Earlier this year, my friend, D, called me up and asked if I would go sock shopping with her. I didn’t need any socks, but it was a nice, sunny day in Oakland, and I didn’t have anything better to do, so why not. We hit a few shops, and of course, shopping for socks turned into shopping for shirts, pants, shoes, and, my favorite, watches. As can be expected, navigating the rigid spaces designated for men – in fit, form, and function – can be difficult for women looking to create space for curves, whether they be hips, breasts, or a gender identity that isn’t easily stereotyped and mapped out. Within a few hours, what started as a short excursion to pick up some essentials developed into the basis of redefining our friendship with each other, and, ultimately, the founding of the Gentlemen’s Sock Shopping Club (GSSC).

One of the most obvious questions is – why shopping? I know that it’s consumerist, and it contributes to the global separation of the haves and have-nots. However, outside of the Folsom Street Fair, the state of California will arrest me for not wearing clothes and most of my favorite restaurants won’t serve me either. So, sometimes, I shop, and I choose to do it with my bois. The camaraderie makes the experience a bit easier to swallow. The occasional glares from other shoppers coupled with the inattentiveness of sales people – that’s my nice way of saying “blatant dismissal” – makes finding a pair of good low-rise trunks far more painful than necessary. Of course, there’s nothing better than the sales person that directs me to the women’s section of the store because somehow through all of the perfume, glitter, and excessive amounts of pink, I must have missed that women have a special place in the front of the store. For whatever reason, when there’s more than one of us, it seems that it’s less likely that we’re lost, and more likely that this “style of dressing” is some form of groupthink amongst all of us!

Needless to say, despite the name, which I think is funny and interesting, the GSSC gives me far more than the opportunity to buy men’s clothes with other bois. The greatest experiences with my bois haven’t come in a store or at the expense of my wallet, but rather, in the comfort of someone’s home when we’re just chillin’, just being. It’s knowing that we all think it’s possible to watch an entire show and the only acceptable time to talk is to comment on a hot actress or to pause for a beer run. It’s hearing my boi say, “You’re like me so…” and know that she means that in terms of how we think and how we look. It’s knowing that I am differently gendered in a way that seems to mix man and woman to create something else, and that I’m not the only one.

As I think about my own life, and how I came to be Mista, I think about my mother, my brother, my aunts, and my uncles. I grew up in a world that told young girls to look to their mothers as models of womanly behavior, that we both want and don’t want to exhibit ourselves. Young boys were to look to their fathers, and in the case of black boys, any positive black role model that might be around in the event that dad wasn’t present. Forever caught somewhere between and around being a girl and a boy, I rejected the idea of a singular model of gendered behavior. I am both my mother and my brother, and simultaneously completely different from both of them. I am my mother’s Southern black woman, and I am my brother’s fervent New York Yankee fan. I equally value a gendered separation of roles and responsibilities and the rights of women to live with the freedoms generally afforded to men.

GSSC gives me space to be all of this, to be both/and, and to dismiss the notion that I ever have to be either/or. As we yell at baseball players that can’t hear us, we talk about the challenges of having and raising children in a world that doesn’t understand us and sometimes jealously rejects the strength it takes for us to boldly be ourselves. Then we sit back and realize that we can create another way to exist, another way to be with each other. A smile. A knowing look. And back to yelling at the baseball game.

Real Talk,

Mista

This morning, I’m thinking about the Butch Voices conference in Oakland, CA – a spectrum of gender identities and sexual orientations coming together to take a closer look at the shared experiences of butches, studs, and other transmasculine folks. Now, I’ll be really frank. When I heard about the conference earlier this summer, I didn’t plan to attend. Not hatin’ – I just couldn’t get past the word butch. Some folks love it, partly because it gives legitimacy and a name to their non-normative gender identity. For me, butch marks territory that isn’t complicated enough – while it indicates a departure from the expected dynamics of relationships between women, as well as women and men, it doesn’t give me enough space to explore how my race(s), class(es), and my personal politics all impact my gender expression. And it’s for that exact same reason that I decided to attend. While I may not self-identify as butch, my female masculine experience (and yours, too) needs to be represented. At its very best, Butch Voices would use the shared experiences around the word 'butch' to bring together folks that don’t necessarily fit socially anticipated options for gendering female bodies (operative and not). Did it? Absolutely.

Some of the highlights: Q’s webumentary, Excuse Me Sir, covered the perennial issue: How do you define butch or stud? Filmed responses to the question ran the gamut, from understanding studs/butches in terms of their masculine dress, to thinking about studs/butches as the bridge between male and female, to understanding studs/butches as an attitude that may or may not correspond to the external appearance. Usually, I’m leery of trying to define the terms that we use to name ourselves because that exercise usually breeds “rules” about who is and who isn’t aggressive/butch/dom/dyke/queer/stud. But the success in this webumentary is in the sheer diversity of the responses, AND, in the fact that more than one person says what’s probably apparent to all of us – that self identification, as well as the meaning of stud/butch is personal. The presence of seeming “contradictions” – lipstick studs, non-dominant studs, butch bottoms – not only smashes the idea of what we should do with our female-ness, but also gives the finger to anyone that limits butches and studs to just being a female version of heterosexual men. Q – great work.

I only made it to the workshops on Saturday, but two really stood out for me. The Butch-Femme Communication session took on lots of topics, but one of the presenters gave me pause when she mentioned that she thought that ‘women get lost in queer’ in response to my (tortured) preference for the word queer over boi/butch/stud/aggressive and so on. I took her statement as saying that words like “lesbian” and “butch” have a very clear relationship to woman, whereas queer doesn’t necessarily.

It was rather curious since I had understood butch as a gender unto itself, distinct from man and woman. Following that, shouldn’t it be okay that “woman” gets lost? (I don’t necessarily agree that women do get lost, but I think it’s an interesting thought.) And, I should clarify – when I say female, I’m thinking of biological parts (and yes, this, too, can be debated). When I say woman, I’m thinking about how we present that female-ness to ourselves and the world. My questions to you – how important is being “woman?” How do you name yourselves, for yourself and for others, and what factors into the name?

Now, that was a lot, and it was all by 9:15 on Saturday morning. At some point, thinking through and discussing the nuances of who I am and why I am gets to be too much – especially before breakfast. So I dipped into Krys Freeman’s session on Creating Social Spaces for Lone Wolves. It. Was. Fresh. The session was akin to sitting at a bar, flanked by your bois, and not saying anything at all. In that moment, all was right in the world because we were just chillin’, just being. At the end of the day, I am at peace with the seeming contradiction that is Mista. There is a critical importance in identifying and naming our selves – for ourselves and for those trying to understand us, be present in our lives, love us. There also exists a critical need to just be, in the ways that can’t be described by words but merely felt by the soul. Kissing my goddaughter and enjoying a good smoke with my dudes or loosening my tie and talking baby with my homegirls – I am chill with just being me – completely and unapologetically.