I started this blog a few years ago, in order to have an anonymous outlet as well as a conversation forum for some of my thoughts as I explored a butcher identity.

I had come out a decade earlier, but still certainly had layers of “the real me” to uncover. (and still always will to some extent I’m sure!)

I was born into a white homogenous heterosexist suburb of Boston. I didn’t know anyone gay until I went away to boarding school, and even then my mother had been so critical of any aberration from any norm in my appearance that I think it really stunted my self esteem and self expression. I didn’t join the Gay Straight Alliance in boarding school (this was in the early 90’s) because I was too afraid that someone would think I was gay.

Though I saw girls kissing at a rugby social my freshman year of college, I drank too much and smoked too much pot to come to any sort of terms with my sexuality for many years. I sucked a lot of dick and had a lot of meaningless sex with men. I was actually too stoned to notice that there may have been some queer women or at least some cool feminist things happening around me. I spent most of my time with stoner boys. They didn’t mind my hairy armpits, were harmless compared to some of the men that had taken advantage of me, and thought I was pretty cool. And feeling pretty cool was a big deal for me back then, after growing up feeling very not cool. I guess I wasn’t ready to rock the boat just yet.

It wasn’t until after college that I finally had a close lesbian friend. She was a cool artist and I spent a lot of time hanging out with her and friends in my early 20’s. It was during this time that I broke up with my stoner boyfriend and started exploring my sexuality. I had absolutely no idea how to date women. I came out as bi, and wanted so badly to date women, but ended up continuing to date men on and off for years because they would hit on me, and I really didn’t know how in the world to ask a girl out.

It’s funny looking back on myself during my early years of coming out. I shaved my head and wore pretty big men’s clothes. I don’t think I was trying to look queer and had not much concept at the time of the word “butch.” I was doing a lot of drugs, pretty miserable, and a lot of the sexual assault I had experienced thus far in life was really hitting me hard. I was consciously trying to hide the female curves of my body from predatory men, and baggy men’s clothes did this quite well. Walking home to my first solo apartment in big pants, combat boots, and a big hoodie made me feel much safer. No one bothered me at night when I looked like a boy.

It was around that time that I hit a bottom with drugs. I overdosed, was pretty crazy for a while, but eventually ended up cleaning up my act and staying clean. Finally getting off of drugs certainly allowed me to come to whole new levels of exploring who I was that I had thus far missed in my life.

This was about a decade ago. I would say that it was during the past decade that I in a long roundabout way came much closer to getting back to the core of me (threads of which have certainly been consistent through all my tumultuous phases of life).

The key layers of this involved exploring what bisexuality meant to me, as well as to other people (who often had quite different ideas of who I was precisely because of my bisexual label). It was fascinating to see how differently the world saw me (and treated me) according to who I was dating. I was offended by the term “heterosexual privilege” at the time, because I was still going through a lot of emotional turmoil and didn’t feel the least bit privileged. I felt a lot of prejudice from within queer community at the time, and felt like I fit in no where (too straight to be gay, too gay to be straight).

When I finally had a long term relationship with a woman I came to a new level of understanding about my sexuality. Questioning my sexuality and starting to have sex with women was much different than being in a relationship for 3 years. I experienced a lot more homophobia than ever before, and yet as I was growing up emotionally (staying clean from drugs and alcohol allowed me to do this), I was really beginning to feel more myself than ever before as well. To come out in a heterosexist society takes a lot of guts. It took me a long time to fully come out. I could give a number of reasons: fear, heterosexism, homophobia, pressure from my mother to fit in and be straight, etc., etc. I’m not sure I can clearly put my finger on any one reason. I just knew so much more about myself after that long term relationship. By the time we broke up, I was already in my 30’s. As I started getting ready to date again, I was quite clearly only interested in women. In fact, when I was having sex during that relationship I remember thinking about how much better sex with women is. I know I had had a lot of sex with men, and some of it was certainly fun, but this was a whole new level of good, of satisfying, of exciting, of pleasurable. I know that I often thought “How did I have so much hetero sex before this?” “Oh my god, I am so gay.”

