Saturday night: continuing the notes from my conversation with M. on transfetishism versus transsensuality

On “Butch Flight”:

Susie Bright coined this phrase for butches running away from their female bodies into the decision to transition F to M. Of course, it trivializes the real and painstaking decisionmaking process people go through. But there are dilettente FTMs, people who aren't transitioning in any direction, and who ten years ago would have been happy identifying as butch.

These same butches sometimes choose to start identifying as FTM without actually a) passing as men, b) trying to pass as men, c) wanting to pass as men, d) taking hormones, or e) even considering hormones (never mind surgery).

These butches may or may not be FTM in a long-term transitional sense, they may be 3rd gender, intersexed, and/or simply lacking a better term than FTM for what they are. They may not be transitioning in any direction whatsoever but see that calling themselves FTM will help get them play (with girls and/or boys). Other motives for taking on the FTM moniker in the absence of transitioning gender can include trendiness, wanting to act in solidarity with an oppressed minority (being a political FTM but living a butch dyke life, the way so many women are political lesbians while living a straight woman’s life), actually liking being in FTM spaces (in the tradition of femme fag-hags, there are butch FTM-hags), and liking the way femmes flock to FTM spaces like so many grandmothers picking over the tomatoes at a market.

Probably the two main motives for identifying FTM without being in transition from F to M come down to sex and friendship. If we are going to be a sex-positive community, we need to be happy that people are exploring their sexual boundaries, and (if we prefer butches to FTMs) contain our anxiety about the scarcity of butches. OK, I have found myself needing to contain my anxiety about the scarcity of butches. Specifically good butch tops. It’s hard to watch a good butch top dematerialize into the faggy orgies going on in the back rooms of the FTM community, sometimes never to return, but I can always just pocket those thoughts and turn them into positive sexual fantasy fodder. And as for friendship— in general this community needs to be more supportive and friendship-based. Building a movement through extended families of ex-lovers is not exactly a sustainable long-term plan for revolution that we want to pass on to our replacements. They are filtering even now into the queer bars out of the pre-teen gender mochepit and they are looking to their elders for values systems to follow. Do we really want to teach sex first, friendship second?

I’m not saying don’t have sex with these juicy youngsters, I’m just saying that we have to model respectful behavior towards eachother’s ever-changing identities that we impose on the 3-dimensional sexual animal we each carry in our core. Let whoever call her/him/hirself whatever, and ask respectful questions about what you don’t understand about her/his/hir choices.

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