"Our kitchen is narrow, like our views on gender."

The mind behind Books Do Furnish A Room has taken a sledgehammer to my gender theory and I am eager to refute him, but it's going to take a day or two. Until then, I can only offer him a tip of the hat as I link to the Sugarbutch Chronicles.

It may be surprising to hear an arch-conservative speak in praise of a "queer butch top" (then again, the two most influential people in the development of my own ideas on gender have been Eve and the girl who "treats her closet like a revolving door," so maybe not), but a great deal of what she says is friendly to my worldview. Consider her takedown of an article titled "Butch, femme, dyke - what kind of lesbian are you? Jeni Quirke explores the negativity surrounding lesbian stereotypes":

. . . So here she’s saying, when I define myself and call myself what I want to be called, when I reclaim the words for myself, it appears to be “very noble and bold,” but really it’s encouraging stereotypes. Who cares if it’s empowering to me in a development of my own gender identity, in putting myself in a historical and cultural context where I recognize the gendered struggles of my foremothers and forefathers and and forebabas and forepapis, really it’s just an invitation to oppress me. Not buying it.

. . . The only reason butch exists is so others - or "sometimes even ourselves," (implying, of course, how sad that is, that our internalized homophobia is so bad that we limit ourselves so awfully) - can categorize us? Goddammit, this is just so inaccurate. There is a long history of butch, femme, and genderqueer WARRIORS who are changing laws, making strives, marching in protests, fighting for rights, being visible, working hard, raising kids, making families, contributing to thriving communities, loving, living, and being ourselves.

And now, this perspective of the author of this article becomes even more transparent: the things she is saying here are flat-out gender-phobic. Probably out of ignorance, rather than intentionally malicious, but still. This author clearly cannot imagine that any femme, butch, or dyke would ever be authentically empowered by these labels (as opposed to falsely empowered through internalized homophobia) or claiming them out of some sort of intentional, conscious, educated, contextualized narrative of queer culture, life, identity, and empowerment.

She even uses my favorite metaphor for gender roles:

I’m working on the details of that argument, but - for now - it’s similar to how a poetic form can actually liberate a poem, or an idea, rather than limit the expression of it.

Unwind your heartstrings, trads:

Claiming a particular label or gender identity or expression also situates me within a particular history. There is a heritage of women who refused to be confined to femininity, many of them butches in the queer community. And I come from them. They are my heritage, I am part of that lineage, I want to claim and celebrate and align myself with what they did, because I am so [...] lucky to be sitting in a corporate office in midtown Manhattan, with my boycut #4 and my polo shirt, black boy slacks and loafers, Hanes briefs and a pocketwatch, wearing Old Spice and American Crew pomade, and my coworkers don’t care. I claim that heritage by claiming my identity to be butch. I stand on their shoulders. I am not alone here.

Leaving aside whether or not conservatives can get on board with the particular gender role she's talking about, most of what she says about butch-ness sounds like the way I think about femininity, particularly the stuff about standing in the company of warriors past.

Based on her story here, I think she might agree with me that, in order for a role like "butch" or a particular variation of "hetero woman" to be content-ful enough to liberate, it has to be specific and powerful enough to have the potential to oppress. (The poetry equivalent: In order for a poetic form to give enough structure to be liberating, it to be, y'know, hard to conform to.) We don't mitigate this potential for oppression by loosening up the role, which would put us on a fast track to a diluted and uninteresting canon of roles; we do it by making sure that there are plenty of options for people who don't fit the usual ones, and by making sure that people know it's okay to play with their roles (in other words, that they take them seriously, but not too seriously).

More from Sinclair: Chivalry is an important part of her butch identity; Why coming out as a butch was harder than coming out as queer. Be warned that the site as a whole is NSFW, although the posts I've linked to are fine.