Memo To The Clueless Butch 3

– if a femme you just met is sick, you offer to bring her soup, and she declines, don’t keep asking. It makes you sound like a creep who wants to know where she lives to stalk her.

– no means “no.” Unless you are already in some sort of relationship/dynamic that allows you to keep pestering her, when a femme says “no” (I don’t want your number, I don’t want to give you mine, I don’t want you to come over, I don’t want to go to your house, I don’t want to go to the movies, I don’t want to see that art exhibit, I don’t want to eat a burger I’m still vegetarian thank you very much, I don’t want to meet your roommate, pets, friends, kids or parents; I don’t want to go out on a date with you, I don’t want to be around you…) believe her and stop asking.

– don’t get a femme a sex toy if you are just friends. A gift card to her favorite sex store is enough. A toy will fuck with her head.

– don’t play games with a femme who can play better.

– we see right through your the-world-needs-more-humanity/patchouli/Mother Theresa butch routine. We may not confront you or go out of our way to talk about your being a double-dipper, but if we hear you are rewriting the story, we are no longer afraid of setting the record straight.

– choose your bros wisely because (a) some butches are worse than femmes when it comes to gossiping and throwing other butches under the bus, and (b) the butch code is dead to some butches who will stop at nothing to get their hands up your femme’s skirt.

– femmes in NYC have started to get together for coffee and compare notes. Be afraid, be very afraid!

– in this time and age, nothing is confidential. Femmes forward butches’ text messages and emails to each other. If you want to date more than one non-poly femme in the same circle, you need to get creative because femme B will have already learned all about your MO from when you were dating femme A.

– if you are interested on a femme, ask her for her number. Don’t give her yours and ask her to call you.

– if you are interested on a femme, go for it and keep the high school drama to a minimum. Don’t ask your friends to introduce or re-introduce you.

– when a femme turns you down and goes out with someone else, it isn’t that butch’s fault. It’s not your fault. It’s no one’s fault. A femme likes who she likes. It has nothing to do with you or the other butch. Love isn’t a competition.

– don’t approach a femme who has called you on your shit playing the hyper mega offended butch in distress (“I’m not the evil you think I am”) because she will set you straight again right there (“I don’t think you are evil, I just think you are full of shit”).

– licking your lips while looking at a femme’s tits is not having a conversation.

– licking your lips while looking at a femme’s tits will not get you laid.

– my ears and mouth are up here, stop looking at my tits!

– It’s ok to have a crush on a femme, but keep it under wraps when you know she doesn’t feel the same way because, if you keep trying to make it happen, you will only make her feel weird and stop wanting to be around you.

– be careful when and how you make a move. That something shitty that you do today to win a femme’s affection, may hurt you down the road. What you justify in your head with an “everything is valid in love and war,” may blacklist you. No self-respecting femme wants to date/fuck a butch who has no morals.

– don’t expect full time benefits if you are doing a part time job.

– if you are not over your ex, even if there isn’t the slightest chance that she’ll take you back, don’t waste other femmes’ time.

– if your 2 cents ain’t paying any bills, keep that shit to yourself.

– can you please change the sheets before you get a femme in your bed? Even if you just met her at a bar, please tell her to give you a few while you change the sheets. It’s ok. We’d rather wait five minutes or help you change them than get busy in stained sheets that smell like cat pee.

– your worst mistake is to take a femme for granted.

– if you are unhappy in a relationship, get out. Don’t badmouth your girlfriend on Facebook. Don’t talk shit behind her back while she goes to the ladies room during a butch/femme outing. Just grow some balls and end it.

– you sound super moronic when you say you are “in a relationship and it’s complicated.”

– being in a relationship that is “complicated” screams of (a) a butch in need of an ego boost who is not really thinking about getting out of a relationship that is very comfortable and convenient for her, (b) a butch who doesn’t have the balls to get out of a bad relationship and be on her own, (c) a butch who doesn’t know how to leave her wife and needs an exit affair, (d) a butch who is shopping around to see if she finds someone better, (e) a butch who is hopelessly waiting for her closeted femme or wannabe femme to come out to her family, and (f) any other drama that not many happily single femmes are willing to put up with.

– don’t tell a femme you are going to treat her at X restaurant without looking at the menu if you can’t afford to not look at the menu.

– if you can’t afford to date, don’t date. It’s 2015: most femmes don’t want to be kept anyways, but we surely don’t want to be keepers.

– a femme knows who her heart belongs to. You can buy her diamond encrusted Gucci, Louie, Tom Ford bags or take her on trips to outta space. If it ain’t you, it ain’t you.

– a femme’s asking you to remove photos of her from Facebook doesn’t make her “high maintenance.” Asking you to retouch, crop, or delete photos from Facebook or elsewhere is “normal femme behavior.”

– for the love of God: use autocorrect!!!

– if the femme you like is going through a breakup, I would give her some breathing room. But if you must oblige your own feelings upon her, there is a thin line between a semi-decent approach (think Justin Timberlake’s Bad Thing) and the total creep approach (blurting you love her out of nowhere when she has told you she likes/loves someone else and/or is sleeping around and/or she told you she friendzoned you months ago and/or a combination of all of the above).

– if you identify as a “gender queer on the masculine side of the spectrum” and are happy, more power to you. Femmes’ not wanting to waste our time with you doesn’t make us “uptight bitches.”

– it is ok to be new to the butch/femme community, not know the lingo, not quite understand how the dance works. Please, please, please: stop putting stone butches down. Show some respect for the women who paved the way for you and the rest of us.

– (with some exceptions) a stone butch is no longer the spitting image of James Dean, Marlon Brando, or a cowboy. A stone butch can dress however s/he wants. Wearing sweatpants or a suit doesn’t make them less of a stone butch.

– never ridiculize a stone butch in front of a femme who dates stone butches (unless you want to get an earful).

– the last thing a femme wants to hear coming from a butch’s lips is “you look tired.”

– unless you have a legit case of Alzheimer’s, insulting a femme, talking shit about her and being called out on both things by said femme automatically removes you from her circle. You have no right to ask her about her weight loss, new job, new apartment, and relationship status when you are alone or in front of other people.

-when a femme you don’t even know mentions she is going “solo” somewhere she is not inviting you to go with her nor asking you to sit by her side to keep her company. Not all of us use the Damsel in distress card, so don’t make assumptions.