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Hard Candy Calendar had a poll and the results were… well… all over the place. I was sure that I’d get some revelation about how non-femme womyn see themselves. I used ‘non-femme’ cuz I really don’t know what term to use. It’s spread almost evenly across the board between, stud, tomboy, androgyn, with aggressive and dom being a close second. Zero voted butch. Fascinating.

I’ve had the conversation about labels many times before. While many want to do away with them, I feel that in general they are needed because, if I don’t call you something, how would you know who or what I’m talking about? We need labels for simple communication. But the labels aren’t affective if we can’t agree on what to use but more importantly, what they mean. Studs are like a box of chocolates. You never know what you’re going to get. Studs run the gamut in terms of style of dress, to attitudes, to roles in relationships and behaviour. So when talking about a stud, you could be talking about the chick in the baggy pants with the thong underneath or the chick next to her in the baggy pants with the strap-on underneath. Big difference. But only one word describes them. It somehow doesn’t seem fair to saddle such a diverse group of womyn with such limiting terms. Whaddaya gonna do? Have 8 million different names to point out every single nuance? Nah, that would be ridiculous and tedious. Who has time to learn all the terminology? The definitions are all based on the individual.

Sounds like a whole lot of pressure to have to live up to or tear down these random tags that are thrown at my dominant sisters. I applaud you all for handling it so well and with such grace. And I pray for the baby studs, little doms, tomboys in training and the label-less who struggle to find their place. Not only in society in general, but in the gay community. Cuz the bottom line, it doesn’t matter what others call you, it’s what you call yourself.

Kinetic is helping you out with a tag of your own. You can get tees and golf shirts with name tags that do not lable you so much as provide a tongue-in-cheek image of how the world sees you. And there’s even a “nunya” tag for the truly rebellious who simply states that it’s none of ya business what she goes by.