A Sexy Butch
By Guest Writer, Effi Mai
If you’re a lesbian, why do you fancy people who look like men?
This is a question I have had countless of times. And it’s probably more insulting than any of the other questions you might get. And with all the ‘Have you not had a proper man?’ and ‘Can I watch?’ questions out there, that’s quite an achievement.
So first let’s go to the straight world. Not every man looks the same there. You get the rough 
I’ve-been-working-in-a-garage-and-then-I’m-going-to-home-and-eat-chips-and-watch-football kind of men. The ones who have more hair on their body than an arangitang in winter and like to start sentences with the word ‘Dude’ in America or ‘Mate’ over here.
Then there are the ones who are a bit more preened and plucked like one of those gardens that have a white picket fence around them. And they do the whole spray tan, manicure and dyed-until-the-ends-split hair. And girls like both types. And by like, I mean sleep with. So 
why is it different for the card carriers of the world?
Now I am a femme so can’t give an opinion from a butch point of view, but I can say why I am attracted to butcher women than myself. It’s not because ‘they look like men’. It’s the way they carry themselves. Often with a I’m-hot-and-I-know-it-swagger. And they can give you a look that says ‘I know you’re not even wondering whether I’m good in bed, it’s obvious I am isn’t it,’ And they’ll get you into bed no messing and without the usual lesbian drama hassle. The type of hassle that’s involved in getting a roller out of your hair or trying to get into a coconut.
And their bodies. I like the thought of taking off a baggy top and finding the tight clothing underneath. And running my hands through short hair makes me swoon and fall about like I’m in some old romance novel. And don’t even get me started on underwear. There is nothing more sexy to me than girls in boxers or men’s underwear. If I think about it anymore I might have to go have a little lie down.
And I do think feminine girls are pretty and I admire what they wear, their hair, their makeup and their ability to walk in the highest heels. But I don’t want someone fighting with me over the last pink lipstick or casually borrowing my shoes. So in between the femmes and the butches I would want a butcher woman to be going down south the meet the parents, going down to the cellar to sort out the lights in a power cut and going down on me in bed.
I don’t know really what to say to the countless people who ask me this. It takes enough energy to just stay calm and not scream and hurl custard over their head. I am attracted to more butcher women, yet I’m not ever going to think ‘Ah well this girl is so butch I might as well go with a man now’. It’s a ridiculous statement. As ridiculous as my hatred for Velcro, and as ridiculous as the question people ask in the first place.
If someone asks me again, I’m going to just snap back ‘There’s still a vagina there at the end of the day,’
If someone asks me again, I’m going to just snap back ‘There’s still a vagina there at the end of the day,’ That’s already the route I take. That, and, “Google it, I’m not your personal gay ambassador.”
Also: “I’m attracted to female masculinity, not men”- honestly, you can just say whatever thing you want- people who ask those questions don’t want an actual answer, they just wanted to state their opinion in question form. Also, Skyler Cooper (first pic) always makes me swoon. I like the woman in the second picture, but unfortunately was first introduced to that picture on Effing Dykes where they positioned her as the do-not-touch cherry popper. D:
God bless you femme ladies. That is all I am gonna say. We have our struggles and you have yours, sometimes even because of us. But you fight for us and it makes me love y’all even more.
Yes, absolutely. I have had people ask me that and the end point is that even in a soft butch the girl works it well, and omg the curves and the yummy smell.
That question makes me want to get my stabby on.
Really?! REALLY?! Just because they look masculine doesn’t mean that they’re male… doesn’t mean that they have the male parts or that the sex is even remotely the same!! Come on people!
Hmm, your response is much more eloquent than mine when I was out on a date with the gf, I said eat shit and die. Oops, I’ll blame the tequila.
As a femme into other femme chicks, you get very different questions from guys.
Butches get those questions too. which is even funnier to me. I have been told that while I simply say it is just not feasible for me to be with a man, that it IS still possible. And of course likely to happen according to some men. Ha. suck it. I’m ninety five percent sure that my cocks are bigger than most. Just saying.
usually when i get asked that i get so distracted thinking about butches and getting turned on that i can’t come up with a coherent answer!!
