A bit on gender

It is noisy at home and it is difficult to write. I am playing music to block the noise but it is still difficult. My mum is fucking screaming, it is getting on my nerves. Wish it were possible to mute the world.

I want to write about that day I thought of myself as butch and felt good, felt possible. It was last July. Someone tweeted about being a dyke in a saree. There was a photo too, she had long hair. Later, I was on the train to college, wearing a checked shirt, my hair was in a braid and I was probably listening to The Blaze, as I am right at this moment. The clouds were full of rain. I thought of myself as a dyke with long hair, a long-haired dyke. I remember standing, waiting for my station early on because I wanted to stand, wanted to feel the breeze. So much possibility. I remember imagining being with my crush S and blushing.

"You dance so well." The Blaze, Places

Now I have short hair. I still haven't told S. Now we are in a pandemic. The train, the breeze, meeting S--none of it is possible. Music is possible, and The Blaze makes me feel at home every time. Hope is possible.

I think part of the magic of that day was that I could see there was no one way of looking butch or femme (I didn't understand these words last year as I do now).

When I read Leslie Feinberg's Stone Butch Blues, the clear division between the butches and the femmes in the early bar scenes made me queasy. Maybe it was because I could not see myself belonging there. But Feinberg goes on to leave the binary behind, and I am grateful to hir book. I will always be in awe of the work zie/she did. Hir story tells me it is okay to look for who I am, to be who I am without compromises, and to work real hard.