i also saw most of “female to femme” last night but it was a scorcher here (87 degrees!!!) and the projector kept over heating so i missed the last twenty minutes of it. it was more than sold-out so hopefully they’ll show it at the LGBT center or maybe it’ll even come out on DVD one of these days so i can see what i missed.

it too was really interesting and thought provoking, particularly in light of all the “this is what a feminist looks like” wars going on in the feminisphere these days.

much to consider and ruminate on at the dyke march on saturday…
xoxo, jared

And a big “WTF” to the idea that “lesbian masculinity” = genderqueer and FTM. what the hell? Butches are so retro, huh? I should climb back into my cave.

Part of this gets confusing when you acknowledge that at least some gay transmen either considered themselves part of the lesbian community pre-transition or actually were primarily attracted to women.

I think the mindset you’re describing is more common to the mainstream. Within the lesbian community SAII, the assumption is made because (duh) lesbians most frequently encounter transguys who start out connected to the lesbian community.

I had a discussion with a butch friend about how–according to her–”butch” is being replaced by “boi” and other variants on female masculinity. “Butch,” to her, implied a particular kind of masculinity, maybe what you’d call classic. She felt that those women were becoming few and far between, but not that they were transitioning or that female masculinity was disappearing. I can’t really speak to numbers.

I know ftms–and “tg butches”–who _do_ consider their ftm persona to be an extension of the butch continuum. My quibble was with an generalization from their identities, or with a conflation of “transmale” and “masculine.”

For example - I used to be a part of WOW Café Theater, a women’s theater collective here in NYC. The theater actually now has a women and trans folks inclusion policy, and I was one of the people who pushed for that, for a few reasons. First - WOW was created around an idea of gender oppression, in response to the theater world being rather exclusionary of women, especially queer women. Since trans folks experience similar gender oppression in the theater world, it made sense to extend the mission to include people who perhaps did not identify as women, but were trans or genderqueer.

Also, there were people who had been part of the collective, transitioned, and then felt unwelcomed in the space. I think that it makes perfect sense that trans men, after transitioning, choose to remove themselves from lesbian or women’s spaces that they once belonged to; however, in many circumstances, I think it’s wrong to push out folks who still feel connected and who have long contributed to the community. And since WOW still put on shows by trans men and had trans men as performers, it made sense to extend full inclusion to those folks, too.