Elegy- “I’m attracted to female masculinity, not men” im gonna try to hold it together next time so i can remember to say this!! this is exactly what i’ve always wanted to say but never been able to come up with the words! that’s exactly what it is too! guys aren’t really a turn on for me, at all. but a sexy butch. oohhhh, god, what a panty dropper!!! *drools* too bad i haven’t come across any where i live
” am attracted to more butcher women, yet I’m not ever going to think ‘Ah well this girl is so butch I might as well go with a man now’. It’s a ridiculous statement. ” Very well said. Great post!
Everytime people ask me this question I go into a fenzy of being angry. It drives me bat shit crazy. So here is obviously my little calming zone where I write everything that annoys me to make me feel bettter. Thank you for your lovely comments
When you’ve given the whole answer though you normally get ‘I don’t understand you lesbians,’ – oh, don’t you, god that’s really going to upset my whole day’. I think mayybe Lee you’ve got it right with the eat shit and die bit! And Elergy? the do not touch cherry popper! Haa! x
I’ve heard girls say that too. “If you want someone who looks like a man just date a man.” Arrrghh really?! Looks aside, there are a million differences between being with a woman and being with a man. The sex is obviously totally different, but so is the mental and emotional connection. Just because a woman looks manly does NOT mean she acts, thinks, feels, or loves like a man.
Ok I’m probalby going to get snarled on for saying this but….. I think a number of straight people are currious and honestly don’t understand. I think it can be a good opportunity to expand a straigh person’s thinking if one wants to take hte time or energy, not that everyone should….Before realizing my own gayness and now being in a lesbian relationship, I had been curious about the same thing. I found myself living a mostly stright life strangly attracted to a soft butch and wondering WTF….. Why am I SO attracted to her… We have not been in a relationship for about a year and I know exactly why. It’s the dichotomy I love. As I say she is masculine from the front and in clothing but all woman underneath. It’s the confidence, security, the masculine demenor wrapped in the pure female connection….
Alaska Femme I totally understand where you’re coming from but normally the people who say it to me say it after I’ve explained myself about forty three times.The first time I’m normally patient and explain myself. x
I was just thinking about this last night (blame insomnia). You look at the range of men women like from the more feminine types who wear eyeliner and girl’s pants like Johnny Depp and Pete Wentz and Jonathon Rhys Meyers and, er, others, to the big, gruff types like um, Ben Roethlissberger (sp?), Gerard Butler and Russell Crowe (man that was hard to come up with names!!) and yeah, their presentation is all different, but at the end of the day, no matter what they wear or look like, they’re all still dudes, with flat chests and dangly things between their legs. Some have a more feminine energy and some have a more masculine energy, but it’s layered upon their basic maleness.
No matter a woman’s presentation (eyeliner, no eyeliner, big, gruff, asskicking – *swoon* – or sparkly and shiny), she’s still, at the end of the day, a woman. And THAT is what I’m attracted to. Some have a more feminine energy (hi!!!) and some have a more masculine energy, but again, it’s layered upon their basic femaleness. And that’s what makes me hot and totally lose my cool – women.
Right. Helps if I reread the article and not just the comments before commenting. Whoops!
From Prince to Michael Clarke Duncan- I think that says it all. No more justifying, haha.
@elegy – ha, true! If males are allowed to come in all spectrums and attract people, can’t women too? But hey, Prince HAS gotten the “isn’t he gay?” thing for years too, so I guess it swings both ways.
I’m not going to dive into the feminine/masculine “engery” topic, but will say it’s the way a woman approaches everything, EVERYTHING, that makes them different than men. While some might think with what’s between their legs, that’s not the typical m.o., in my experience. It is that very basic difference that makes women so attractive. They analyze everything, and I love that. They don’t operate from just one corner of their primal drive (ie, if you can’t hump it, pee on it). They see with their fingers, and they appreciate the subtleties in all sensory perceptions to complete the picture for themselves. They are deep creatures with many layers and you can map the bottom of the Mariana Trench, but you will never, ever be able to map the features at the bottom of a woman’s soul.
@Rexie – so totally agree about women. Love love love that.
That said, re: ” if you can’t hump it, pee on it” – I dunno Rexie, sometimes I think that guys have the right idea and that’s something I want to emulate.
@WWG – you crack me up! lololol
@WWG again – I will say that if you do emulate that particular drive, you’d do it with so much more panache and finesse than a man ever could, precisely because you’re a woman.