So to wrap it up a bit, it took me into my 30’s to really come out as gay, after about a decade of identifying as bisexual. In that long term relationship, and really before that too, I had never been interested in butch/femme identity, I guess in much the same way that I wasn’t interested in being gay before I came out. It was something I had preconceived notions and judgments about and I didn’t think it had anything to do with me. I’ve thought that about many things throughout my life, until some sort of experience and open-mindedness pushes me beyond some edge and gets me to see things in a new way and then suddenly I feel like I came home at last, to a place I never thought was mine. This process could describe so many aspects of my sexuality and gender identity (which I am just getting to). I thought I was straight, I thought I was bi, I didn’t think I would like to spank anybody or be fisted. Time and time again I got to new levels of comfort with myself and the world around me and would finally let myself be a new layer of who I was.

This is what has been happening in the past few years with my butch identity.


This is what I wrote when I started this blog:



“Ok. So I’m going through some changes. Self awareness, fashion, sex, gender, sexuality, presentation. Not sure I even have the words for all of this. Kind of scared to do this publically. But then I know how helpful it is for me to read the thoughts of others going through uncomfortable and beautiful metamorphoses. And how much it helps to share what is in my head, heart, brain and skin.
Allowing myself to tell myself the exact opposite of what I might have told myself growing up, or yesterday, or last year. Like, in my fantasies, sometimes I am a man, but I don’t want to be one in real life…or maybe I do? or not? or just a little…and what is female masculinity? who am I attracted to? am I attracted to you because I want to be you? or do you? or both?

And allowing all of that to just be beautiful, ok, honest, and fluid.

Whew…I like opening this fountain…of genderqueer butchdom…or something.

xoxo,

Zoey Rayal”

As I read these words today I thought it was time to change them, because I’ve come quite a long way in the past few years. I was scared to identify as butch, but I’ve heard myself say the word out loud more than once. I was scared to shift my appearance. I was scared to cut my hair short again, after years of positive reinforcement from my family and the professional world for my long beautiful hair. I was scared to change my dress for many of the same reasons. I was scared to change my underwear choices lest my lovers laugh at me or reject me when they got my pants off. I was scared of trying to claim an identity that might mean something different to somebody else. I was scared to claim an identity and have someone tell me I wasn’t enough of something to claim that identity.
I’m sure I still have a long way to go in life in getting to know me, and fully being me. (I certainly stumble with job interview outfits, new clothes for fancy occasions, and that sort of thing). And I still wonder whether my lovers will like my hairy armpits, my sports bras, and my men’s underwear. I hesitate to think that I need acceptance of these aspects of my presentation from other people in order to feel comfortable in my identity. I will say that my current lover finding me sexy not despite these things but precisely because of these things certainly helps.
In any case. I feel clearer about my identity (sexuality and gender) than I did when I first started this blog. I want to update my profile blurb, but before I did that I wanted to reflect on what has gone on it the past few years. Thank you to all of you who have liked, commented, or reblogged my posts. It has done numbers for my self esteem as I continue to explore who I am and how I express me.

Peace,

Z Rayal

I had some very interesting discussions tonight, with a barely out bisexual woman and a radical lesbian separatist feminist activist.  The barely out woman has this activist on such a pedestal, because she brings to light such interesting discourse and conversation that jolts the foundation of her sheltered reality, in a very good way.  The younger bisexual woman hangs on the older woman’s every word, as if what she breathes is gospel.  I care for and respect them both.  I do have a lot of fear, however, for people who I feel nearly demand by the intonation in their speech that I of course must agree with everything they say.  While I dearly respect this activist and her process, I am afraid to bring up certain topics in her presence, because I don’t want to be judged, and I am scared of feeling uncomfortable or argued with.  It’s interesting to articulate the level of fear that I have with this woman’s politics.  They’re too extreme for me.  I am a liberal queer woman, who has experienced and witnessed discrimination within queer community.  That is where some of this fear lies.

