![high definition gay pride wallpaper high definition gay pride wallpaper](http://cdn.wallpapername.com/2897x1805/20121213/lgbt%20parade%202897x1805%20wallpaper_www.wallpapername.com_69.jpg)
I’ve been confronted in women’s locker rooms. I wasn’t allowed to use my own college library for months because I “didn’t look like my school ID” after cutting my hair.
![high definition gay pride wallpaper high definition gay pride wallpaper](https://www.hdwallpapers.in/download/colorful_rainbow_sticks_black_background_hd_pride-HD.jpg)
I felt comfortable, and in my queer social bubble, I was surrounded by people who were comfortable around me. (Well, more often in the boys’ section-I’m 5'2".) I had a regrettable love affair with fedoras. I started buying clothes in the men’s section. Things changed a few weeks into college, when I finally started meeting masc cis women, genderqueer folks, trans women, and trans men, and their existence and encouragement opened up new possibilities for my own gender expression.
#High definition gay pride wallpaper series
Even The L Word, a Showtime lesbian drama I’d illegally downloaded on Limewire, offered minimal representation of masculine women, and the series gave its only trans character a storyline filled with misconceptions. Growing up in a relatively conservative town, I hadn’t seen many representations of gender non-conforming people, and the ones I saw on TV-like SNL’s Pat-were mostly presented in a negative light. I believed that in order to be desired, I had to look desirable, and as far as I knew, there was only one way to do that. But when I went to college-a place where I was determined to have all the gay sex I’d missed out on in high school-I turned the femme drag up a notch. From early childhood, I had always been drawn to a more masculine expression. During my brief femme era, I felt attractive, sort of, but I didn’t feel like myself. Today, I know many queer women who embrace this aesthetic with ease. In high school, I wore meticulous liquid eyeliner and huge dangling earrings. Still, I didn’t want to give those bullies any more fuel, so I wasn’t “all butchy,” at least not at first. After coming out, I experienced homophobia from some relatives, peers, my friends’ parents, and my high school principal, but I didn’t feel ashamed-I felt angry. I also knew I liked girls as soon as I learned what a lesbian was. A high achiever with long, wavy hair, I excelled in school, theater, and dance. To recap, female masculinity has long been associated with ugliness and failure, but growing up, I was neither of those things. One newsletter for the lesbian organization Daughters of Bilitis published a letter to the editors in the ’50s that read, “The kids in fly front pants and with butch haircuts and mannish manner are the worst publicity that we can get.” Well into the ’70s, some lesbian activists vocally distanced themselves from butches, presenting themselves as “normal,” respectable taxpayers so they could better integrate into straight culture. Straight people weren’t the only ones who vilified gender non-conforming people. Thanks to archaic masquerade laws, butches, transgender women, and other gender non-conforming patrons were often beaten and arrested for “cross-dressing.” McCarthyism ushered in a heightened moral panic around homosexuality, and police raids of gay bars became increasingly common throughout the ’50s and ’60s. That pride was mostly confined to gay bars, but butches weren’t always safe there. Working-class lesbians who wore men’s clothing claimed the descriptor with pride. In the 1940s, “butch,” which had previously been used to describe tough or physically fit men, evolved into a disparaging term for “manly” women. Because there’s a place for you at Pride, even if you’re not sure what it looks like yet.īefore “butch,” there were words like “bull dagger” and “bull dyke,” which originated in Black lesbian culture in 1920s Harlem. In honor of Pride this year, we’re publishing a series of essays that celebrate everyone who’s still figuring it out.