@Rexie –
. And yes, I would hope that I would have more finesse and panache when peeing on something I can’t hump.
Wow! Thank both Rexie and WWG for that exchange! Lovely!!!!!
I know the feeling. I get asked alot if you dress like guy do you want to be a guy. No i don’t. Some people just don’t get it.
I some times respond with: are you both the girls? Or are you both the guys? Because there are two peas in a pod. It wouldn’t make sense if one was corn and one was pea.
For the longest time, I have had a theory, one that I have had validated again and again over the years: diversity doesn’t work, but not because of the shortcomings of any one group, but because most people are vain, entitled, and self-centered. As a result, no given group of people can really appreciate a point of view too different from their own.
I find this particular article to be another excellent example of the inherent vanity, entitlement, and self-centeredness of the super-class “Humanity”. To wit: the point of the article is that no matter how a woman dresses or acts, she possess “femaleness”, a quality no man can ever understand or emulate, and that is what lesbians find attractive. However, having acknowledged that males and females are fundamentally different, you then take offense at the fact that said males are curious about this fundamental difference, and ignore the possibility that it may be this fundamental difference that makes them curious about said fundamental difference in the first place.
Now I am not going to rant: I know no one wins an internet argument, and nothing is gained from writing pages and pages that most likely not one single person will care to read. I do think, just for honesty’s sake if nothing else, it is worth pointing out that if you just switched some of the pronouns around _and nothing else_, you could make one of those articles about why heterosexual people are uniquely attractive to heterosexual people, and it is stupid for homosexual people to question or even try to understand them. The assumptions made about what men sexually like (humping and peeing), and about how wonderful women are, are about as baseless and ill thought out as any penis worshiping diatribe I have seen on the internets. Believe it or not, some men see more to sex than just what their penis does, and more than a few women, are about as shallow and full of themselves as their outward exterior belies. Some women, have the same stupid questions about homosexuality that men do.
You want an answer to the question “why do straight people discriminate against us”? It isn’t all idiocy from straight people: even legitimately tolerant “straight” people know that at some point in time, after they’ve acknowledged that everyone is an equal and a comrade, and they’re sitting around the campfire asking “what gets you off and why”, they’re going to come to you or someone like you, and ask the same question they have asked of everyone else, and rather than educate them, you’ll take the opportunity to assume offense, and attack them for their ignorance. Because to vain, entitled, self-centered people, everything is an offense of some kind if they wish it to be so. Ultimately, it says more about your intolerance of people unlike you (which probably can’t be fixed) than their ignorance of people unlike them (which probably can be fixed).
But hey, diversity rules, right! Can’t wait until we become like modern Greece, or Georgia, or Syria, one of those other countries where nothing of value ever gets done because everyone is too busy protesting and fighting all day for their “rights”.
Whoop, whoop, there’s a difference between total strangers who fancy themselves elf-important enough to want or need to have other total strangers validate their sexuality to them (“if you’re [really] a lesbian, then [why don't you meet the specifics of my ignorant qualifications]“), and a friend asking about the intimate (because that’s what this is) how’s and whys of life.
You took an awful long time to say that you don’t have a strong foundation in the understanding of social inequalities.
Wtf is that TUP? Word vomit? I appreciate the careful crafting of your, uhm, argument? but I’m not catching the point because it is lost somewhere in all those words.
<3 Elegy.
@ TUP
“No given group of people can really appreciate a point of view too different from their own.” Indeed. Same seems to go for individuals. I take it you sought to provide an example?
>Complain about the sense of entitlement and unwarranted self-importance in others
>Write five paragraphs on the subject using someone’s blog as your personal Hyde Park because your opinion is apparently so important.
Not to mention the ending. You know, the part where you turned Effi Mai’s pet peeve into a menace that would shake the very foundations of a developed country.
Ah, it is good to be back here , even if it’s just for little drama gems like TUP’s comment.
@TUP – I’ve read your post several times and attempted to respond several more times. There really is no cohesive statement to respond to, but I’ll do my best.
Heterosexual people are catered to everywhere. You can find details of their sex lives and interests everywhere – as well as pretty much every type of heterosexual man or woman held up as a sex object. Like em skinny? Tall? Short? Fat? Curvy? Scruffy? Clean shaven? Somewhere there is a magazine, website, blog, or porn site giving you access to this part of your sexuality.
