redefining self

The predicament...

Going on a date where I feel out butched is a really an interestingly strange place for me to be. I have never felt out butched by anyone I've ever been with, there has always been some element of the relationship that left butchness of each member of the pair relatively equivalent. Even when I identified femme of center I never found myself feeling out butched, which is really a strangely powerful statement when considered.

As someone who has come to really find butch of center a place I can call home it is a strange feeling to feel out butched, I don't have an issue with it, I know that there are a great deal of individuals who are "more butch" than me. There are tons of characteristics that one attributes to butchness and I am very aware that I am not as butch as the stereotypical butch with all of the tough around the edges and emotionally in control, all of that "boi crap". There have just not been situations where I have been interested mutually in someone who leaves me with that feeling.

Despite my butch of center identification, this sense of being out butched and the grrl is an interestingly strange and new homely place. I've never really found myself falling into the hetero normalizing of my relationships. The idea that one person is the boi and the other the grrl has never appealed to me, maybe because it has simply never happened or maybe because I don't like it, I don't know that I've ever had to consider that before. I have always been a soft butch, I've always embarrassed the position. I have always had an attraction to others who are identified as butch of center as well. With that said I think there has been so much of no need for boi and grrl because there is so much equality in the butch-ness and femme-ness and whatever-ness there is to be present in a person. I have never found the proportions of a relationships to be quite as cut and dry as to be placed into the hetero normative positions.Being in the situation to have to think about it, I don't mind it so much. Strangely enough, when discussing the fact that it was once said, "I am the boi," about a family questioning session; I couldn't help but think, "yes you are!" and even smile a little at the though.

All of this brings back my once present far more femininely expressed physical presentation. The way that I was when I first began to accept my own orientation, when I kept myself far more feminine in an effort to "pass".  Since then I've noticed myself moving towards a far more masculine presentation, being the butch boi that I am expected to be based on some of the internal identifications and the far more stereotypical "lesbian" look and feel. I'm really noting that my choice to present that way is a lot less to do with my personal desires to physically look the way I do and more to do with how I am expected to. I'm growing into being myself whatever that means and despite what that makes others feel or think, but seemingly this being out butched and the grrl in the situation really seems to be a great place to be with this new choice. Having a sense of being in a place to be whoever I will, and that it'll be taken at face value, that I am not expected to be anything more or less than exactly who I am. There feels like so much more of a I want to know what this can be than expectations of who or what I am or should be.

Thinking about all of this has left me redefining myself and my own place in the continuum, where I want to be verses where I have allowed myself to be or others perceive me to be. I still connect very whole heartedly to my butch of center identity I know that for certain. I'm finding the idea of butch and boi to not have to be synonymous, and liking it. I have not thought it needed to but the longer I do find myself identifying butch the more I've been expected to be boish. I am finding myself comfortably set into being grrl and butch and the two really coexisting in one space and person without conflict. It is an interestingly strange place to be where I feel like I can be both, after years standing behind the butch boi toughness and hardened wall. This place where I can call myself, grrl/boi/grrly boi/whatever I want to choose today is entirely gratifying and freeing. The feeling that I can be and share all of my butch of center tough and soft all at the same time.

I love the new labeling I'm finding for myself where I don't have to be anything I don't want to and can be everything I wish to...Butch Grrl, that's me and it's the best me I've ever been! Now all I have to do is figure out what the hell that even means?! This is me setting off on a new adventure to figure out how I define this new self labeling, this label that feels so much realer than just butch ever did, than boi ever did and lets me embrace grrl without the strange and uncomfortable feelings its left me with before.