'Butch' was a dirty word for me for years, I'd feel sick if I said it out loud. Whereas now I relish it. It's synonymous with all of my favourite things: leather, denim, work boots, swagger, having an uncontrollable urge to wink. It's a very specific and nuanced energy.

I came out later than most, at 25. About six months after I came out to my mum, I felt free to pick up where I left off at 14 with my gender presentation. I have a very inherent butchness that I really repressed, so it felt like stepping into my own body as I'd always been. My first short haircut felt like my inner magnetic field flipping over 180 degrees. That was the moment in my coming out when I became myself.

My family have largely come to terms with my sexuality, or at least understand what they can and can’t say about it. On the other hand, they feel it's far more socially acceptable to critique my gender presentation than my sexuality itself. There’s far less pressure for people to pretend to be fine with you being butch. My uncle recently said to me, "Why do you want to look like a man?" I don't look like a man! I look like a butch woman, it's not a choice – I'm butch because I can't be anything other than that.

When I was more neutrally presenting I didn't experience that much harassment, but now it’s basically daily. It's so acceptable to see butch women as 'other' and see them as wrong, gross, even dirty. I’m doing everything you're taught not to do as a woman, and the harassment seems like a more culturally acceptable homophobia. I appear very clearly as someone who is rejecting being sexualised by men and their gaze.

Butchness has a history tied to working class women that’s very important to me. There's a bit in Stone Butch Blues by Leslie Feinberg about the revolution around gay identities that happened in the '70s and '80s, which saw far more middle class lesbians taking over the community and rejecting the butches and femmes. It's part of the reason why I've leaned into the butch identity. Being from a working class background also compounds the homophobia and butchphobia you’re confronted with, and it felt like there was much more stigma and shame. I didn't know anyone who was a lesbian, I didn't think it was a thing you could be until I was at university. But that's why there's something so important about being butch and participating in that cultural history.

I have several older butch women in my life who are some of the most important people I think I've ever met. Coming out was a really difficult time for me and I was incredibly grateful to have those women in my life. While it certainly feels like there aren't many of us, out on the street you're quite visible to each other. A nod of recognition or a moment of eye contact can sustain me through a whole day of being called 'sir', because I was seen for a second by somebody who understands what I am.

Even before I came out, 'beauty' was a term I hugely struggled with, but now I can see that of course I'm beautiful! I think women are beautiful, butch women are women, and therefore I am the most beautiful I've ever felt right now. I see my butchness as one kind of femininity on a three-dimensional spectrum of femininity. I don't like being referred to as 'masc-of-centre' or having female masculinity – after years of trying to understand myself, I’m extremely comfortable identifying as a woman through understanding myself as a butch woman. I can't deal with it being this kind of line where I'm closer to the men than I am extremely femme women. I feel like I have far more in common with high femmes than I do any cis man.