various experiences of a trans woman butch

hey! this is the first real butch community i've found online, so i thought i'd go ahead and share some of my experiences here and see if anyone else can relate (i'm not really active in a lot of online spaces and live in rural georgia so i haven't had much opportunity to connect with other butches). this post is not just for other trans women btw i would love to hear anyone's thoughts on all of this, including relatable bits! fair warning this is going to be venty in some parts, shouldn't be too heavy though. discussions of dysphoria and feelings of alienation from the queer community ahead but i really do not want the negative to be the main focus here. apologies if this is a bit scattered, this is mostly stream of consciousness

as the title says, i'm a trans woman and i'm a butch. 21 years old. was a bit of a rocky journey to figure out my identity. at various points in my life i have identified as l g b and t and have finally settled on the label of butch lesbian in the last year or so (it's all-encompassing for me, defines my sexuality and gender pretty succinctly). ive never liked the label of 'transfem/transfemme' for myself and i have only recently put the pieces together as to why (i dont like labeling myself as fem/femme because, as is obvious, i am a butch lol). i'm nonbinary but i've also been on estrogen for 3 years so it makes sense to me to call myself a trans woman in a political/social sense but it still not 100% a label i vibe with as like, who i am as a person.

i know this is not everyone's experience but for me personally, i kinda define my butchiness less as an embrace of masculinity and more as a rejection of femininity, if that makes sense. i get hella dysphoria if i go too masc (especially if i forget to shave my face) but i get a different flavor of dysphoria if i go too fem. the way i present myself tends to throw a lot of ppl off and it has some very funny results from time to time. throwback to when i had a side shave and this one time some Loudly Homophobic old guy (sitting on the Bald Side of me) came up to me asking if i knew his son and then i turned to the side and he factory reset in real time and slinked away shit was hilarious.

this is where its gonna get the ventiest so feel free to skip this paragraph, discussions of transphobia+alienation within the queer community ahead, so here be dragons:

!i've historically been kinda alienated from a lot of queer spaces my gender identity is a bit complicated and a lot of people are threatened by it. these are experiences shared by a lot of butches and a lot of trans women but ive noticed i get a really strange flavor of vitriol in a lot of lesbian spaces and a lot of trans spaces. i've felt a lot of pressure to present as more femme-leaning and only relatively recently did i start to shake that. theres already the idea that permeates the queer community that anyone masc presenting is inherently dangerous, but it feels like people are a bit more mask-off with it lately. idk man i just feel like theres such a crazy pressure for trans women to be hyperfemme 24/7 and if we dont we're not real women and it's coming from inside the queer community as much as anywhere else. i think if it felt safer to present more androgynous (or even masc) as a trans woman, a looot more trans women would do so. it was certainly a big obstacle for me at least!<

PAST THAT i have been in an incredible butchfemme relationship for almost 2 years now and remi if you see this ily. i think being with someone who sees me for me has really helped me explore a bit more of who i am - i don't need to worry about being 'acceptable' in the way i present myself to be considered attractive and it has helped me embrace my butchiness. since march 2024 i've been keeping my hair shorter for the first time since in a very long time and its felt so nice, especially because i have control over it. i am happy with who i am and im happy to find a little corner of the internet with people like me