Nostalgie de la Butch
The Guardian’s Julie Bindel, mentioned here recently, is once again unhappy with the world:
Today, the old butches are a dying breed. The veterans of the Gateways [lesbian] club are now as likely to blend in with the rest of us than wear a suit, tie and starched shirt… During a recent trip to Sweden I thought most women I saw in the street were lesbians, and the men sitting around in cafes with their babies, gay dads.
Yes, it’s a bold statement. A classic sentence for our series. The gist of which being that the 53-year-old Ms Bindel, for whom radical lezzer is a profession, is having trouble telling which team a person, a younger person, is batting for. Imagine the indignity.
A number of lesbians I know who are on the butch side have been asked [by other lesbians] when they are transitioning. Being openly and proudly butch has now… become something that many in the lesbian community look down on. At the same time, within gay male culture, being camp or in any way “feminine” is derided.
I don’t follow such things closely, or at all, but apparently bull dykes and mincing nancies are so last century. Affected burliness for gay ladies and girliness for gay gents is no longer deemed fashionable, and the quaint term “straight acting” has all but vanished into history. The donkey jacket dyke, of which Big Grumpy Jules is so fond, is now a museum piece. Well, a lot can change in half a century. However, this lack of enthusiasm for acting like a caricature is for some a source of rancour and rumblings of conspiracy:
This, I would argue, is a product of plain old sexism and misogyny.
This being the Guardian, Ms Bindel doesn’t offer much in the way of actual argument. But as fashions in lesbianism have changed since Julie’s first flush of youth back in the Seventies, this must be the doing of The Patriarchy and its phallic tentacles:
Despite feminism and the gay liberation of old, lesbians are only really acceptable if we present as “real women.” Many lesbians seem to seek male approval by not looking too different from the women they judge to be acceptable.
Lesbians are courting the approval of straight men? This I didn’t know.
Let’s face it, plenty of men expect lesbians to look like the women acting out their fantasies in girl-on-girl porn, and there are not that many tool belts and buzz cuts to see in that genre.
Attention, Patriarchs. We must redouble our infiltration of lesbian bars and Sapphic subculture. Our grip on lesbian fashion must be tightened even more. And remember, no tool belts.
Those of us who reject what I would call the insignia of our oppression – lipstick and lingerie – are seen as a threat.
Or possibly a relic from grandma’s generation.
Recall that Julie detests what she refers to as lipstick lesbians. This appears to be a part of a dislike of choices transgendered people make:
“Those who ‘transition’ seem to become stereotypical in their appearance — f**k-me shoes and birds’ nest hair for the boys; beards, muscles and tattoos for the girls. Think about a world inhabited just by transsexuals. It would look like the set of Grease.”
I think that’s kind of funny but mostly true. What’s missing is the complete absence of any empathetic sense that would challenge her own biases. To Julie no one would wear make-up unless they were forced to. The idea that someone is doing so from their own free will is inconceivable. The thought that women might be party to changes in fashion is anathema. Ergo it must be the patriarchy.
Ah, well. Hey, I live here, nothing would truly surprise me coming out of Sacratomato.
Jerry needs to be fitted for a very long-armed smoking jacket, and the AG belongs in jail.
the insignia of our oppression – lipstick and lingerie – are seen as a threat.
I don’t wear either and I’m a straight girl person. Just not a particularly girly girl person.
Who the hell cares? If you’re a lesbian who genuinely has a passion for driving truck and you genuinely dig dressing, talking, and acting like the other male truckers, then go for it. Knock yourself out. My blessing, as if you needed it.
Likewise, if you’re a lesbian whose breath is taken away by frilly, feminine accoutrements, follow your bliss wherever it takes you. Do yourself up like Scarlett O’Hara complete with hoopskirts for all I care.
In fact, NOBODY CARES. No need to make yourself unhappy trying to be edgier than thou just because some bitter activist says so.
Also, it looks like Old Lesbians envy Young Lesbians just as much as Old Straight Women resent the giggly young things who steal their husbands.
So they’re real, stereotypical women after all.
It’s more that she’s unhappy about gay people blending in and, as she imagines it, “seeking approval” from those dastardly heterosexuals.
Exactly like the way black conservatives (and gays) in America are excoriated as sycophants, sucking up to their enemies instead of being Down With The Cause.
As if.
It’s frustrating to be white in America because many People of Color (the activists and public figures, anyway) are living a psychodrama that the rest of us don’t even know about. I remember that during the Anita Hill testimony against Clarenc Thomas I was introduced to all kinds of stereotypes about black male sexuality that I — a graduate student — had never even heard of.
I was raised in the Deep West, where there are so few blacks that there’s no way to blame them for any of the problems and so there was certainly no opportunity for I, as a child, to overhear adults muttering about Those People under their breaths.
So let me get this straight: according to her, evolution stopped at the neckline.
Absolutely.
The idea that hormones, in utero, inform how the brain is organized is the worst kind of heresy. If you identify any physiological difference between the female and male brains — even if the women come out ahead in a particular area — that just gives Teh Patriarchy a pretext to keep women out of the CEO’s office.
And we can’t have that.
So even though in all other species testosterone makes males randy and aggressive and estrogen turns females into nesting caretakers, those same characteristics in humans are PURELY SOCIALLY CONSTRUCTED BY THE PATRIARCHY to oppress and control.
SCIENCE!