Increasingly disturbed by the number of posts going around from younger/“new to being femme” femmes posting about “traditional dynamics” in OFOS butch/stud-femme relationships that also talk about being housewives with provider butches. This is in fact not the traditional dynamic. In the era you are seeking to mimic, butches and studs regularly encountered significant employment discrimination (and frankly a lot of them still do in certain fields!) They were regularly out of work, so their femmes used their relative “straight passing” privilege in that era to hold down whatever working class (both office jobs and typically blue/pink collar jobs) they could find to keep things afloat. This is why it’s important to remember that our roots are in working class culture and solidarity, and why these identities are so much more than aesthetics and who we’re partnering with. They’re community based roles. We are in community to support each other.
Butch chivalry is not defined by ability to provide. OFOS femme behaviors are not based in the idea that we are meek house wives. OFOS is a dance in how we treat each other in our relationship, and it is not based on relative job/not job status.
There are butches and studs who cannot work or are underemployed who consider themselves OFOS. They are no less OFOS because they cannot “provide.”
Femmes who earn more are no less OFOS/traditional than those who are housewives. Femmes who CANNOT work, including meaningfully keeping a home as a homemaker, are also no less a traditional/OFOS femme.
My last thought here (as a 34 year old, disabled, OFOS femme in a 15 year+ relationship, who is not an elder but is experienced in being in an OFOS butch femme relationship) is that there is nothing more dangerous as a young person in these spaces than being completely dependent on one person. You need to be able to leave and take care of yourself if your partner turns out to be toxic or abusive. You need to have your own money if something happens to your partner or they leave you. Being able bodied is not inherently a permanent status for you or your partner, and you need to know how to provide for yourself (via accessible employment or access to support services) in order to ensure your own safety and future. If your “traditional” relationship actually looks like a high control situation, then that’s not OFOS, it’s financial abuse. Please take care of yourself.
*This post is about a dating/relationship subculture from lesbian/sapphic relationship contexts and should not be taken out of that specific context, especially since folks outside the community have historically talked about this dynamic imitating heterosexuality when it very much does not for pretty specific reasons. Also this user supports transfem lesbians who identify with this subculture, and this is not a terf safe post.
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