Butchness and Brotherhood (pt. 3)
I can hardly remember a time when I didn’t struggle in one way or another in my relationship to “butchness” and “being butch.”
Most of the time my struggles center on the way in which people read me as butch and their disappointment when I violate their assumptions of “proper” butch behavior. I’ve always thought of it as being butch profiled and policed, akin to racial profiling (and indeed butch profiling is very much implicated with our racialized understandings of sexuality). For some reason, when it comes to butchness, I’ve let others’ definitions of “butch” precede my own.
To this day I’m still not sure of what *my* definition of butch is…
Often, though, it is the case that others comment on my butchness as a form of offering a compliment. I’m more than willing and proud to accept a compliment (I am a Leo, after all). Still, even in these instances a feel a little strange…
Got together for dinner with a friend the other night and she remarked that my having looked up directions on how to get to her house from the restaurant was a very butch thing to do… I did feel a little charmed, but that didn’t keep the strangeness at bay for long.
I think when it comes down to it, the predominance of butch-femme discourse has been what kept me on the margins—I’ve always hungered for butch-butch relations. I still do.
In the invisibility of these relations, though, I’ve thankfully found refuge in brotherhood.
It is amusing, though, to experience the physical boundaries of brotherhood—the ways in which men are and are not allowed (by others as well as by ourselves) to touch one another, or even more generally just convey affection for one another verbally, physically, and otherwise.
And yet, at the same time that these boundaries are being negotiated, brotherhood, unlike butchness, relies explicitly on one’s relationship to another/others. That is, butch is a marker/label of the self, independent of others, while brotherhood specifically signifies the self in close relationship among other men. Of course, as S. Bear Bergman shows us in hir book, Butch is a Noun, the two are not mutually exclusive, and can indeed be quite intertwined. Still, I have yet to see such butch brotherhoods sustained…
posted by sprouthead @ 1:53 PM
3 comments
3 Comments:
I can't resist commenting . . .
I have a lot of reactions to hearing your thoughts on my words. (It is the maker of the remark.) I too have a complicated relationship with "butchness". I've never identified as butch, though I can't really say why. I feel like I'd never live up to that profile I and others have created. And because of my desire for those with queer(ed) masculinities.
As someone who came to my masculinity without much support, I often wonder what the role of butch mentoring is in being butch. Bear talks about it quite a bit in hir book, but you haven't mentioned it at all (so I don't know your experience).
I don't know if this opened up your thinking at all, but it's what I've got.
Let me close by saying I was attempting to compliment your caretaking skills. Hopefully that will come through more clearly in those words. If not, I will curse gender roles and go finish my laundry!
This comment has been removed by the author.
V,
I'm glad you couldn't resist commenting...I love exchange. :)
Mentoring is definitely an important aspect to discuss, in regards to butchness, but also beyond.
You're right, Bergman does talk about it in hir book--something I don't mention in this post at all, and something I only slightly touch upon in my original posting about Butch is a Noun [http://sprouthead.blogspot.com/2007/05/wanted-brotherhood.html]
I think it's an oversight I made because of my own complicated relationship to mentorship, both having mentors and being one for others.
As a teacher, it's no surprise that some might look to me as a mentor. But, honestly, as much as I understand myself as a teacher, if not more so, I also see myself as a student. Clearly, you can be both. Seems to me the best teachers I've had are the ones who saw they still had things to learn, too.
In my life, though, I've been called on on many occassions to be mentors to others...I would like to say that I've risen to the occassion every one of those times, but I don't think that'd be the truth. I hope that I have been more successful lately than I have in the past.
Still, a big part of me yearns for others to mentor me in ways I just haven't felt in such a LONG time...
I appreciated the compliment then, and your reiteration of it here--that doesn't mean we shouldn't still curse gender roles!
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