I\u2019d like to discuss yet another YouTube video! This time, it\u2019s a short segment from a video by Cammie Scott. Specifically, the video covers her own coming out story.
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Butler delves extensively into the idea of \u201closing place\u201d in gender, when coming to accept one\u2019s own non-heterosexual orientation. She states that she \u201csought to understand some of the terror and anxiety that some people suffer in \u2018becoming gay,\u2019 the fear of losing one\u2019s place in gender or of not knowing who one will be if one sleeps with someone of the ostensibly \u2018same\u2019 gender\u201d (11). Returning to Cammie, she is a lesbian, and a self-identified femme. Around the 4:50 mark of the video (embedded below), Cammie briefly discusses the exact experience that is being described by Butler. Even after establishing that she experiences attraction exclusively toward women, and having been in a same-sex relationship at the time, Cammie continued to grapple with the (\u201cterrifying\u201d) idea of being a lesbian. The sole reason: A distorted idea of what truly constitutes a lesbian, and a belief that she would need to wholly sacrifice her femininity in order to truly be a lesbian. She felt that she would be forced to masculinize herself, as Cammie believed that this was tied, without exception, to being and identifying as a lesbian.
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From an anecdotal perspective, at least, this is an incredibly<\/em> common experience for femme\/feminine lesbians. (Personally, I delt heavily with this issue, as a teenager.) Through her writing, Butler truly does offer some insight into why and how this (seemingly silly) experience is so common, and why it can become a severe struggle. As she would say, ultimately, it boils down to the \u201cinstability\u201d of gender.
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