"Hi, friends. Today I am going to talk to you about butch queens, a fairly modern subculture that purports to be neither exclusively masculine, nor exclusively feminine. It is another subculture that aims to be inclusive, but ultimately is exclusive, bedecked in a uniform that differentiates the butch queen from jockeying-for-mascdom bears and daddies, and the flamboyant and fun twinks. And essentially everyone else that isn't butch + queen = modern.
It appears that the further we move along on our queer timeline, the further we get from being a unified whole. When Harvey Milk rallied the troops together to create change and fight the good fight, or when Stonewall happened and changed life as we know it, there was no emphasis on style code or fetish-friendly creed. A united front was the tie that bound a collective of queers who denied segregation in an effort to end a struggle versus creating a new one. Sex happened, obviously, but it didn’t promote alienation that led to any sort of cataclysmic separation. People fought and people rallied and people died.
So why are we backpedaling? Why do we feel this desire to draw lines in the sand? Where will we be when we grow tired of this trend? Will something new, something completely arbitrary, become the new raison d’etre of the modern man? It isn't difficult to think in this jaded, cynical manner. We can physically see the transformation of divisive subcultures, from the idolization of lean and clean homos in the late ’60s and early ’70s to the pro-masculinity advocates of bear culture to the more-evolved-than-you attitude of an arena of art fags that position themselves not only as counter cultural, but also counter-old school. Within a community that needs to fight, we are just as prone to in-fighting as ever before.
It is damaging. It hurts more than it helps. It sets up categories of otherness that translate to “better” or “queerer”. When in truth, we should abandon these indicators for something less restrictive. We can adopt these uniforms for sexual stimulation, but when these fetishistic categories evolve into becoming markers of goodness, we need to stop and think about why degrees of sexual admiration determine someone’s worth in a community.
We can all get along in the simplest of terms. It is a clichéd expression that fits here—turning a blind eye to your fellow man because his aesthetic doesn’t match yours is tacky and shallow. Building friendships of all colours, sizes and styles is essential learning. It is something you need to know. There aren’t bear hospitals and butch queen coffee shops. You do show basic indicators of human kindness in your day-to-day life, so why doesn’t this translate to your social life? Creating worlds of sameness is something most people abandon after they cease to be children. Grow up."
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