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These
women are articulate, sophisticated, and often downright
sexy. In one sequence, each woman describes her definition of
a “femme,” the historical opposite and complement
to the “butch.” When Skyler, one of the interviewees,
describes a femme as someone who is simply “beautiful,”
my heart just melts for her. (It doesn’t hurt that Skyler
is also incredibly hot.) The sincerity of the sentiments expressed
by these women transcend butch or femme identifications; they
are simply women expressing their appreciation of and capacity
for love.
But
Butch Mystique fails to contextualize these interviews
historically or geographically, which could lead to some confusion
on the part of viewers who are not familiar with butch identity,
or with lesbian politics and history.
This
group of women hails from a very specific location: Oakland and
the San Francisco Bay Area in 2002, a fact that is never mentioned
at all within the documentary. This has the effect of universalizing
the stories of these women—a mixed blessing that also erases
the uniqueness of the place and time in which they live.
For
example, when Johnnie, the performance artist, notes half-humorously
that “I’m really a big nelly fag” rather than
a butch lesbian, no explanation is given for this statement. Johnnie
is referring to a recent development within the transgendered/queer
community to reappropriate the pejorative term “fag”—usually
an epithet thrown at effeminate gay men—as an identity marker
for women who may look butch but may feel more like a fag (that’s
right, an effeminate gay man).
In
the San Francisco Bay Area, which is known for its huge gay population,
the concept of gender as a continuum—or even a playground—is
probably much more common than it is in the rest of the US. Providing
a context for Johnnie’s statement would have created a richer
discussion about the concepts of butchness and gender for these
African American women, allowing them to bring in generational
differences as well as geographic ones.
Butch
Mystique would also have benefited from a more in-depth
exploration of the development of butch identity within lesbian
history. Although Matu, a retired carpenter/musician, does provide
a skeletal outline of butch history, this outline is too thin
for viewers who are new to lesbian history.
This
wasn’t necessarily a problem when Butch Mystique
was playing only at gay and lesbian film festivals, but now that
it’s being shown on Showtime, it will be accessible to a
much broader audience who is probably unfamiliar with much of
lesbian cultural history.
Despite
these shortcomings, Butch Mystique succeeds in presenting
an interesting and informative picture of the lives of African
American butch lesbians, because the interviews succeed in making
each of these women truly human. In the past, butch lesbians have
been stereotyped by heterosexuals as mannish freaks of nature,
or castigated by 1970s-era lesbian-feminism as sell-outs to heterosexism.
Butch
Mystique challenges those stereotypes by showing that butch
lesbians may not fit within culturally proscribed boundaries of
femininity, but they are certainly women.
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