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make me feel connected to butch/femme lesbians of the past, present, and future.

Almost 2 years ago, I started identifying as a Femme with a capital F. Identifying this way was the best thing that's happened to me. Realizing I was a lesbian--something many think of as a limiting label-- and living as one loudly and proudly has been my single most liberating act. A liberating, brave, and necessary act of self love.

Since identifying as Femme and starting to immerse myself in lesbian culture and community, I quickly came to know the beautiful history of the butch-femme dynamic. I learned it and lived it. The balance, the tenderness, the fucked up gender, all of it.

However, my knowledge of the history came from bite-sized snippets and snapshots from social media. I wanted to read the lesbian classics, the queer theory and histories, but I had trouble making time for it.

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At the beginning of the semester, I'd missed the first two weeks of GWS 203 because I had transferred from another class, then ended up being sick. But, as I was catching up on readings, I was introduced to the gorgeous work of Jack Halberstam in the assigned excerpt of Female Masculinity. Although my lived experience as an extensively-qualified, certified masc-loving lesbian and queer community member had afforded me a marginal knowledge of my identity, reading Halberstam's work put the most perfect words to everything I had grown to love about female masculinity--I even ended up buying my own copy of the book (pictured) a few weeks ago from the Pilsen Community Bookstore!

I adored how Halberstam described lesbian masculinity specifically--constructed by reworking and improving observed male masculinities. In this way, the butch/femme dynamic is so much more than some cheap iteration of heterosexual relationships.

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in the middle of reading that Halberstam excerpt, enthralled by every word--and down astronomically with a debilitating case of Big Bad Lesbian Breakup.

I had broken up with my ex partner less than a month prior to this point in the semester; reading about female masculinity and contextualizing it with butch lesbianism made the already raw wound sting.

Naturally, in post-lesbian-breakup fashion, I took the pain to butch/femme Twitter...where my newly coined term, "butchstarved," seemed to strike a chord with the yearning Femme community. (I blacked out the info for privacy, but believe me when I say this tweet did numbers.)

Lucky for me, however, my butchstarvation was satiated just a month later on my very first date with...

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my Masc, my Stud.

As a woman, the masculinity she embodies–as described by Jack Halberstam–is a social rebellion. A Threat to gender conformity and white, middle and upper class male power. When linked with queerness and coupled with lesbian desire, a hetero-patriarchal society sees masculinity as dangerous, unacceptable.

But, to me? A Femme? Female masculinity linked with queerness and lesbian desire is simply a dream come true.

Not a danger, a predator, or a pervert, but a lover. She takes care of me and I take care of her.

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There are endless things to love about being a Lesbian

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There are endless things to love about being a Lesbian

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(specifically, being Femme for Masc), but what I love most is the privilege of showing a masculine lesbian a tenderness that the rest of the world has not afforded them.

I am my girlfriend’s safe space for vulnerability, her confidant, her nurturer. Sometimes, I’m her personal shopper and stylist!

She sits in the bathroom with me while I get ready to go out, tells me I look beautiful. She brings me flowers, drives me everywhere, walks on the street side of the sidewalk always, and helps me carry my groceries in.

A man on the subway late at night came up to us once and said, "that's your stud, she protects you."

It made me smile, because she is, and she does.