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Title: Butch Anarchy Author: Lee Shevek Date: June 2, 2021 Language: en Topics: Lesbianism, masculinity, feminism, anarcha-feminism, queer, patriarchy Source: Retrieved on November 20, 2022 from https://butchanarchy.medium.com/butch-anarchy-9ffaf75eaf2e
Butchness is not only the appropriation of traditional masculinity, but
the subversion of it. The sacred weapon in the arsenal of patriarchy,
the one they did and continue to do everything to keep us from taking,
is not something we even bother to steal under the cover of nightfall.
Instead, we swagger right through the front door, wryly appraise the
shelf on which it sits, and take what of it suits us best. We wear it
openly in the streets, keenly aware of the retribution such a theft will
at any moment bring down upon us.
We take it so blatantly, so assuredly, not because we believe that
masculinity belongs to patriarchy, but because we know that it does not.
We know that gender expression and play and variety has existed
throughout and beyond all of recorded time. We know who the original
thieves are, who took masculinity and locked it away for only the
privileged few to use and to weaponize. We know that this shares an
origin story with all of private property. We know that the answer is
not to concede the loss, but to liberate that which was stolen. That is
what we butches do with masculinity.
Patriarchy, capitalism, centralized power, they are the original
thieves, whose heists were such a phenomenal success that they went so
far as to make many of us believe that we were made to be so
impoverished, and, beyond that, that there is nothing in our power to
change that. It is what we butches were taught from young ages, when our
authenticity, our masculinity, first began to show its face. That’s not
for you. Girls can’t do that. Why do you want to be like a man? You are
a woman, so you must be feminine. Our truth, our birthright, stolen from
us before we even understood what it meant to us, before we knew how
precious it was. And then we were taught that the theft was not only
normal… but that it never even really happened. Some of us developed our
iron grips at a young age and never fully let go, some of us nodded
along with pain in our hearts and tried to adapt for a while, some of us
had masculinity printed so clearly on our faces or voices that no amount
of policing could deny its truth. All of us, though, have scars from the
attempted taking… and even more scars from the punishment that followed
our refusal, then or later, to deny that we had a right to keep it.
Butchness, as we discover (sometimes with pain, sometimes with joy), is
naturally subversive. There are butches who cling to other identities of
power and privilege so tightly that they deny this subversive power, but
it is there, and we all know it. We cannot walk into a room and not know
it. While there are those who flinch away from the raw and vulnerable
power such subversion lends us, there are many more who recognize that
this is a necessary, and beautiful, aspect of being butch. We embrace
it. It is the fuel to our fire. It is our righteous cause. It is butch
anarchism. The subversion and overthrow of the entire order that would
ever dare to limit who can and cannot be masculine. Who can and cannot
be authentic. Who can and cannot eat. Who can and cannot be free. Who
can and cannot live.
Butch anarchy is simply the refusal to accept the private ownership of
anything, including identity and personal expression. It is a keen eye
to the past, where we know there is a rich and endless history of those
like us who struggled against the sovereignty of the powerful, and a
focused eye on the future, where we see strong possibilities for a
better and liberated world. It is a somber recognition of the ways that
patriarchy has privatized and weaponized masculinity, and a joyful
knowledge that this is not the inherent nature of masculinity, only a
sick and vapid distortion. It is a dedication to discovering personal
authenticity, no matter how difficult the road. It is a commitment to
taking masculinity and putting it to the work we know it’s well-suited
for, even if such a purpose has long been denied it: care, compassion,
vulnerability, protection, mutual aid, liberation.
This is, I believe, the logical conclusion of butchness itself.
Regardless of the unfortunate numbers of butches who choose not to
travel to such a conclusion. If our enemy is the force that stole
masculinity from us, who made us fight so hard to keep it or retrieve
it, who beat us when it saw us wearing it, then our enemy is every
institution that takes for itself the right to determine and restrict
the conditions of our lives. Our enemy is every structure that works to
rip away anyone’s autonomy and personal agency in order to feed its own
power. Our enemy is the State. Our enemy is capital. Our enemy is
centralized power.
Recognition of such an enemy, then, makes us anarchists. Butch
anarchists. And this is a beautiful thing to be. Here, we can fully
resist the call to attempt to assimilate our identities into the rhythm
of traditional, patriarchal, masculinity. We know that doing so would
afford us no real safety, and, further, we know that even attempting to
do so would be a capitulation to the very system that brutalizes us and
so many others in the name of control and “normality.” Here, we can look
with clear eyes at who our real comrades are in the struggle, and what
work needs our butch hands put to it. Here, we can see stretching before
us endless possibilities for liberation, paths that are incredibly
treacherous, but nevertheless do not demand any more surrender from us:
only integrity, which — luckily — we have in spades.