Is this man bothering you?: On Visibility

It happens every night after a show.

My fellow dancers and I at a bar decked out in leather and fishnets, cooling off with drinks as sweat evaporates off our bodies after an hour-long show. My troupe-mates' hair is down, their long lashes barely clinging on after 60 minutes of head-banging, their tits and asses barely - but strategically - covered by layers of bodysuits. Every night after a show is the same: as we cluster around the bar, a guy approaches and pushes between us, yelling something we can barely hear over the band. And I see it immediately on my friend's face: a stiff smile hiding barely restrained rage. She's the baddest bitch I know, more than able to take care of herself. But I see behind her eyes deep exhaustion. So that smile is my signal.

When I insert myself between him and my friend, and make an obvious effort to ignore him, he'll spend a few minutes mumbling and try to reposition himself until he realizes I'm not moving. Then he'll move on. My friend's smile will turn genuine, and we'll finish our drinks in peace.

If cishet men must see me, that is how I want to be seen. In general, I prefer to be invisible to people socially. Much has been said about the invisibility of transmasc people: the erasure of their experiences from political discourse, from media, from medicine; the belittlement of their perspectives in queer spaces where they are perceived as privileged gender traitors. I agree that it is imperative that I be visible to politicians and doctors. I too ache to see people like me on screens and in books.

But if I am not on stage, where I have full control of how I am seen, I am pretty uncaring about whether I am seen or not. Perhaps that is part of the agender experience. If I relate to neither male or female or masc or femme social roles, if I recoil from having such expectations placed upon me, how do I make myself comfortably visible? If the price of social visibility is the obligation to adopt a character that is entirely wrong for me, do I welcome invisibility?

When I don't know how to answer such questions, I read. And I came across S. Bear Bergman's book, "Butch Is A Noun." This book is a gorgeous exploration of butch-ness, which is "a gender all its own, something which cannot always be described within the confines of the bigendered pronoun system we have now." And these words jumped out at me:

"Butches are monosyllabic, until you get to know them, which they will not allow but want, or will allow and want, or will allow but don't want, or won't allow and don't want, so you may or may not get to know them, but you should try, or not."

How well that sentence captures the ambivalence and indifference I feel about being perceived, the indecision and frustration I feel about being seen. And ultimately, the directive that you should try, or not, to know me, that I don't care either way.

When I insert myself between men and my friends, I am casting off invisibility and assuming some gendered role. But what role feels correct? Bergman offers further insight. His book has an entire chapter dedicated to the butch's essential role as a safeguard for femmes:

"When I am walking with a pretty girl, or sometimes a femme boy, things change; my gender changes. The girl, as they say, is mine, and my gender performance has to change in order to meet that expectation. I have seen all manner of men and boys melt away when I appear and rest my hand lightly but familiarly on a waist or neck, looking friendly and interested but present and big in my body. It rises up in me unbidden, every time, the knowledge that keeping this femme safe when I am not present may have something to do with the public perception of who might be in the wings to protect her."

In the book, "Persistence: All Ways Butch and Femme," Karleen Pendleton Jimenez writes in her essay, "A Beautiful Creature":

"My definition of butch involves chivalry. I want to be courageous, gallant, to show the highest respect for a woman."

She tells a story of when she was nine years old, when a girl at camp asks her to hold her when she was scared by the counsellors' gruesome stories. She describes the elation and pride she felt protecting her: "Everything, for an instant and for the first time in my life, felt right."

These descriptions of "butch," as an identity onto itself, resonate strongly with me as I consider where my social instincts lead me. I know that I may never be seen as butch... I don't have the stereotypical body or aesthetics. But Bergman and Jimenez's words offer an alternative gendered role that I can fulfill at least in my own mind. A way to be visible, at least to myself.

And it's worth it to protect my friends. As Bergman states:

"I do it to give something back to these femmes who take such good care of me, in so many ways, in whatever small way I can."

Butch Is A Noun, by S. Bear Bergman

Persistence: All Ways Butch and Femme, edited by Ivan E. Coyote and Zena Sharman