Desi Butch (Where the ’Twain Shall Meet)

Abstract

The terms “desi” and “butch” are difficult to define separately but open up new possibilities for thinking sexuality and borders when located next to each other on the page. “Desi” can mean people from South Asia, and gestures toward land as home. “Butch” can mean queer masculinity, female masculinity, lesbian, bisexual, pansexual women’s subcultures. This article uses autoethnography to experiment with desi and butch next to one another to think about what desi queer and trans masculine genealogies and experiences might tell us about transnational logics of sexuality, space, home, and body. The article thinks through desi, butch, and desi butch as potential analytics of sexuality, movement, masculinity, intimacy, and desire, and attends to the work of the risks and costs of these shared terms. What does desi butch do to spatial modes of intimacy, alienation, care, fragmentation, and genealogy, in multiple vocabularies of land and home? The author asks after the complicated affects, temporalities, and desires signaled by desi butch as a category that troubles and has trouble with heteronormative border regimes and futurities across geohistories of North America and South Asia. This includes questions of translation, embodiment, and citizenship. Attending to their own desires, orientations, and experiences, the author asks what forms, spaces, and practices of care and collectivity are made possible through desi butch as negotiations of borders, and experiences of melancholy and alienation produced by different lines.