And guess what? Straight people aren’t asked *consistently* to justify why they like that type of person. Hey, if I was straight and I liked bearish men with scruffy beards, no one would say to me “why do you like men who look like they belong in the woods?” They simply wouldn’t, partially because it wouldn’t occur to them to ask that, and partially because they realize it’s rude. But yet, that’s exactly what happens EVERY time someone asks me to explain, not so much why I like butch women, but “why do you like women who look like men?” First and foremost, how fucking disgusting and, to use your words, vain is it to assume I like women who look like men. The assumption right there is again, men are the axis of my sexuality, and indeed of all women’s sexuality. Nope, I don’t like women who look like men. I like women who like to be comfortable in their own skin and own who they are, who have confidence, swagger and yes, meld the masculine and feminine energies. Note, I didn’t say meld men and women. Men really think they own all things masculine and in truth, they don’t. Their egos just let them think they do. So yeah, every time someone asks me to *justify* why I like whom I like, I get offended and I have every right to do so.
Secondly, yes, men are curious about women and what we’re like. Great. I’m curious what it’s like to be a scientist, because I so am not. But there’s a distinct difference between genuine curiosity and self-serving sexuality and ego, which is EXACTLY what is happening when a man asks “have you not had a proper man” or “can I watch?” Here, let me break it down for you:
“Have you not had a proper man?” is about denigrating all aspects of competition so that he can jump to the front of the line and get his dick wet. Yup, it really goes back to humping. What, you think he’s asking out of the goodness of his heart? HA! The next part of that question is usually “maybe I can be the one to turn you straight.” I’m sorry?!?!?! At no point ever in that question is there anything resembling mere academic curiosity or respect. So yeah, it really goes back to “can I convince her to fuck me?”
And then the absolute favorite: “can I watch?” Gee, I dunno, if I was in a heterosexual coupling, do you really think some random guy would come up to my boyfriend and I and ask “can I watch?” The only place that would not get him a beat down would be in a sex club that caters to such things. But really, do you REALLY find it mere curiosity that would lead to such a question? Because I surely don’t. I find it patently offensive and disrespectful. Again, the basic premise here is “can I get my dick wet?”
So yes, at some point everyone sits around a campfire and asks “what gets you off?” but here’s the thing – when you’re around a campfire, there is a sense of friendship, intimacy and closeness that allows for that. There is a trust and honesty and RESPECT there. Having some random shithead come up to my girlfriend and I on the streets, in a restaurant or club, or anywhere else and ask these questions? Not cool, not respectful and sure as fuck having nothing to do with anything other than intolerance, selfishness, vanity, ego and sexual desires.
I am under no obligation to educate the world about my sexuality, nor am I under any obligation to answer any questions about my personal life whatsoever. To assume otherwise is stepping beyond one’s boundaries into a level of rudeness that deserves whatever response it gets. Might I answer the occasional question for a dear male friend? Maybe, if asked politely. But a stranger? Fuck no. All he should receive is the exact same level of rudeness he’s given me right back towards him.
So, in conclusion, while some men may genuinely want to learn about what being a lesbian is like, they should click here for ALL the answers they can handle. http://www.jfgit.com/
Ps. Something tells me that’s a link you should click yourself.
I
WWG Good points. I am only attracted to butch and androgenous women. The girl I’m sort of seeing (if u call separate states “seeing” lol) is very very much what society calls a masculine look and OMG she is beyond hot!!! NOT because she “looks like a guy” (eye roll and gag) but because her personality and compassion could knock any guy out of the water.
LOL WWG…You tell those idiots!
And, Jaz- Hope she ‘s a good woman for you!
Loads of great answers. My answers tend to change according to who asks and what mood I’m in. A good one I’ve found is to launch into a very serious diatribe about the fact that a Butch isn’t “masculine” at all that they must be coming from the gender binary rubric which has been found troublesome, at best, and that there are many gender identities. And that my particular sexual preference is to the gender called Butch. Usually that garners an eye glaze that will shut them up for good. Otherwise I just say, “Because her dick is bigger than yours.” Done and done.
oh, and Tup makes a hella great point.