The studio is eerily quiet — except for Michael Jackson playing. Two assistants are looking for Danielle Cooper’s favorite song “Dirty Diana” but end up finding “They Don’t Care About Us”. You can see the fashion activist’s shoulders relax as the backbeat of the highly rhythmic song gets underway.
We’re in a small studio off a cobblestone street on a Wednesday afternoon, watching Cooper put on this clothing armor because them. is in Dumbo, Brooklyn, filming masculine and butch queer women. We set out with a mission to figure out where all the butch dykes had gone, but like most things in the queer community, we found that just because we aren’t acutely aware of them, doesn’t mean a community isn’t thriving. It’s just changed and evolved as our conversations around gender have shot lightyears ahead in the past 30 years. Masculine-presenting lesbians haven’t disappeared. We’ve just opened our understanding of who fits into those categories.
She’s pulled on a lavender button-down dress shirt that’s embroidered with “She’s A Gent” — the name of Cooper’s blog — in the back collar, along with a teal plaid suit with closely-cropped cigarette pants. For Cooper, whose fashion blog showcases masculine-presenting fashion, being a butch lesbian is about comfort. She knows the images of her, and women like her, are important to the next generation. “I just want the next person of color, a black young person to feel comfortable in their skin because they see a butch-presenting female who's black that they can relate to,” she says.
Cooper credits a member of the previous queer generation, pioneering comedian Ellen DeGeneres, with giving her the courage to start branching into more masculine clothing. She was a basketball player so she was no stranger to slouchy or oversized fashion, but it was Ellen that sold it. “It was in college when I started to come out. I was like, ‘It's the blazer. That's what it is.’ Thank you, Ellen. I put that on and over time, it went from being a loose fitted blazer to a — if you can't tell — tailored blazer,” Cooper says while she tugs on the lapels of her immaculately-tailored suit.
Later, the 32-year-old elaborates on how her suit is like armor. “Honestly, it's when I feel untouchable. I can walk through the world without being questioned,” she tells us. “The sexiest thing to me about being butch is being able to put on a suit and do it better than the guys.”
Next up is Ilsa Jule, a 51-year-old production manager. Jule goes by she or he, but never they. She’s a butch top lesbian and began experimenting with her masculine look when she was a senior in high school. “Some people were really vocal about it not being okay with them, and I was just kind of like, ‘Well, you can go fuck yourself,’” she says, recalling some of her high school peers. But her look hasn’t changed much in the last 34-ish years. The hair remains closely cropped; she got a trim right before she stepped onto set, in fact. The glasses are unassuming, small square frames that match the angularity of her cheekbones. Today, she’s going monochromatic: black pants and belt, dark gray (like a matte steel) button-up with stays in the collar and a black tie.
For Jule, the aesthetics behind being butch are a deeply conscious choice. “If I get up and I get dressed like this,” she says, gesturing her full suit, “this doesn't happen by accident, right? I got up. I chose these things. I have a certain masculinity about myself. It flows.”
But watching the changing state of gender has been a balm for Jule. Her butchness has hindered her employment prospects in the past. “In the early '90s, it sucked and was nearly impossible [to get a job],” Jule said. “I think that if a slightly masculine woman shows up, if you're qualified, now you will probably have a pretty good chance of getting hired. Whereas when I was qualified in the '90s, it didn't matter.” The first salaried position she took ended up being what she called “an accidental hire.” The hiring manager had no idea that a lesbian in a men's collared shirt, men's pants, men's shoes would be showing up. “But then he sort of collected himself really quickly, and he actually gave me a shot,” she says.
Jule was the oldest butch we met with, and listening to her talk about the tremendous strides the queer community has made in her lifetime was exhilarating. But she also had a good point. “I don't know that it's harder to be a butch woman than it is to be any sort of woman,” she says, glancing down. “I think it's not really that easy to be a woman right now, in the U.S. That's my experience.”
For Elsa Waithe, being a butch was the most obvious thing. “Butch is who I am,” the 29-year-old tells us. “I don't really know any other way to be.
This comedian likes her hats and t-shirts and baggy jeans. It’s her uniform. “I didn't even understand the words until someone else told me what stud and butch meant,” she says. But then it clicked. Having the vocabulary — learning that she was a stud — meant the world was put in order. This was especially important to her as a black lesbian, because you can’t divorce one from the other.
“I'm not black or lesbian; I am both of those things simultaneously, and you cannot pull those apart,” she says. “I can't order myself, or prioritize myself in that way.”
That’s why her advice for baby butches (and others experimenting with masculine presentation) is to just do it.
“If you feel like you want to present butch, go for it,” Waithe says. “Put on clothes that make you feel comfortable.”
Part of that comfort has meant exploring sex toys and strap-ons. The most open and fun moment of the entire day for me was when Waithe brought out her strap-on. Sex toys can make a room full of people go awkward. And I thought it would be hard to become so vulnerable to a room of almost a dozen people. But instead, Waithe was candid and funny when talking about this really fraught topic. Waithe smiled wide and wiggled her hips to show some of her moves, and it’s the best moment to watch someone so be free and confident with regards to sex, something we’re told to be ashamed of.
Her strap-on was a gift from an ex. “I thought, actually, this might be a little too big for me, but I have learned to wield it masterfully,” she says with a smile, glancing down at her toy. “I don't mean to toot my own horn but… beep-beep! I have heard from women that it is as good, or possibly better, than the men they've been with.” Two of her girlfriends have tried to steal it when they broke up! You know this stud brings a good time.
For Waithe, being butch also carries a real sense of history. “Excuse me if I'm being presumptuous with this [but] I would say that masculine women, butch women, are kind of the bedrock of the gay community,” she says. “We are, I think, the strength of a lot of the community. We're the doers.”
While the term "butch" might not be used by every masculine-presenting queer person nowadays, it’s because our vocabulary for what someone can be is even larger than before. This knowledge was a balm as the crew turned off the studio lights and walked out into a dark and cloudy Dumbo night lit by only a few streetlights. It’s clear that the people we filmed are only the tip of the iceberg.
Caitlin Cruz is an independent reporter and editor in New York and Texas. She writes about gender, labor, politics, health, culture, and the collisions therein.
