The Butch Enigma

Ajay is a butch lesbian in her 60s. Adopted at ten days old by an older woman already ill with cancer, she was raised by a series of nannies while her adoptive mother was too sick to care for her. At four and a half, she was sent to a convent boarding school, where she stayed until running away at sixteen. During school holidays, she came home to care for her dying mother, making her a young carer from childhood.

From her earliest memories, Ajay was gender non-conforming. She hated dresses and loved her riding jodhpurs because she could wear a collar and tie with them. Her birth name was Amanda Jane, but she refused to answer to it, insisting on AJ instead and changing it legally to Ajay at eighteen. As a child, she stuffed socks down her trousers and still dreams of having a penis.

Ajay has never medically transitioned but says she certainly would have if the option had existed when she was young. For most of her life, she has wanted a mastectomy. Only in the last couple of years has she decided she probably won’t have one, though she’s still “not completely 100 certain about it.”

In this episode, Ajay talks about what it means to her to be a butch lesbian, and how her early life may have shaped her relationship with her body and her sexuality. She reflects on butch and femme dynamics, stone butch identity, and compulsory heterosexuality, and shares her view that women seem more sexually fluid than men. Ajay also discusses what she perceives as growing pressure on gender non-conforming lesbians in recent years, and why she believes many older butch women would have transitioned if it had been possible.

Resources and References:

Butch Lesbian Identity

• Stone Butch Blues by Leslie Feinberg (1993) - free PDF available on author’s website

• Always Endangered, Never Extinct: Exploring Contemporary Butch Lesbian Identity in the UK (2019)

Compulsory Heterosexuality

• Adrienne Rich, Compulsory Heterosexuality and Lesbian Existence (1980)

Sex and Gender

• Colin Wright, The Sex Binary: What It Is and Why It Matters, Genspect Bigger Picture Conference (2024)

• Murdock and Provost, Factors in the Division of Labor by Sex: A Cross-Cultural Analysis, Ethnology (1973)

Boarding School Syndrome

• Boarding School Syndrome: The Psychological Trauma of the ‘Privileged’ Child by Joy Schaverien (2015)

Attachment and Early Separation

• The Origins of Attachment Theory: John Bowlby and Mary Ainsworth, Developmental Psychology (1992)

• The Effects of Psychosocial Deprivation on Attachment, PMC

Support

• Beyond Trans (Stella’s online support groups for people who detransition or regret medical transition, where she heard perspectives like Ajay’s).

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