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.”