Marriage Equality: A Case in Point: MINE

Now this is truly disturbing and I am considering ending a friendship around this.
I have a friend of mine that I hang out with a couple times a week when she's available. She claims she's AC/DC(bisexual), but comes across quite butchy/dykey in the way she takes up her space and in her persona. We come from the same hometown, so we were raised in a similar environment which influences our personalities to a great extent. I don't want to go into all the details and thus 'outing' her online...

I've known her for a couple years and we are engaged in some of the same activities which brings us together. I have felt that she is in denial of her Lesbianism, but yet she engages in it in a very indirect platonic way with a female friend of hers, that she buys all kinds of items for, treats and gives expensive gifts to. The woman is way more femme than her, straight, and they fight like an old married couple, like this old married couple, my partner and myself.....Butch on Butch! She knows both of us, and we are longterm partnered, going on 10 years, longterm sobriety, and LEGALLY MARRIED since 2008, though we also married in 2004 while Gavin Newsom was allowing it before the courts stopped it. Those marriages held for six months before they were struck down. The ones in 2008 are still legal(yes we got to hear the actual arguements in the California Supreme Court itself, one day).

We have done the marriage equality marches, rallies, marched for 6 years in San Francisco Pride for Marriage Equality....so we've done our part. Our marriage certificate sits upon our hallway wall.

SO ANYWAY, this pal of mine, I talked to her two nights ago, and she went on about how 'gay marriages aren't legal in California because of the law[Prop 8].' I told her
OURS IS. That my partner and I are LEGALLY MARRIED in California...she started to argue about it and for someone who hasn't followed the whole struggle it's rather confusing to understand it all(she's pretty nonpolitical). I told her we married in the 5 month window when the California Supreme Court allowed same sex marriages in 2008. We married two weeks before the infamous election...and even so, when the case was finally decided, going before the CA Supreme Court again, they kept Proposition 8 legal, the discriminatory law that stopped the same sex marriages, and declared marriage between a woman and man only, but we're still fighting it...AND it also allowed all of us who married LEGALLY in that 5 month time frame before the 2008 election, to stay MARRIED. So, our marriage, unlike in 2004 when 4000 same sex marriages were annulled, 18,000 same sex marriages in 2008 including ours, was NOT annulled by the State. We still have California State Legally Married status.

I tried to explain this to her and then she retorted: "Well, the Catholic Church says that marriage is only between a man and a woman." Do you know how many people we picketed, including the Mormon Temple in Oakland, how many times we marched, how many times we protested and how much consciousness we've tried to raise, around those who would deny us, and shout their religious crap at us???To get this from my own friend whose too scared to claim her Lesbian identity???But still wants to hang out with us, go to coffee and meetings with us, and be our friend? WELLLL...this fucking HURT! It was so unexpected....for a moment I was in shock...but then I came to my senses and responded: "And do you know how many churches support Marriage Equality? The Unitarians, the Quakers, liberal Jewish Congregations and many others..." Then I told her I had to go and hung up on her. She called me back the next day 10 minutes before Obama's speech, but I just couldn't bring myself to answer it.

I would feel sad to let go of yet another friend...but...but....and my partner was just as shocked, her knowing us as a MARRIED committed Lesbian couple in longterm sobriety and all, and proud of who and what we are....we just did not expect this to come from a friend...so I'm grieving and angry too.....

It never is easy for Lesbians..especially OUT LOUD AND PROUD ones, but it's done so much for me being married to my partner. It has changed everything. Not just the rights, but my attitude towards commitment, and especially having the right unchallenged to have complete access to her while she was in the hospital and Emergency room for several serious health incidents in the last few years since we married.

Whether you believe in marriage or not, I'm glad that we at least can claim the right.
-In Sisterhood,
-MasterAmazon

Overcoming MicroCommunity Butch horizontal hostility, response to Dirt

I see just what kind of an ally you are Dirt. The kind that can't be trusted....sadly...and that's hurtful. I've NEVER used a Femme as a 'punching bag', but I DO affirm being primarily Butch on Butch. It is YOU who started the whole sordid nastiness with your Capital B Butch Bullshit, that ONLY a Butch EXCLUSIVELY into Femmes can claim the word 'Butch'!

I countered that, and will continue to counter that. I've done ALL flavors of womyn, and the strongest preference I have is exclusively LESBIAN women...I've had longterm relationships with Femmes and with Butches, and affairs/one night stands whathaveyou with all manner of different kinds of women, lesbian and bisexual. I've come to different conclusions with that.

And NEVER have I been put down more for enjoying Butches than by other Butches, the kind like you who are exclusively into Femmes. Is this your OWN internalized lesbophobia?? There are MANY Butches who like both flavors, both Butches, Femmes and all the rest. They are as much of a Butch as you are. They have NO INTENTION to transition, they ARE NOT 'Tweeners', or all the things you attribute to any Butch who doesn't have the same Femme worshipping behavior you have. Because they too honor and LOVE and LUST after other Butches. And often they have to be more secret about it, whereas they can brag about the Femmes they've been with.

MANY Butches are trying to hold onto their Butch identities, and I don't want to see my sister Butch loving Butches, or Butches who love and lust after BOTH Butches and Femmes feel 'less than' or that they're 'not really Butch' because they don't follow your lockstep or that of B/F.com or any other straitjacket lesbian commmunity that YOU YOURSELF rail against for not accepting Butch/Femme lesbians.

I don't want them to be convinced that maybe they're 'into dudes' cuz they like other Butches, or are dudes, or that FTMs and Butches are the same, or for that matter, maybe even gay men are then an option....and on and on with the insanity, the SAME TYPE of insanity that you claim that B/F lesbians suffered under, the same type that Butch on Butch lesbians HAVE ALSO suffered under often at the hands of Butch/Femme Lesbians but can NEVER speak about.

That's the REAL issue, if you want to take me to task. Not that I should 'worship femmes' like you do. I know what I like, what I prefer, I've been out for a darned long time....and I know what floats my boat, whether you approve or not, or give your Capital B stamp on it.....

I worship ALL STRONG DYKEAMAZONS Butch or Femme for taking up their space, their power, their sexuality, and for making it into a different world because of their REALTIME WORK and presence. Not all the microcommunities one must jump thru hoops for to belong...
-MasterAmazon