Throughout my life it has been the words and actions of those who came before me that have often opened my eyes and heart to new ways of looking at issues, or even new ways of being that I never dreamed possible.  In high school I had an out lesbian teacher, who was pivotal in my growth as a human being raised in a heterosexist, homophobic, sheltered, bigoted American suburb.  Growing up in such a fashion ingrained in me all sorts of stereotypes that literally fell away the moment I met any real human beings of any sort of label I had been raised to think was a certain way.  The more I read about and listened to and made friends with people who were queer, the more I was able to come out.  I spent so much of my life dating men, even after coming out, that I held onto the bisexual label quite closely, though a good friend had reminded me that labels are for other people, not for me.

In any case, existing in the world as bisexual identified, I noticed that mainstream pop culture often portrayed bisexuals as something very different than what I meant by the label.  The local radio station would have “bi-day” where they would have hypersexual ditsy sounding women call in and recap their multipartner sexual exploits, in such a way that painted a picture of bisexual women as women who will let another woman into the bedroom for a fun menage a trois with their boyfriend.  For me, bisexual meant that I was attracted to people, regardless of their gender.  And though I am open minded and have tried all sorts of things and ways of dating and being, I find that I am pretty monogamously inclined.

Something else I noticed as an out bisexual woman was that regardless of my identity, it felt as though the world treated me a certain way depending upon who I was dating. If I was dating a man, society saw me as hetero, while holding a woman’s hand, I was a lesbian.  I thought about these things often, wondering about what else I could do to be seen as more of who I was.  Coming out and holding a woman’s hand and kissing a woman in public were certainly much scarier and triumphant acts than PDA with a male.  Heterosexual PDA is expected.  Homosexual PDA may or may not be, depending on the environment or the community.  Dating women, I often thought about and wondered about safety in ways that had never occurred to me when I was only dating men.

Which brings me to a concept that I have conflicting emotions about: heterosexist privilege.  I once had a radical lesbian separatist roommate who used this word in regards to me and it sounded like an accusation.  I remember thinking that I certainly didn’t date men on purpose to have this privilege.  I did notice, however, that I felt somewhat on the fringe of this little circle of friends that I hung with, purely because they were all lesbians and I was the token bisexual.  Interesting to me as well was the fact that many of these women had dated men, but just not at that time.  I even dated a woman who went back and forth dating men or women kind of like me, but “politically identified as a lesbian.”  I think she got some sort of lesbian privilege that way.  There was actually an lesbian artist’s group that many of them were in that I was excluded from because of my identity.  I kissed men sometimes.  In both the hetero world and the lesbian world I felt like an outsider.  I didn’t really know a bisexual world, except for the one I heard on the radio, besides just one friend and one lover.  What really got me was that an already marginalized and discriminated against community could turn around and discriminate against me.

Throughout the past decade I have dated men and women, and more recently, less men and more women.  Pretty recently (the last 4 years or so) I have dated primarily women.  Dating a woman for 3 years was a far different experience than shorter term relationships, in that I existed in a relationship that on the outside is labeled lesbian.  I even started to use that term more.  We were so serious that I didn’t really think about what the gender of my next partner would be, because I was in that relationship for the long haul (at the time).  That in and of itself did an interesting thing for my identity.  I liked identifying as lesbian.  In fact, I think over time I tried the word on more and more and just got used to it.  Once in a while we went to lesbian events and hung out with other lesbians.  I met more and more lesbians.  I felt like I belonged a bit more and more to my idea of the community that had once marginalized me.

Since that long term relationship ended, I have been more consciously examining my sexual identity, which is about a lot more than who my partner is, I think.  Even outside of that relationship, I heard myself identifying as lesbian.  I hung out with a couple ex-boyfriends in the wake of my heartache, but it felt weirder than it ever did.  Partly because they were ex’s and I had grown more confident about standing up for what I did and did not want.  But also, I think, because they were men.  I noticed that I was attracted to more and more women than men.  I still find men attractive.  I find women incredibly attractive.  Sometimes I look at men and I feel so gay.  I just think something related to something I thought as a child, “How is it that moms grow up and find these dads attractive?  Will I have to?  Is that part of growing up?  Why do women find Magnum PI attractive?”

