Lesbians

The butch kind. Julie Bindel Sunday July 07 2019, The Sunday Times

(I wrote this piece three years ago, published in the Sunday Times Magazine, to mark the fact that lesbians had been pretty much ignored or misrepresented during the Holy Month of Pride.)

Why butch lesbians are still battling society’s gender stereotypes

As Pride in London weekend draws to a close, Julie Bindel celebrates butch lesbians and explains why she believes their history and identity are under attack

When you hear the phrase “butch lesbian”, what do you imagine? A male-like female figure wearing tweeds and smoking a pipe? Or the updated version, such as Lea DeLaria in Orange Is the New Black, with her short quiff, bow-legged swagger and male clothing — or the ever-so-subtly-butch Fiona Shaw character in Killing Eve?

At her studio in Kent, I watch Shaz Riley, 53, founder of the Butch Clothing Company, measure up a client for her first “butch suit”. Shaz tells me about her wedding to Sue in 2011. “I was waiting with my brother and best friend, Gareth, while Sue’s brother walked her down the aisle to Wild Horses.” Sue wore a traditional white bridal gown and carried a bouquet of white roses. Shaz wore a Butch Clothing Company suit, accessorised with cufflinks, starched collar and pocket handkerchief.

Shaz is what I would call a “classic butch” — not wishing either to look like or actually to be a man, but a proud lesbian who rejects traditional notions of femininity and celebrates her female masculinity. It took me years to realise this. When I came out aged 15, in 1977, the only lesbians I had seen had been on TV.

The Beryl Reid character in the 1968 classic The Killing of Sister George was a gin-swilling, cigar-smoking butch lesbian with a sadistic streak. Such was the ignorance and homophobia back then that people, including myself, believed that butch lesbians were a group of female sexual predators who modelled themselves on men, who came after girls with a view to converting them towards their perversion.

As Pride in London comes to a close for another year, I want to celebrate the butch-presenting lesbian. I now believe they are not only brave and proud of their sexual identity, but are rigorously challenging gender stereotypes and the expectations placed on women. I also believe their identity and their history are under attack. They are in danger of being co-opted and colonised by the powerful transgender movement. Some young lesbians who once might have identified as “butch” say they feel under pressure to become trans men.

Stormé DeLarverie was a proud black butch lesbian, cited as the woman who threw the first brick at police officers at the Stonewall riots in New York in 1969, which gave birth to the gay liberation movement. Yet today she is described as a “trans man” by some, including the transgender scholar Susan Stryker in Transgender History (2008), despite her being a lesbian who loved wearing male clothing.

Then there is Anne Lister, often referred to as the first modern lesbian, who is played by Suranne Jones in the BBC series Gentleman Jack, which concludes tonight. Lister, born in 1791, is known for her coded diaries that tell the story of her life and lesbian relationships. Last year, she was honoured with a blue plaque in York, on which she was described as “gender non-conforming” instead of lesbian. There was such an uproar about this by lesbian activists, myself included, that York Civic Trust agreed to have it rewritten.

What has changed my mind on the way I perceive butch lesbians has much to do with the way that lesbians have become subsumed within an ever-growing list of so-called “queer” identities, such as “questioning”, “polyamorous” and “intersex”, none of which has anything to do with same-sex attraction. The “L” in the ever-expanding LGBTQQI+ is more or less redundant — an issue that has been raised at several Pride events around the UK this year.

Defying sex stereotypes and rejecting the rigid gender rules imposed on females is crucial right now. At a time when Love Island, Instagram and the current norms of popular culture pressure women into adopting highly feminised dress and behaviour, young lesbians being able to reject all that is liberating.

“Femininity for women is more compulsory than it was,” says Sally Munt, professor of cultural and gender studies at the University of Sussex, and the author of several publications on butch lesbian identity. “I think being butch is something we should be proud of because there is a liberalisation around sexuality that we fought for. If you are a young butch lesbian then you’ve got an awful lot of very difficult things to negotiate, to do with the overwhelming pressure on young women nowadays to be feminine.”

The older generation of lesbians remember their early struggles with identity and sexuality. Growing up in west London, Mary Vassallo, 68, felt that she was letting her family down by not conforming to society’s expectations of a little girl. Mary, now based in Hastings, says: “When I was little, relatives used to say, ‘She’s so strong,’ which made me uncomfortable because that was not quite what a little girl should be. I have often thought I would love to have been a boy.

I’d have even loved to ape a heterosexual situation.” She explains what “femmes” (feminine lesbians) see in their butch partners. “Women have said it’s like having the best of both worlds: someone you can talk to but someone who also has a certain masculine attitude and way of being that they find attractive.”

The Sussex-based poet Maureen Duffy, an 85-year-old lifelong gay rights activist, also wanted to be a boy when she was growing up. “I was the man about the house because I had no father. I was out roaming the streets on my scooter. I had the fantasy of being a cabin boy and going to sea.”

