Female Identified Butches trying to organize

It has been a hard journey the past year to bring Female Identified Butches together. We know who we are. I have already gone through two groups, both which will shortly become/have become defunct partly because the group leaders have not allowed input and democratic process to take place, or even basic feminism/egalitarianism between the womyn. One had a very clear focus but almost too narrow, and expounded upon it without allowing others to really have input, it was a monologue. But at least she has a vision of what she wants the group to be, and in her mind, heart and spirit she truly is a Female Centered Female Identified Butch who is troubled by all her peers genderqueering, taking on the use of male pronouns, identifying with men, or actually wanting to become one by taking hormones or having surgeries.

The other, is a failed FTM, if not worse, an interloper, a traitor, one who wants to harness what little space we have left as Female Identified Butches, who wants to convert us over to the Genderqueer/FTM cause, or at least make as few waves as possible, by actively silencing our voices. She does not represent us. She is NOT us...in fact just a few short years ago she proudly announced at a monthly women's organization meeting I was in that she just had surgery to remove her breasts, and pulled her shirt up to show it off to all in the room....it sickened me, because I knew another Dyke in this same community who was having fundraisers because both of her breasts had been removed due to cancer, and was having trouble with money for all the surgeries and procedures.

My partner and I also followed said individual above at Gay Pride, we didn't know it was her, with 'Butch' proudly on her back, with her shirt off....cuz we love to flirt with other Butches, and when she turned around, she was flatchested, the same individual who proudly announced the removal of breasts...and NOW, fastforward several years later, she wants to lead a Female Identified Butch group under the rubric of 'Butch Voices' a conference supposedly for Butch Lesbians that took place in Oakland, California in August of 2009, and it was completely led by FTM's and Genderqueers. There was only ONE Female Identified Butch workshop, led by said individual above, who had her breasts cut off, an FTM, an infiltrator. It is why I didn't attend the workshop till the tail end. I felt crestfallen when somebody not of our community, somebody who has chosen not to keep her body integrity, her femaleness in tact, not because of serious disease like cancer, but because she no longer wanted to be female, sporting all the genderqueer dress, appearance, scratchy hormone induced FTM voice, and appearance, wanting to represent those VERY BUTCHES who don't want any of that?

Those very Butches who we are constantly told we're a 'dying breed'? Those Butches who are Dykes, Dyke loving Dykes, Womyn Loving Womyn, who refuse hormones, surgeries, male pronouns and male identities being imposed on us? Who had our workshops for Female Identified Butches refused, and turned down by 'Butch Voices', but they have their patsy take over and now 'represent' us? Because we are the DykeAmazons simply too potent to be controlled by them, or to kowtow to their agenda, that we gotta be spoonfed that an FTM, a Genderqueer is as much a Butch as we are? While they run away from essentially what makes a Butch a Butch, is that she is a WOMAN, a DYKE who loves other WOMYN, whether they're Butch, Femme or Androgynous....she has a herstory that is rich, that has resisted men, and male power in the bedroom, and as much as possible in her life. Where she has fought for women, protected them, worked on empowering them, and in honoring both their and her own female body, and Lesbionic Dyke Desires.........so we are to kowtow to them, and accept a stand in who has not lived our reality, in fact rejected it, to 'lead' a group that represents us, and then tell us that now any Butch can be part of the group, any individual who counters who we are at our essence may come, the very individuals that have coopted our identities, who have convinced our young women that transition is the way to freedom from the problems of the Butch Dyke Female position, or even the Female position, that liberation comes at the end of an injection, a surgery or a pill? And that if we imitate maleness, it may rub off on us(at least in our minds) that we might get the same rights men do. Is this right? Not..it's called cooptation. And it has been done to colonized groups over and over again who have fallen for the patsies, the interlopers, the fakers, to sell their lands, their spiritualities, their beings, themselves, and their very souls, like the Native Americans, the Blacks, the Jews, and the radical Dykes.

And on top of that, that the group won't be free, it won't be democratic, or consensus or feminist oriented, it will be under the dominion of the very conference that shut out our voices in the first place, the falsely named 'Butch Voices'. This is my blog for today, my first blog...but I have many more to go on this subject of Female Identified Butches, who we are, and who we are not....but there will be other DyketoDyke topics as well! Women's spirituality, where does it fit for Dykes, and especially where does it fit for Butches? What are our roles in it, and what do we bring to our Female Centered Spirituality? How do we expand our role in that movement, without feeling invisible? We'll talk about all forms of Butch oppression, liberation, empowerment, sex, and sex magic! Yeah! Other topics like Goddess worship/Paganism/Wicca, recovery (clean and sober), creating community for ourselves, or reclaiming community for us Dykes and Butch Dykes...Michigan Womyn's Music Festival, and other Festivals I attend, womyn's space, womyn's land, womyn's and dyke empowerment, and defending those spaces....womyn's and especially Dyke and Amazon Mysteries/Rites of Passage/Ritual....friendships and more....Dyke Identified and centered Leathersex, maybe even Science Fiction, being in the Trades as a Dyke and as a Butch....and our struggles together overall as Dykes, Womyn, Butches or Femmes....taking back our Dyke community one womon, one space, one idea at a time...till we are a force to be reckoned with, not bartered, not coopted, not sold out! We are NOT a dying breed!!!!!