In examining my sexuality, I’ve been noticing the types of people I have been finding attractive.  While I certainly love to ogle the bosoms of straight women, I find myself more and more attracted to butch women and trans men.  One of my closest friends is trans, and incidentally has been discriminated against by the lesbian separatist feminist activist I mentioned at the top of this post.  Which brings me back to the fear I was mentioning earlier, of the activist woman.  While I respect a great deal of the work that she does, I am shocked and appalled by the way her opinions and her politics ostracize many of the friends and loved ones and members of just that community for which she has a voice.  She identifies so purely lesbian that she has been labeled “trans phobic.”  After listening to some of her politics and to the friend of mine who she very blatantly discriminated against, I feel that that phrase may accurately describe her.  I hate to see such schism and discrimination within an already marginalized community.  In fact, the barely out bisexual who puts the activist on a pedestal divulged to me later that she was afraid to mention that she was bi, or to refer to the man she was dating.  Isn’t this just the same sort of fear lesbians want to break free of?  I have played the pronoun game to not divulge my identity both to heterosexuals and to homosexuals, lest either think I was “other” than they, especially if it came with discrimination.

I know for myself that I have broken through personal concepts that I now regard as ignorant through the boldness of individuals who are “out” whatever it may be that they are “out” about.  Perhaps it would be beneficial of me to speak up to this separatist when she says things I find ostracizing, rather than shying away and hoping for the conversation to end soon, the way I just laid back and waited for some unwanted hetero sex to be over.  Or perhaps there are other venues where I feel safer that are more appropriate to be out.  Like with my friends and in my relationships.  It is very empowering to say, “No, I don’t like/want that.” And it could be eye opening (and has been) to others when I do speak up and say what I really think and feel, whether I out myself in the process or not.

I like mrsexmith’s discussion of multiple meanings of trans… transitioning, transcending the gender binary, etc. I started this blog as an aid and as a documentation of my current coming out process. More than 10 years ago, when I was first coming out, I told a lesbian friend that I was bisexual. At the moment, I was feeling pretty proud of myself enough to be able to slap on a label. She promptly responded, “Labels are for other people, but not for you.” While her statement was so profound I am blogging it over a decade later, at the time I was disappointed. I think I wanted to just settle on a label & move on; stop trying to “figure things out.” Right now, I am noticing that the figuring out of things can be so wonderful & freeing and beautiful in and of itself. I am so shy and self conscious lately. And at the same time I feel bold & sexy. It’s true that I get used to the way the world outside me reacts to the me I present. I recently cut my hair short, in my first “butchy?” haircut I have had in 10 years. Only a few months ago I had long flowing red wavy locks just about nipple length which attracted lots of attention and compliments. Sometimes I forget why the world outside reacts differently and then I remember that I look different. I was walking out of my office building by some male construction workers the other day & I noticed something strange. They didn’t notice me at all. For quite some time I had kept my hair long because I was comfortable fitting into what I think an American standard of beauty for an office woman might be. It was just easier. I felt like a little girl playing dressup. If I dressed the part, I felt like people would take me more seriously. I didn’t want it to be like that necessarily, but it seemed to be working at the time. It’s a bold move to step out in a new way, whatever may be new, a haircut, a new style, bolder makeup, etc. What makes me so extra self conscious is the conscious reflection and reaction from people outside of myself. The bolder the change, the more the reaction (or lack thereof). I’ve been wearing butcher pants lately. Somedays butcher shirts, but not everyday. The other day I showed up to work in more feminine slacks & a top (something I’ve been doing a little more lately in conjunction with my shorter hair). A coworker (a sweet, flirty, supportive perhaps-gay one that has encouraged me to “let my butch flag fly”) noticed and said “those aren’t very butch pants:)” to which I replied, “I’m just me. Did you think I fit into boxes?” of course not. Tomorrow we will go out to lunch. I bet we’ll chat about sexuality & gender…maybe a little gossip… Maybe I’ll try and make out with her while we’re away from the office ;)