Wanda Goldwag, a 64-year-old butch north Londoner, says: “I have a picture of myself at two years old. I’m wearing a duffel coat and look a bit like Paddington Bear, and everyone who has ever seen that picture says, ‘Ooh, look at the little butch dyke.’ ” Wanda began to come out as a lesbian at 14 and later found her way to a noted lesbian nightclub called the Gateways, which was made famous in The Killing of Sister George.

“At one end of the bar you would have all the butches, who would be wearing suits and ties, and at the other lots of women wearing pretty frocks and make-up.” She recalls the macho vibe. “I was chatting with somebody at the bar, but I wasn’t flirting with her, just being polite. The next thing I knew, her partner broke a bottle on a table, put it near my face and said, ‘Are you chatting up my bird?’ And in my incredibly middle-class accent, I said, ‘Are you kidding?’ ”

Wanda met her current partner, Catherine, after responding to an appeal on the lesbian dating site Pink Sofa, asking for a “butch with brains”.

Young butch-presenting lesbians today often decide to take hormones and undergo surgery. Ali, 21, from Sweden, is one of them. “I was very tomboyish up to the age of 14, then I felt the pressure to conform [to a more feminine stereotype],” she tells me. “I did that during high school for about three years, but I was always very uncomfortable with that and wondered, ‘What is wrong with me?’ ”

Three years ago, aged 19, Ali began to wonder if she was really a man. “First I thought I didn’t want to take any medical steps because I wasn’t uncomfortable with my body, but I soon felt the pressure to conform from the queer ideologues.”

Today, lesbian is almost a dirty word. Many young lesbians feel they should say they are “gay” or “queer”; and the word “dyke”, which many out-and-proud lesbians used to embrace, is becoming a rarity.

“I wasn’t comfortable calling myself a lesbian,” Ali says, “and I knew my partners liked all the masculine things that were part of myself, so I felt it would be easier if I were a man.” Ali found a therapist in Sweden who, after a few sessions, diagnosed Ali as transgender. “She asked, ‘How were you when you were young? Did you play with the boys? What kind of clothes do you like wearing?’ I also got the question, ‘Would you like to be in the military?’ My surgeon never really questioned me, even though I was one of the first patients having gender reassignment surgery. She really believed I was a man, I guess.”

After a few months in therapy Ali began taking testosterone, which she bought online, and proceeded to a double mastectomy. Ali paid privately to avoid the waiting list. Six months later, she began to regret the surgery and gradually stopped taking testosterone. “Eventually I discovered the detransition community online. I have grieved a lot and definitely regret it. I lost one of my nipples and have no sensation left in my remaining one.”

Since detransitioning, Ali says she feels “much better about my body in general. Recognising my female body has really improved my mental health.” But Ali’s experience has been traumatic. “I lost most of my friends when I detransitioned, and that’s awful, but I feel much better in so many aspects. My analysis now is society didn’t really accept me for being different from other girls. For being a lesbian.”

Ali says even her mother believed she should be a man: “It took some time before my mum accepted that I wasn’t trans any more,” she says. “The definition of gender to her is based on stereotypes, so it was logical to her that I was really male on the inside. It has taken some time for her to understand that I can be a woman as I am.”

I am aware that there are many trans men who say their transition was a positive choice for them (see panel, below). My concern is not about this group of trans men, but with young, butch-appearing lesbians who feel pressured into transitioning, especially those who do so at a young age.

Katie Herzog, 36, is a journalist based near Seattle and a proud butch lesbian — but that was not always the case. “In my twenties, I cared about what people thought and, because my friends were ‘queer’, I identified as queer and looked down on lesbians. I now reject that term and embrace being a butch lesbian. But if I was 10 years old now, with everything that’s happening I would probably have been shunted into a gender clinic.”

According to a number of experts in the field of gender dysphoria, the fastest-growing group at present choosing sex-change surgery and hormone treatment is young lesbians. According to recent figures from England’s only youth gender clinic, almost three-quarters of young people seeking help to change gender are girls. The Gender Identity Development Service at the Tavistock and Portman NHS Trust saw 1,740 female referrals in 2018-19, compared with 624 males. For the first time, the majority of patients referred to the clinic (54%) were aged 14 or under. The youngest female referral was three years old.

One senior expert I spoke to, who has asked not to be named but practised at a gender clinic for several years until recently, found that there has been a distinct fall in referrals in the 44-plus age group, raising the question of why older people are not taking advantage of the new-found freedoms and acceptance of transgenderism. This clinician would argue — as would many of the other experts I spoke to (but dare not be quoted) — that young girls are being influenced on social media. The same clinician told me that statistics for 2010-15 from his former clinic showed a threefold increase in referrals from young people, the majority of whom were females who presented as lesbians.

The American-born Max Robinson transitioned from female to male seven years ago when she was 15, but now regrets it. “The experiences that are diagnosable as transsexualism are feelings that I and a lot of lesbians have,” Max says. “Like hating your body, hating being treated like a woman and looking for ways to escape those experiences.” Max was out as a lesbian for eight months before she started to consider transitioning. Her main source of support was online and she says that transitioning is “definitely a natural progression for butch lesbians. If your distress is from the way lesbians and straight women get treated, transitioning to be a guy seems easy.”

