Ellie’s Story

Gender: butch

Sexuality: lesbian

Pronouns: she/him

Home: Virginia Beach, VA

From: East Coast – between VA & NC

Interests: Video games, cosplaying, horror movies, scrapbooking on the occasion, Welder by trade, thespian at heart

I’ve always known I was a funky human. I grew up socialized very girly, but rejected a lot of that femininity from a young age. Most people slapped a tomboy label on me and I ran with it. I was a t-shirt and jeans kinda kid and hated any semblance of pink, frilly, and feminine. As I got older and came into my own a bit, I recognized my attraction to women, and very specifically my non-attraction to men when I was in middle school, but didn’t call myself a lesbian until after I graduated in 2016.

My young adulthood was rough and wrought with some questionable experiences as I survived 3 years of an abusive relationship that had me questioning a lot of parts of myself. I leaned very hard fem, for a long time. I was pushed into a ‘good submissive girl’ kind of box that I really leaned into for a while. Heavy makeup, dresses and tights and heels.  It wasn’t until 2020 that I rediscovered my masculinity and embraced my butchness.

While the journey is ever moving, I feel like I’ve definitely found myself where I stand right now after years of experimenting and trying on different types of ways to be. I found that the more I embraced lesbianism and butchness, the more I understood my gender more intrinsically. It includes the history the word ‘butch’ holds and how much of an honor it is to carry it today. To represent my community as someone who is chivalrous, bold, caring. A butch who wears her heart on his sleeve and shows young people that things will turn out okay.

Butch, specifically, as it relates to my identity is incredibly important to me because it holds so much more than an outward presentation. I am butch because I am a servicer, I am a caretaker, I am a holder of Lesbian history. I am a lesbian before I am anything else. Being a lesbian is what has most heavily influenced my gender and my perception of gender as a whole. I tell people, these days, that my gender is just: butch.  And they can interpret that however they like.

Photos taken November 2024