So recently I have seen many Very Bad Takes on the butch and femme identities and what they mean, so I’m gonna take a moment real quick to clear up some things that butches and femmes are and are not.
Butch and femme are not aesthetics. They have little to do with the length of your hair, the makeup you may wear, whether you prefer skirts or pants, the amount of flannels in your closet, or anything of the like.
Butches and femmes are not rich. Butch and femme identities originate in working class bar culture, and not being able to afford expensive suits or name brand eyeshadow palettes does not make anyone any less butch or femme.
Butch and femme are not heteronormative. Butches are not, and can never be, men, and femmes are nothing like your typical straight woman, and a butch/femme couple is one of the furthest things from a heterosexual couple that you can find. Lesbianism cannot be normative in any way.
Butch and femme are not for men, in any capacity. Yes, that includes women that have the capacity to love men. Butches and femmes are exclusively women who exclusively love women, they can never be men or include men in their attraction.
Butches are not “masculine oppressors.” Again, butches are by definition women, and all women are oppressed under the patriarchy regardless of their presentation.
Femmes are also not favored under the patriarchy. We face our own trials in the world we live in, because again, every woman is oppressed under the patriarchy, as the entire system is rigged to be against us. The only way that the patriarchy allows women to exist is in complete subservience to men, and that is no way to exist at all.
But more important that what we are not, here is what we are:
Butches and femmes are a beautiful and diverse set of women, from the most gender-rejecting butch to the most subversive femme. We have a rich history stretching back almost a century filled with women of color, trans women, religious and ethnic minorities, and are all united by our butchness/femmeness and love for each other.
Butch and femme are lesbian specific gender identities, with each helping us butches and femmes understand ourselves in this world that tells us that we need to make ourselves available for men in order to truly be women.
Butches are the rejection of the feminine gender role, which often leads to a presentation that is read as masculine. This does not mean that butches are “manly” in any way (although some may choose to describe themselves that way) but rather that we live in a binary gender system where the rejection of one gender is often read as the acceptance of the other. But make no mistake, a butches rejection of femininity does not make them a man. Along with that, one of the most integral parts of the traditional feminine gender role is sexual availability to men, which is why butches cannot be involved in relationships with men. In order to fully reject femininity, as butches by definition do, they must live only for themselves and their fellow women.
Femmes are the subversion the feminine gender role, taking the trappings traditionally used to please men and turning them around to benefit only themselves and other women. Although femmes are feminine, due to this subversion we are still very often read by society as lesbians and are treated as such. Femmes are everything straight men want a woman to be but backwards, twisted, and turned inside out in order to make ourselves completely inaccessible to them.
Butch and femme are an extremely important framework that many lesbians use to understand themselves, their gender, their love, their sexuality, and their general relationship to the world.
Most importantly, butch and femme are home. In a world where most of society would quite frankly prefer if we didn’t exist the butch/femme community is a place where we can feel loved and accepted for who we are and how we love.
For me and the countless other lesbians who identify as butch or femme, these identities can be life saving. Learning to view my body through the eyes of other women rather than men, and learning to let those women love and appreciate me for who I am was and is an experience I will forever be grateful for, and I am blessed to be able to be part of this fantastic community of women who share similar experiences of gender and love.
Conversely, those of you who are trying to dilute and change the meanings of butch and femme are destructive. Allowing non-lesbians to identify as butch makes way for kicking butches out of women’s spaces, taking away essential resources from an extremely marginalized group of people. Allowing non-lesbians to identify as femme erases the specific struggles, dysphoria, and love that femmes share, and contributes to lesbian erasure in society as a whole. Allowing non-lesbians into the definitions of butch and femme deteriorates their meaning and community, making it harder for butch and femme lesbians to find joy in their love and their bodies. Anyone but lesbians who claim butch or femme as identifiers are committing cultural appropriation, and destroying one of the earliest ways that lesbians were able to begin to recognize and form relationships with each other publicly en masse.
Anyways that’s all I have for now. Please, learn more about the history of butch/femme communities before you go around using these terms meaninglessly or making them the subject of your discourse. It’s not a good look, and all you’re doing is hurting already marginalized individuals.
