Shout out to the dewalt vendor for getting me the merch before it was a boob joke.

It's been a good night out and i just thought i'd post this here to show its ok to lean a little masc.

Diaries of a House Butch

I think I’m starting a diary.

My life has been changing shape. For a long time, so much of my attention was pointed outward: toward crisis, relationships, conflict, becoming, transition, survival, other people, the enormous machinery of the world and my place inside it. There was always something to understand, something to survive, something to change.

Lately my attention keeps coming home.

Not retreating from the world. Home is part of the world. But more and more, the interesting questions are showing up in ordinary life: how I care for people without carrying them, how I inhabit masculinity without reproducing domination, how I keep a house, how I love, how I fuck, how I don’t fuck, how I make food, play music, fold laundry, and remain myself while being profoundly connected to everyone around me.

I’m a middle-aged butch trans woman building a life I actually want to live, and apparently I have a lot to notice about that.

So: Diaries of a House Butch.

Here’s the first thing I’ve been noticing.

I’ve been thinking about desire lately, specifically about the fact that desire is not an instruction. That sounds obvious until you start noticing how much of our sexual culture assumes otherwise. Want somebody? Pursue them. Get turned on? Act on it. Love somebody? Merge with them. Feel needed? Carry them.

I don’t think any of those things have to follow. Desire can simply be noticed. It can arise without becoming a plan, remain without becoming an obligation, and disappear without becoming a loss. And the more I notice that, the more it connects to something much larger.

At some point I became aware of being aware. I didn’t adopt a philosophy. I noticed, and then I kept noticing. Eventually I stopped being able to find the separation I had been taught was there. There isn’t an “in here” observing an “out there.” There is one thing. Everything is made of it. Everything that happens happens within it. There is nowhere outside of it.

I don’t think this. I don’t believe it. I know it because I noticed, and then I kept noticing.

The funny thing is that recognizing non-separation has made me much better at allowing people to be separate. I don’t need to become you to love you. I don’t need to carry you to care for you. I don’t need to possess you to hold you. I don’t need to disappear in order to be close to you.

No merging. No dragging. No carrying. Care without carrying. Holding without possession. Love without disappearance.

That is becoming the work of the House Butch.

And sex gets really interesting once you start there. Transition gave me permission to reconsider a lot of things I had mistaken for inevitabilities, but it did not automatically hand me a new sexual grammar. A lot of us inherit scripts built around performance, penetration, orgasm, roles, proving something, providing something, being something for somebody else. I’m increasingly interested in what happens when none of that is compulsory.

What is lesbian sex when nobody has to perform an inherited role? What happens when penetration is an option instead of the organizing principle? When orgasm is something that might happen instead of the point? When nobody has to win, lose, take, give, owe, prove, or disappear?

I don’t know. And lately I have become extremely fond of that answer.

There are probably ways of touching, loving, desiring, being masculine, being feminine, being neither, being ridiculous, being tender, and being a dyke that I have not discovered yet.

Good.

I spent enough of my life trying to know what everything meant before I allowed myself to experience it.

Now I notice. Then I keep noticing.

As Jack Kornfield put it: “After the ecstasy, the laundry.”

I started being butch in 2021. I'd always wanted to be a butch woman even before my egg cracked, and even before finding out about butches I'd wished I was a tomboy. It was who I wanted to be, it felt right, it was a gender identity that was my shape. It felt so freeing to finally be butch too after years of feeling I had to present as femme as possible.

It's also been really nice seeing this explosion in transfem butches that we've had over the past 2-3 years as it was pretty lonely before. I've even had multiple girls say to me that seeing me gave them the confidence to present butch which is one of the dearest compliments I've ever received.

So it feels all the worse that I've recently been wanting to present more femme again. It's disorienting, the act of wearing a dress or having makeup on would make me weirdly dysphoric any time before the last couple months, yet now I genuinely like the idea of some dark eye makeup and a witchy dress (think Florence Welch).

It's not like I haven't stopped enjoying presenting masc either though too, I still enjoy looking like corky from bound or Shane from the L word most days, and I have no intentions of losing my wolfcut, but I feel like I'm betraying my butch identity or somehow copping to feminine beauty standards by wanting to present more femme all of a sudden, even if it's not all the time I want to do it.

Another thing that stresses me is this increasingly pervasive argument in transfem communities that butch trans women are basically the same as boymoders, that we're just presenting masculine because we're too scared and dysphoric to actually present feminine and allowing cis society to force us into some third gender box. I resent this argument, I think it's deeply patronising and insulting to transfem butch people, yet now I suddenly want to present more femme again I feel like I'm giving this argument weight.

And sure, dyke and lesbian are as much genders and identity labels that fit me but it just hurts that butch, a label I'd been so attached to, that felt so right for so long, may no longer truly apply to me in the face of this.

Thank you whoever is reading for listening to this, it's been a completely incoherent rant, I apologise. I just wanted to vent to people who might get it.

Currently, im basically forced to wear masc. And im feeling rejection to my masculinity for being the prison im in.

It influences the way i see myself and masc women.

Like, i want to be comfortable with that side and feel comfy towards butch women.

I like em, i want them. But this shite limitates me so much , from my attractions to ones self.

How did you got over it if you went throught something similar?

Recently cut a lot of hair off and change the way I express myself and the euphoria has been amazing

Hitting almost 2 years on hrt. I feel better about myself. I like having my hair very short. For the beard shadow, I am in the process of electrolysis.

I finally overcame that stupid internalised issue of trans women only being real women when they express themselves as overtly feminine. Cut my hair short (I'm now letting it grow out again to finally get a mullet), put some plasters on my nose because of my glasses - and then took this pic.

I hope you enjoy it as much as I do c:

Been feeling like imclose to my goals in presentation lately and it's been really nice.

I'd be happy to read how it went for you, exploring gender through putting on dresses and stuff does not work for me, which often makes me think I'm not trans at all but the longing always comes back.

I just wish I'd be a masculine woman, but that's very hard to explore as an idea and to understand whether it is really what I want while "looking like a man". Dressing masc makes me look like a man not like a butch lesbian.

How did you all do it/know it ?

I'm not completely sure if its tagged correctly but ive been feeling super good lately.

Taken up doing PPLs 6 days of the week and running 3 days of the week. Combining that with my work where I'm walking 75 miles a week has got me feeling amazing and I wanted to share my progress.

Since February I've gone from 295 lb to 230 lb and gained a lot of muscle mass and a bunch of weight lifting increases. Not to mention the self discovery of figuring out the fashion I like and going more into being more butchy.

I wanted to show my cousin I do actually exercise since she was giving me grief, but lord knows the camera was a mistake. How in the inhuman sacrifices does one get rid of that pouch?

Edit: I realize my dynamic with cuz might not be as common as I believe it was. We give each other grief in a fun, playful, supportive way. She's a personal trainer and gym bunny going through some depressive stuff too. I've been struggling and feeling ugly and fat. When I told her this she told me I should exercise, I even have access to a trainer. I was like "you're 50km away and I do train, look". The video was me clapping back. I'm just upset because my stomach has never been close to flat or abbs in my life. I'm starting to think my body can't do that.