The Sashay Project #3: Walk Like a Man

Let Us Reiterate the Series Motto:
Free Your Ass and Your Mind Will Follow!
(Background HERE and HERE -- if you haven't read those yet, this probably won't make much sense.)

I’ve talked some about my relationship with Butchiness in the past, and I will confess that the prospect of adopting a true sashay challenges a lot of the identity I’ve constructed over the years as a butchy-dyke.

There are parts of my butchy walk that seem to be fairly native to me (see the btuchy post I link above for childhood pictures), but there are parts that I definitely know I have affected.

Like when I worked as a carpenter with construction crews comprised completely of men (until I arrived, that is) -- I would walk onto a new work-site with a very distinct gait and stance, relaxing into a more natural-to-me gait and posture only after the men I’d be working with seemed fully convinced that I knew what I was doing.

Many, many, many times I have “butched up” my walk when I walked alone at night in the city, or in some place where I wasn’t completely convinced that I wouldn’t be physically attacked.

When I played softball in a Portland summer league, I definitely butched it all the way up – mostly because I was insecure about my abilities and playing on a team that was 97% butch-identified dykes who were way more "athletic" than I was.

Even just thinking about these times right now, I have a visceral sense-memory of the tightening up and readjusting that this entails.

I tuck my ass under my spine and square my shoulders. I dangle my arms a bit further away from my sides. I compress my neck down toward my traps so it looks thicker, and when I walk -- nothing moves but my arms and legs.

My Beloved has been a massage technician for decades, and she has often commented on the locked pelvises of Western men. This is the pelvis I adopted and emulated, in order to perform My Butchy Walk. (It's like My Little Pony -- but stompier, and in no way pink.)

I’ve had a love/hate relationship with the concept of Butchiness for years – on the one hand, I am actually pretty “yang” in my general expression, and I have been that way all my life, as far as I know – I’m kind of attached to thinking of myself as “butch” or “butchy” or “mostly butch”.

On the other hand, the more I’ve become aware of the concept of gender performance in the last twenty years or so, the more I’ve questioned my valuation of my butchiness as it relates to my feminist ethics.

Example: I’ve heard many, many conversations between dykes (of my age, at least), wherein butches have been offended if you implied that they were femme in some way, but I’ve rarely heard conversations wherein femmes bristled if you indicate that they are butch in some way.

I’ve always been aware that, at some level, this relates to the conscious or unconscious adoption of the notion that behavior and qualities associated with the performance of “manhood” are more highly valued than behavior and qualities associated with the performance of “womanhood”.

For me, as a survivor of severe abuse in my early childhood, I know for a fact that I associated all things “manly” with being "in control" and "powerful", and that at least some part of my desire to be perceived as butch/tough was an attempt to adopt that perceived seat of power and control. I’m not saying this is true for every butch, but I know it was true for me.

That’s hard to admit, because I’m terribly, terribly fond of my butch identity (tenuous as it is, sometimes). I think I’m afraid that I’ll have to give it up for Feminist Lent or something.

So, acquiescing to the sashay that my sacrum obviously prefers for hikes and walks right now is a little scary.

Gender identification has been rocky ground for me at many points in my life. I’m one of those dykes who’s always had a “psychic dick”, but who never wanted to “be a man”. As a kid, I never felt like a boy in a girl’s body – but neither did I feel like a girl in a girl’s body. I never really felt like anything – I just felt like me.

I will confess that I resented sprouting bodacious tatas long before anyone else in my class had anything resembling breasts – but for me, this didn’t seem to be about gender – they just got in the fucking way. (Sometimes I’ve wondered if I developed this bubble-butt simply to provide ballast for The Girls.)

I still feel ambivalent about my tits from time to time – they’re lovely, yes, and they are a part of me, but I feel about them the same way I felt about every egg that popped out of my ovaries month after month after month for forty years. When I’d get my period, I’d kind of apologize to that monthly egg -- you know -- like: “Sorry you wasted all that time and energy . . . but don’t expect any sperm next month, either!”

It’s not that I feel like I was born in the wrong body – it’s just that I’ve never really identified with living in a female body very strongly.

So, it’s ironic to me that now, when all those ova have, at last, been spent, and I’m fully Crone-o-fied, my body seems more visibly “female” than ever. My hips and ass are more voluptuous, as are my breasts, and my jaw- and shoulder-lines have softened.

And now, my back tells me that it wants me to sashay.

Fer fuck's sake. Oy gevalt. Oh, maaaaaan!

There’s the tiniest little part of me that worries that I will be betraying my Inner Butch with this new walk.

There are parts of me that caution that I will not be safe if I walk this way. That people will assume things about me that I don’t want them assuming. That I will make myself vulnerable to those who will point at my fat ass and say shit I don’t want to hear. That I will look ridiculous.

That I will look Straight.

When I contemplate the morass of fears (and yes, it all seems to boil down to fear) engendered by a few inches of hip movement, I am, once more, aware of how the tiniest (and seemingly most "natural") acts we perform each day are affected by the fact that we’re soaking in it.

(Series note for the Sashay Project: This is a series of posts that explores the way I locomote through the world and how it is affected by sexism and the gender binary -- people who locomote through the world by means other than walking are welcomed and encouraged to share their insights about how sexism/gender performance might impact how they move through the world.)