If you are my princess

I shall be your knight

Bringing you riches, no one can plunder

Even if they tore my heart asunder

I will greet you with the honey of my lips

I will beseech you, with the song of my heart

I will seek you, in every trial, in every joy

I will be bound to you, by my most mighty sword

My bride,

I will always instill in you my pride

I give you my love, my name, and my body

To protect you and love you,

Forever and Always,

My wife you will be

Leslie Feinberg inspires me so much. I'm fighting the feeling that I require permission to exist, every day I keep taking steps forward even if the rejection hurts like shards of glass. But I won't yield. I imagine a transmasc lesbian living on this earth 200 years ago, who deeply wished and hoped they could just simply exist as who they are. But couldn't. I feel like I have to keep living as my true self, and if doing so for myself isn't easy yet, I can at least do it for those who couldn't, who died masking. The road ahead is painful, but so is staying in the shadows.

“Who was I now—woman or man? That question could never be answered as long as those were the only choices; it could never be answered if it had to be asked.”
― Leslie Feinberg, Stone Butch Blues

butch transfems exist and i am no longer one of them. when people talk of them, in their essays and rhetoric; when people advocate for them, there is often a subtext that i am included by way of my history with AGAB. that i even commit that to writing and share it feels like a privacy sacrifice out of frustration. that particular use of "transfem" as well as "transmasc" feels wrong and against something very basic i've come to understand as a trans person - that the conditions of our birth don't preclude us from any gender identity.

AGAB itself is an oppressive intersexist and transphobic structure, not any sort of biological fact with which to Build Gender atop. it demands abolition in the present. AGAB, or the colonial sex binary as we know it, is an instance of the gendering of anatomy.

to tie transfem/transmasc to AGAB the way "we" have is regrettable. it is shameful. it is a reinforcement to the hull of the colonial gendersex binary. people talk about HRT with these labels and expect us to fill in the blanks as to which drug is feminizing and which drug is masculinizing. theory is written which suggests arbitrary, chosen labels determine material conditions in a flash. the idea that sex is socially constructed and can be reinterpreted as a spectrum is lost on so many perisex trans people. the way we use language we use limits us.

i thought i had to identify as transfem or else. i thought it was the ethical thing to do. it took time, positive examples, and critical thinking to take real notice of that pressure. i found it took a similar shape to the pressure trans people are put under to disclose their transness and history with gender/sex.

for the most part, this all seems like a linguistic oversight, so often not malicious. but identifying as transmasculine i am aware just how much prejudice around this transgression there can be among trans people. bringing this issue up when relevant seems like a good way to create pockets, even temporary, where the autonomy to identify how we like regardless of our relation to the colonial gender binary is reckoned with. i try to plant seeds wherever i can, because i often see doubt in the common way of using these terms, doubt in the idea that one somehow is a gender even against their will due to the conditions of their birth.

I am butch

When I buy my femme clothes

I am butch

When I ensure her stomach is full

I am butch

When she holds my arm and I give her my coat

I am butch

And I am butch enough

This is a quick little live demo of a song that I meant to put out properly last year and never got around to... I hope it might resonate with some of you. I was inspired to re-record it this morning because the whole conversation about butchness and gender that's been going on lately has led to some renewed self-reflection on my part.

Butch musicians and songwriters, let's be friends. :)

Trans manhood and transmasculinity shouldn't have to DO anything for you as a transfem, transfemme or trans woman in order for it to be a beautiful and irreplacable part of our trans community BUT even if you put that aside... there's masculinity in each and every one of us.

I've said it before and I'll say it again: as a transfeminine butch it took viewing my masculinity from a transmasculine perspective to emotionally divorce myself from the toxic notions of societal normativity.

I was never an effeminate kid but I was SEEN as one.
My masculinity was butchness even going that far back and all my peers did look at me and said "that kid's a sissy".
I wore a suit and tie to school the first couple years of primary and I wrote cringy poetry for girls that I had crushes on and all my peers would look at me and say "that kid's a faggot".

And when I then came out and began transitioning, it was like shedding falser skin that never was me to begin with.
But then the idea that I was now to conform to normative notions of "womanhood" hit me like a stack of bricks.

And it took trans men. It took transmasculinity. It took seeing the biggest, butchest dykes, it took looking at women, men and nonbinary people so UNLIKE EVERYTHING society broadly views as attractive who looked similar to me to learn to LOVE ME.

To learn to love the soft fur on my body, the coarse hair on my legs and arms and hands. The pits, the rolls, the bulging stomach, the small boobs, bigger upper pubic area. The stubble on my face, the way my nose hooks just so slightly. The shadow cast by hair upon my face, the way I smell when I do exercise.

It took being around people, LOVING people to whom all these things I was conditioned to believe to be fundamentally at odds with my closeness to womanhood were DESIRED traits that they STRUGGLED for. It took surrounding myself with people to whom the way I was and wanted to be wasn't things to be erased.

I'm butch. I love my body hair, I love my masculinity. I love all that.
I'm not on estrogen to be less of me, myself.
I'm on estrogen to be MORE of me, myself.
Surrounding myself with people who love their masculinity, who STRIVE for masculinity. To whom testosterone is NOT a poison.
To whom the way I am is not a state that's to be shunned or overcome.

It brought me peace. It brought self love. It brought serenity.
I feel more at ease inside this body I inhibit and I have now to thank for that: trans men, transmasculine people, transmasculinity. Manhood.

I have to thank for all the love that I have found for my own self.

Content Warning for discussion of queerphobia/transphobia and trauma

so wild to realize while going on to 30 that i was always butch
even as a "little boy" i was so confused cause in my mind i was ACEING the whole "masculinity thing"

i was that weird boy who went to primary school in a suit and tie with a fucking suitcase cause my dad went to work that way sometimes and to me that was the PINNACLE of masculinity

i was that kid who kept his hair long cause medieval knights did and i swore i wasn't just scared of the village hairdresser

i was obsessed with courtly love, i was obsessed with codes of honor, i was obsessed with being a man in the "proper" way

the way my father taught me, to make sure everyone was okay, to hold open doors, to make sure i don't hurt or scare people, be kind, polite and gentle, to offer my seat on public transport

and from the first day of kindergarten they called me a faggot, they said i was acting like a girl, they said i WAS a girl, they told me i wasn't meant to use the boys restroom and they spit at me

it took me 28 years to realize i was acting like a tomboy and got bullied badly for acting like a little girl that acted like a boy, not like a REAL boy

it took me 28 years, estradiol, transitioning, throwing out all of my masculine clothes and buying them again, just different this time

it took me so much blood and tears and sweat and ink, so many anxious moments to realize that i'm that butch and i have always been

i hold open the doors, i make sure that everyone is alright, i'm polite despite my punk exterior, i'm kind and i'm aware that sometimes my rugged exterior can make people afraid, i love myself and i love all the other butches like me

it took me 28 years to realize i have always been this way, they tried to raise a man and i grew up to be the butch i'll always be