After binding her breasts for a while, Max began taking testosterone and underwent a double mastectomy. Soon afterwards, Max began to regret the surgery and discovered blogs by others who felt similarly. “What they were saying made a lot of sense to me. My life was getting into a stable place and, although we didn’t call it that, I was in a lesbian relationship, and more able to work this stuff out than I had been as a teenager. We need to acknowledge that women are having a bad time because of misogyny and people hating lesbians. I think I was a lesbian woman the whole time. That’s my identity and it’s very valid.”

Max and her girlfriend started a blog about detransitioning, and soon received threats and abuse from some transgender activists. “Hundreds of people were saying we were scum. We had loads of detailed rape threats online,” Max says.

This is an experience shared not only by anyone who dares to speak out against transgender ideology, such as the Woman’s Hour host Jenni Murray, who suffered threats and abuse for merely pointing out in this magazine in 2017 that trans women are biologically different from natal women (see also Martina Navratilova, in this edition), but also those conducting research into the outcomes for those who transition.

In 2017, James Caspian, a psychotherapist specialising in therapy for transgender people, began a legal action against Bath Spa University for refusing his research proposal into people who regretted and reversed their gender transition. The idea for the research came from a discussion he had with a genital reconstruction surgeon, who had been surprised to find that a number of patients were requesting reversals. Caspian was also noticing that growing numbers of his patients, who were mainly young lesbians, were asking for a double mastectomy — not wishing to be identified as women anymore. Caspian, 60, was told his research was “politically incorrect”, and is now challenging the ruling through the courts.

The old-style butch Lee Lynch, 73, is the author of classic lesbian-themed novels such as The Swashbuckler. I meet up with Lee at her home town on the Oregon coast. “I worry about young women who are not encouraged to respect their own butchness, who think that the option of mutilating their bodies is the solution to bigotry,” Lee says, resplendent in plaid shirt and denims. Sue Hardesty is “best butch friends” with Lee and lives in the same small town on the coast. The diminutive, dapper woman was born in 1933 in southern Arizona and raised on a cattle ranch. In her late teens, Sue lived as a man for two years. “My first lover did not want to be with a woman and she insisted that I become a man. We went to California and I took jobs in gas stations.” But Sue was deeply unhappy living as a man. “I got sick and tired of hearing about how long the men’s dicks were, and them trying to get me to go with them to some damn whorehouse. I didn’t want to be one of them, I just wanted their freedom.”

For many young women, growing up in a culture of sexual harassment and prolific pornography use, presenting as butch can be a way of protecting themselves from male attention. Lauren is 23 and grew up in a working-class household in London. As a child she loved boxing, which her father was happy for her to pursue. However, everything changed when Lauren started school. “As soon as I started wearing a school uniform and going to the local comp, that’s when older men on the street would start harassing me. It made me despise my body and want to hide it,” she says.

“I didn’t want men to look at me, so I constructed my entire way of being around trying to avoid men looking at me and talking to me. Being butch makes me confident. I don’t want men to look at my tits and I’m looking forward to when I’m old and men don’t look at me any more. I get asked, ‘Do you think you’re a man?’” I ask Lauren if she knows many out-and-proud butch lesbians. “I’ve not met a single other woman my age who would define herself as that,” she says, adding that she knew “only two” lesbians during her whole time at university. Both of those women are now taking testosterone, beginning the transitioning process. So, is the butch lesbian going back in the closet, or is she enjoying a revival, as evidenced by the popularity of characters in Orange Is the New Black and Killing Eve?

“I think butch is getting a resurgence,” says Elaine McKenzie, 55, who identifies as “soft butch”. Elaine ran a lesbian bar in Euston for 13 years before it closed in 2008 and now works for Transport for London. “Somebody asked me when I first knew I was gay, and I said I had come out of the womb screaming, ‘I’m a lesbian’! I came out to my parents when I was 23 and my mum said, ‘You are a woman, you’re black. Why do you also have to be gay?’ Because clothes hang well on me and because I’ve got good taste, that makes it easier for me to be butch. My wardrobe is just full of suits.”

Elaine explains the freedom and prejudice her “butch” identity brings. “I still occupy the area in life that is generally occupied by men, but I express it as a woman. When I go into a restaurant, they will always give me the wine menu, and if my girlfriend asks for the bill, they will always bring it to me. There are lots of things men do traditionally and they assume that you are taking that role because they don’t understand the dynamics.”

Each of the butch lesbians I interviewed spoke of the “pride” they feel. “Butch is a power base. It enables me to express myself and occupy a part of society where women are not encouraged to go,” McKenzie says.

Shaz is positive about the future. “When I was a girl, I was called ‘baby butch’. I snuck up to London to go to gay clubs at 16,” she says. “Those butches who used to go to the bars, although they were hidden in society, they were out and proud among other lesbians. Today, it’s OK to be butch. I think that we’ve still not had our day, because butch lesbians are still a threatening group in society.”

Some names have been changed