Butch and femme are LGBT terms describing respectively, masculine and feminine traits, behavior, style, expression, self-perception and so on. They are often used in the lesbian, bisexual and gay subcultures. A similar term, en femme, is also frequently used in the crossdressing community.
Butch and femme are sometimes used to describe the identities of each person in a gay or lesbian relationship in terms that are analogous to a heterosexual relationship, with butch representing the traditionally male role and femme the traditional female role. Not all gay or lesbian couples can be described accurately in these terms.
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The word femme is taken from the French word for woman. The word butch, meaning "tough kid" may have been coined by abbreviating the word butcher, as first noted in George Cassidy's nickname, Butch Cassidy. Butch gained the sense "male-like lesbian" in the 1940s.[1]
The terms butch and femme are often used to describe lesbians and gay men. Butch can be used as an adjective or a noun[2] to describe one's gender or gender representation. A masculine person of either sex can be described as butch.[3]
Stereotypes and definitions of butch and femme vary greatly, even within tight-knit LGBT communities. Butch tends to denote masculinity displayed by a female-bodied individual beyond what would be considered typical of a tomboy. It is not uncommon for females with a butch appearance to meet with social disapproval. A butch woman could be compared to an effeminate man in the sense that both genders are historically linked to homosexual communities and stereotypes.
For western homosexual women, butch-femme has had varying levels of acceptance throughout the 20th century. People who prefer 'femme on femme' and 'butch on butch' relationships face discrimination and cultural repression within their own cultures. This was common in the mid-twentieth century United States working-class lesbian butch-femme scene, and today, this is notable in cultures where masculine tops who have sex with feminine bottoms or trans women are considered straight.
Alternate conceptualizations of femme or butch persons suggest that butch and femme are not attempts to take up "traditional" gender roles. This argument situates "traditional" gender roles as biological, ahistorical imperatives, a claim that has been contested by Sigmund Freud, Judith Butler, Jay Prosser, Anne Fausto-Sterling, and many others. These authors regard gender as both socially and historically constructed, rather than as essential, "natural", or strictly biological. Specifically with regard to butches and femmes, lesbian historian Joan Nestle argues that femme and butch may be seen as distinct genders in and of themselves.[4]
Others have argued that butch and femme are "read" as imperfect mimicries of heterosexual gender roles, due to the uncritical assumption that masculinity and femininity are inseparable from genetic femaleness or maleness. For example, to suggest that a butch woman is attempting to annex heterosexual male power or privilege—a claim leveled by some radical feminists such as Sheila Jeffreys—fails to note the social censure leveled at individuals who reject social and cultural imperatives that link biological sex with "gender performance".[5]
Prior to the middle of the 20th century in Western culture, homosexual societies were mostly underground or secret, which makes it difficult to determine how long butch and femme roles have been practiced by women. Photographs exist of butch-femme couples in the decade of 1910–1920 in the United States; they were then called "transvestites".[6] Butch and femme roles date back at least to the beginning of the 20th century. They were particularly prominent in the working-class lesbian bar culture of the 1940s, '50s, and '60s, where butch-femme relationships were the norm, while butch-butch and femme-femme were taboo.[7] Those who switched roles were called ki-ki, a pejorative; they were often the butt of jokes.[8]
In the 1940s in the U.S., most butch women had to wear conventionally feminine dress in order to hold down jobs, donning their starched shirts and ties only on weekends to go to bars or parties as "Saturday night" butches. The 1950s saw the rise of a new generation of butches who refused to live double lives and wore butch attire full-time, or as close to full-time as possible. This usually limited them to a few jobs, such as factory work and cab driving, that had no dress codes for women.[9] Their increased visibility, combined with the anti-queer rhetoric of the McCarthy era, led to an increase in violent attacks on gay and bisexual women, while at the same time the increasingly strong and defiant bar culture became more willing to respond with force. Although femmes also fought back, it became primarily the role of butches to defend against attacks and hold the bars as queer women's space.[10] While in the '40s, the prevailing butch image was severe but gentle, it became increasingly tough and aggressive as violent confrontation became a fact of life.[11] In the 1950s, ONE, Inc. assigned Stella Rush to study "the butch/femme phenomenon" in queer bars. Rush reported that women held strong opinions, that "role distinctions needed to be sharply drawn," and that not being one or the other earned strong disapproval from both groups.[12]
Starting in the 1970s, some feminist theorists pronounced "butch-femme" roles politically incorrect, because they believed that all butch/femme dynamics by necessity imitated hetero-sexist gender roles, leading to butch-femme relationships being driven underground.
