All Comments on 'Real Butch, Real Woman'

It's great that the trans woman in this story is correctly gendered, but it still doesn't make it okay that you call the trans guy 'she' and 'it.' Genitalia doesn't define gender and it's sick that you even made the trans woman believe that it does.

I would have loved to have read this story, but as a ftm, I found it difficult to read since [you] your main character resorted to identifying the transman as "it". "They" would have done just as fine as a neutral pronoun. Then to continue on as "she"? Fail. Especially rude when coming from a character who wishes to be identified as 'she', and identifies other transwomen as 'she'.

Anons- I absolutely agree with you. My conceit for this story was to portray a trans woman who transitioned somewhat in isolation (alienated from her trans peers by her butch identity) and without much community- trans or cis lesbian- if any at all. She's attracted to other butches but has no access to them, and so when she comes across the early-in-transition trans man at the bar, she gloms onto him and indeed projects what she wants him to be (combined with her ignorance, as well- as I meant to portray with her not understanding the trans male lingo like "T" for testosterone). The misgendering in the story is meant to be the main character's, not the author's, but I definitely understand that it could nonetheless be triggering or painful to read (or comes off as though I endorse this misgendering), and for that I apologize.

To be entirely honest, I wrote this quite a long time ago, and even before but especially now reading your comments, I vacillate between wanting to take it down or edit it, and wanting to keep it up as is- a sort of bittersweet story (for the reader) of a lonely woman who ironically uses someone much like herself in order to feel confident.

As a trans person and being fond of butch women, I thought it would be fun to trash about a lesbian trans woman's adventures with her butch female lover. Holy shit, what a mess of transphobia I've stumbled onto.

The "butch" trick is not a woman who should be talked into keeping her beautiful tits. HE is a straight male trans man who has not yet had top surgery. And why the fuck would you ever call any person 'it?' Disgusting. First you dehumanize him, then you misgender him.

Additionally, who are you to judge other trans women in your bar scene who have to do sex work to afford to transition? Shame on you. Not everyone is rich. You come off as arrogant, ignorant, and naive. You may like fucking women but you're no lover of women.

It’s more than a little ironic and even insulting that this piece centered around the trans woman main character gaining self-realization as a real woman while referring to a trans MAN as first “it” and then “she” and continually relating to him as a woman, to his body as something that should be a woman’s (main character asking him to “keep those pretty tits” etc), rather than the real man he must equally be considered if the author considers trans women as real women. Flat out, it’s hypocritical to treat an FTM subject with such total invalidation and disrespect to the reality of FTM transition, while giving full validation and respect to the MTF subject and her transition in writing. You can’t have it both ways.

Overall disappointing....

P. S. “It” is for objects, “they” is for people whose gender you can’t tell...people are not inanimate things and I’d’ve imagined a trans writer to know better than to use words like “it” that violent transphobes use to dehumanize while harassing and even beating trans people.

nice transphobic story, weirdo

I don’t think I’ve ever seen a story here featuring a butch trans lesbian, so props for that. She seems like an interesting character. I enjoyed this as a story, but some of the language made me a bit too uncomfortable to immerse myself.

I don’t know if the person the protagonist hooks up with is supposed to be nonbinary or a trans man, but either way using it/she is a little off-putting.