We’ve come a long way since the 1970s, when The Woman-Identified Woman manifesto was a huge leap forward for lesbian rights and queer self-identification in general.

Sadly, it seems that the original intent of the manifesto has not stayed in our minds, which does make sense, we’re a new generation.

We see today many people who were assigned female at birth, who are struggling to find a way to hammer their identities into a box labelled “woman”.

It makes me despair to see my siblings so painfully trying to understand and tailor their existence with the tools given to them, when the toolmakers themselves were pioneers who did not foresee the need for labelling to evolve in the coming decades.

It has been nearly 30 years since the publishing of Stone Butch Blues and yet, thanks in large part to the ridicule and debasement of nonbinary identities by trans exclusionists, we continue to have an aversion to nonbinary lesbianism and nonbinary butchness as concepts.

We see far too much dismissive rhetoric about nonbinary lesbianism, and I’m not here to discredit any of it; the discredit of this rhetoric is self-evident in the way nonbinary lesbians are spoken of, as if we do not exist. How is this any different to lesbians being spoken of as if we did not exist prior to the 1900s? How is this any different to trans people being spoken of as if they are only mentally ill or transitioning for attention?

How is your bigotry somehow the correct one, and not simply yet another tool of the patriarchy, as all bigotry that came before? Tell me, trans exclusionists, why is the harm you do a good thing?

Before the 1970s, lesbian was a slur, and then it was an inclusive label, open to bi women. Over decades we have had a gradual tightening of the noose until it has now become a label that means “binary woman who loves binary women, without exception”. You can see it yourself, in our history. You can read of this in books by Leslie Feinberg and Ivan Coyote.

There is a significant online presence of trans exclusionists who are invested in erasing trans identity, they wish to see trans people as just their sex assignments, as if our lived experiences and community are worthless, as if we are delusional, as if we are wrong to live as ourselves.

It is they who are wrong.

The reason why there are so many more labels for gender experience these days is because people find them helpful, they find them useful in seeking their communities. The most important gender label I’ve ever found, one that trumps all others in sense of community and belonging, is that of Butch.

Your right to self-identification was spelled out 50 years ago by our elders in The Woman-Identified Woman. The binary isn’t real, and it never was. You don’t need to try and force the expansion of a rigid box that doesn’t fit. You should use the labels that make you feel comfortable, the labels that connect you to the butches like you. We are not merely bound by the label of woman. Though the expansion of womanhood to remove its misogynistic chains is a righteous and fruitful cause, attempting to also fit our beautifully nonbinary experiences within it, that’s always going to leave us wanting more, wanting better, wanting visibility, and wanting justice.

Time and again I read tales of butches who do not fit the binary, and who think it is they who are wrong. They think that not fitting the binary as a woman means they must fit the binary as a man, and then reject that obviously false premise when it conflicts with their gender and community, but unfortunately still end up believing that not being a man means they must be a woman.

We erase ourselves to insist that our nonbinary existences can be subsumed into a definition of binary womanhood. What binary woman uses he/him pronouns? What of elective mastectomy, testosterone shots, metoidioplasty? Some, certainly, by virtue of the variance of humanity, and I’m not here to discredit their experiences if that is what fits them, but are you personally happy to be an outlier in a community that does not see you? We share these experiences of lesbian transgender identity, we should take up labels between us all. We should hold beacons, so that we might find one another in the dark.

Don’t believe in the rhetoric that it’s one way or the other. It’s not butch or trans man, it’s a spectrum. In between, we have stone butches, trans butches and trans stone butches. We have a rich history of existence in lesbian spaces and there’s no chance of that ever stopping.

We’re vulnerable. We don’t want to be, few of us are willing to admit it, but the fact remains that we’re all very isolated and many of us are totally without the all-important community we all need. Through the internet we now have a chance to come together, to be seen, and to be found by one another.

Trans exclusionists insist we need to exclude each other over trivialities such as the pitch of our voices, the density of our chin hairs, or the amount of scars on our chests, but at the end of the day, we’re just hurting each other for wanting to live as our true selves, and the only winners of such fights are the trans exclusionists who stood back and cackled.

We aren’t just women. We aren’t just men. We can be both, we can be neither. We can be much of neither, and in ways, much of both. Remix your gender until you feel like it matches your soul.

We are Butch. We are in orbit around the community of women, as protectors, as fighters, as lovers. In this orbit we can find our friends, our community, those others who love and fight as we do and who live as we live.

You don’t have to choose hormones over community, you don’t have to choose identity over labels, you don’t have to choose community over surgery.

You can be yourself, and you can love yourself as the mess of gender you are.

You can identify with women without being one.