However, "inherent to butch-femme relationships was the presumption that the butch is the physically active partner and the leader in lovemaking....Yet unlike the dynamics of many heterosexual relationships, the butch's foremost objective was to give sexual pleasure to a femme. The essence of this emotional/sexual dynamic is captured by the ideal of the "stone butch," or untouchable butch....To be untouchable meant to gain pleasure from giving pleasure. Thus, although these women did draw on models in heterosexual society, they transformed those models into an authentically lesbian interaction."[13]
Antipathy toward female butches and male femmes could be interpreted as transphobia, although it is important to note that female butches and male femmes are not always trans-gendered or identified with the trans movement.
Some young people today in queer communities eschew butch or femme classifications, believing that they are inadequate to describe an individual, or that labels are limiting in and of themselves. Other people within the queer community have tailored the common labels to be more descriptive, such as "soft stud," "hard butch," "gym queen," or "tomboy femme." Comedian Elvira Kurt contributed the term "fellagirly" as a description for queer females who are not strictly either femme or butch, but a combination. In the 1950s and 1960s the term chi-chi was used to mean the same thing.
Those who identify as butch and femme today often use the words to define their presentation and gender identity rather than strictly the role they play in a relationship, and that not all butches are attracted exclusively to femmes and not all femmes are exclusively attracted to butches, a departure from the historic norm. In New York City LGBT community a butch may identify herself as AG (aggressive) or as a stud.
In 2005, filmmaker Daniel Peddle chronicled the lives of AGs in his documentary The Aggressives, following six women who went to lengths like binding their breasts to pass as men. But Peddle says that today, very young lesbians of color in New York are creating a new, insular scene that's largely cut off from the rest of the gay and lesbian community. "A lot of it has to do with this kind of pressure to articulate and express your masculinity within the confines of the hip-hop paradigm..."—Village Voice
Among the subcultures composed of butch gay and bisexual men is the "bear community". Gay men who are more femme are sometimes described as "flamers." Femmes are sometimes confused with "lipstick lesbians" which generally are understood to be feminine lesbians who are attracted to and partner with other feminine women. Conversely, a butch woman may be described as a "bulldyke" or simply just as a "dyke". There is also an emerging usage of the term soft butch or "chapstick lesbian." The usage of "dyke" has widened in recent years to encompass queer women in general. At one point, both were considered derogatory; "dyke" has become a more neutral term, but may still be taken as offensive if used in a derogatory manner or by those outside the LGBT community.
Banjee or banjee boy is a term from the 1980s or earlier that describes a certain type of young Latino or Black man who has sex with men and who dresses in urban fashion for reasons which may include expressing masculinity, hiding his sexual orientation or attracting male partners. The term is mostly associated with New York City and may be Nuyorican in origin.
"Homomasculinity" is a term coined by gay activist editor in chief of Drummer magazine Jack Fritscher in 1977.[14] The term describes a subculture of gay men who prefer masculine-identified men as legitimately as some men prefer effeminate men and drag queens. Equating the three self-fashioning identity labels "gay," "homosexual," and "homomasculine," Fritscher also coined "homofemininity" for lesbians to whom he opened Drummer magazine in the late 1970s by publishing writing about the Society of Janus and writing from Samois, a group founded by gay activists Patrick Califia and Gayle Rubin. Humanist Fritscher intended "homomasculinity" as an identity concept and never as an exclusionary concept as promulgated by Jack Malebranche in his latter-day book Androphilia. The term "homomasculinity" grew out of the gay-identity movement and the leather subculture of 1970's San Francisco. and is detailed in Fritscher's gay linguistics essay "Homomasculinity: Framing Keywords of Queer Popular Culture" presented at the Queer Keyword Conference, University College Dublin, Ireland, April 2005.[14]
Another common term is "Stud". A stud is a dominant lesbian, usually butch, often African American. A "stud" typically dresses more masculine, and enjoys "masculine" activities. A "stud" is stereotypically used to describe a black masculine lesbian, as most white masculine lesbians are considered "butch".
Historically, a blue star has been used as a symbol of butchness.[15] The site Butch-Femme.com uses a black triangle in a red circle to represent butch/femme sexuality.[16]
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