Wall NJ. 22. They/Them
What does being butch mean to you?
“Being butch is just being a lesbian, being gender non conforming, protecting and treating other lesbians with respect.”
What is butch culture in relation to lesbian culture?
“Butch is an inherently lesbian term. It historically came from the lesbian bar culture created by working class lesbians from the late 1940’s to the 1960’s in the United States. Butch lesbians are gender non conforming, but not all gender non conforming women are butch, as some gender non conforming women do not identify as lesbians.”
How does being butch affect you in your daily life? (work, social economic)
“Most people I see on a day to day basis don’t see me as butch, as I’m Chinese with visibly ethnic features. White people are dead set on seeing me as an East Asian man. I’m not hyper feminine and there’s a stereotype that East Asian men are very feminine because they don’t match up with the standards of white manhood. I work as a barista at Whole Foods so the mostly white customer base treats me like a man. If they take a longer look at me while counting their change or picking up their drink, people usually get a bit panicky over whether I’m a woman or a man. They often swing between calling me “sir” or “ma’am” and the whole thing is uncomfortable, but normal for me at this point.
Concerning my social life, I don’t really hang out with many people. Most of my friends are lesbians who live in different states. I spend most of my time by myself, drawing comics or recording episodes for my podcast, Chinese Make Out. It’s hard to find people who know how to treat me like a normal person. Being Chinese, a lesbian, and agender at the same time makes a lot of people uncomfortable. Most political topics are personal for me, so I avoid having to deal with dehumanizing social slip ups by avoiding people as much as possible. I grew up with literally no friends until I turned fifteen, so it’s regular for me to be alone most of the time.
Economically, I don’t think I’m ever going to live a “normal” life, as I’m very visibly butch and South Eastern Chinese, meaning I have very prominent Chinese features and brown skin. My dream career would be working as a ceramics professor but I don’t think I’ll ever have the money or time for such an expansive education, so I’ll most likely just get my barber’s license instead and be around to offer free haircuts for LGBT youth.”
How do you think butch culture has evolved over time and across generations?
“I think ‘the look’ of being butch has changed over time, but the spirit of being butch has remained the same.”
What are some stereotypes about butch women? Do you relate to them?
“A lot of butch stereotypes are based in equating white butch lesbians to their white male counterparts, so I don’t feel very personally affected by a lot of them. That’s not to say that butches of color don’t have their own set of stereotypes based on our male counterparts of color. Where white butches are seen as hyper masculine and unfeeling, East Asian butches are seen as disgusting non men, creatures to be killed lest we threaten the safety of white women. I feel much more comfortable around Chinese men than I do around white women.”
How do you feel about the way butch women are portrayed in the media?
“Honestly, I’d love to see any portrayal of butch lesbians in any sort of media. We are invisible to the mainstream. I’d argue that we don’t have any legitimate butch icons that have national recognition and regular appearance in the public eye but honestly, I’m comfortable with that. People don’t need to be in our business and to me, it’s almost a form of protection to be spared from the ridicule of the general public. They can all just keep thinking that Ruby Rose is the toughest, stoniest butch around and leave us to our relative peace.”
How did you evolve into your butch identity?
“I think I’ve known all my life, but my race seemed to stand between me and my butchness. I’m butch for butch but when I dated white butches, I thought one of us had to be fem and since I was the Chinese one dating an American “boy”, I had to wear dresses and makeup and heels. I came out in Washington State and it’s not a good place to be butch. Lesbians are hated by straight people and “queer” people there so I softened myself in order to survive. I finally came out to myself as butch when I moved back to the East Coast and I’ve never felt more at home with myself.”
How does being butch affect relationships you've been in or will be a part of?
Being butch and brown and in relationships with white people has been a nightmare. The white person usually decides how they want to interpret my gender depending on what will convenience them at the time. When they don’t feel like addressing their own whiteness, I’m a big scary brown man threatening their white existence with my demands of basic respect or offense at racially charged language directed at me. When they feel like having a certain type of sex that I don’t want to have, I’m suddenly an Asian woman whose sole purpose is to please my white partner.
Any first love stories, or a story about a relationship you've been in and how it's affected you
Honestly, I’ve never not been in an abusive relationship and the abuse has always been race based. I’m trying to take a break from doing anything romantic right now and focus on art career stuff, though I hold the concept of marrying another butch of color very close to my heart.
What makes you feel beautiful?
“I don’t think I’m beautiful and that’s probably due to a lot of internalized racism, homophobia, and transphobia, but I think my work says more about me than my face ever could. Comics are the most important thing I do in my life. If you want to see the beauty I create, look at my comics, not the physical being that I didn’t choose for myself.”
How do you feel like your identity has been seen and heard by your chinese culture?
“I’m transracially adopted and I have a strong feeling that my mother is a closeted lesbian who was raised in the same homophobic Irish catholic culture that I was raised in. I’ve been doing some reading recently about lesbian culture in China and it seems different there, though not inherently better. Before colonization and the forced decision to open trade with the West, China had its own type of homophobia, but it was nothing like the Christian based homophobia that was introduced by Westerners. Through my research, I found that butches and femems call themselves T’s (tomboys) and P’s (prettys) in big cities in China. The Tomboys all look like me, though they’d be considered hyper masculine or hyper feminine by people in America.”
How do you think your culture has impacted your identity?
“I was raised by my mother, the child of two Irish immigrants, and I’m pretty sure she recognized I was gay the same way she recognized she was gay. She hated me as she hated herself and she passed that hatred onto me. She wanted me to be her straight white daughter, to grow up and marry a man and wear the clothes she couldn’t make herself wear. Coming out literally felt like I had to abandon the god I grew up with but I found a new one and she’s butch and beautiful. I’m referring to the Moon, of course.”
What is a life changing moment that revolves around your butchness?
“This is gonna be a dumb one. I texted one of my friends in January and asked if they thought I was butch and they responded “Yeah. I think you are” and then proceeded to send a photoshopped version of the Back at the Barnyard meme with the pig in a doctor’s costume saying ‘I diagnose you with bitch’ but instead of bitch, it said butch and it literally made me come out to myself.”
What is something you would tell your younger self? (Or just young butches in general)
Come out of the closet and stop trying to date your mother i.e. stop dating traumatized white people who treat you like a magical brown person and try to make their trauma your personal issue to deal with.
If you would like to view Liu's comics, their Instagram is @lemonliu32