What do you mean about Kiki? Iâve always just heard it to talk about parties
different kiki! for some reason queer people just love this word.
"kiki" was a term used in mid 20th century US queer communities to refer to a queer woman who wasn't a butch or a femme. it was meant as a derogatory term. wiktionary has a list of cited quotes featuring the term:
"For example, Faderman views butches, femmes, and kikis as roles imitative of heterosexual models and not part of primary, unique lesbian sociosexual identities. [âŚ] In the 1950s and 1960s, this sexual identity is complicated by the flourishing of butch and femme roles, as well as [âŚ] . For their part, butches and femmes found these women âkikiâ â neither butch nor femme, women who didn't know what they really wanted, women who were giving in to society's expectations regarding dress or behavior. [âŚ]"
Wiktionary has a quote from Odd Girls and Twilight Lovers: A History of Lesbian Life in Twentieth-Century America but its kind of weirdly cut, so here's a longer version:
When a young woman entered the subculture in the 1950s she was immediately intitiated into the meaning and importance of the roles, since understanding them was the sine qua non of being a lesbian within that group. While some women saw themselves as falling naturally into one role or the other, even those who did not were urged to chose a role by other lesbians, or sometimes their own observations forced them to conclude that a choice was necessary. Being neither butch nor femme was not an option if one wanted to be part of the young or working-class lesbian subculture. Those who refused to choose learned quickly that they were unwelcome. In some areas the issue was very emotional. Shirley, who lived in Buffalo, New York, in the years after World War II, remembers being in a working-class bar and admitting to a group of lesbians there that she thought of herself as neither butch nor femme: âThey argued with me for a long time and when they couldnât convince me I had to be one or the other, they threatened to take me outside and beat me up.â Although the issue seldom led to violence, butches and femmes were often adamant about rejecting what they called the âconfusedâ behavior of âkikiâ women, those who would not choose a role.
One New England woman remembers: "We used to have parties and play games like charades. The butches would be on one side and the femmes would be on the other. There was one couple whoâd have to flip a coin to decide who was going to be on what side, and we used to think they were the craziest people."
Another New England woman recalls that âkikiâ also referred to two butches or two femmes who were lovers. They often had to âsneak it,â she says, because of the hostility of those who were committed to roles. Membership in her group demanded that one select a partner who was heterogenderal, that is, who took the opposite role, at least in appearance: âIf I wasnât going to choose that, I couldnât be in a gay bar. I couldnât be with gay people.â In New York kiki lesbians were also called âbluffsââthe word being not only a combination of âbutchâ and âfluffâ (another term for femme) but also an indication of how such women were regarded in that community. Even in Greenwich Village, which in the 1920s had been a melting pot of all manner of straight and gay people, the pressure to make a selection and to stick to it had become very stringent. One denizen of the Village says that already by the 1940s one was expected to be either butch or femme. âThose who did not conform were contemptuously referred to as people who didnât know their minds.â
Such strict role divisions continued throughout the 1960s in much of the bar subculture, even during the era of âunisexâ among heterosexuals; they are testimony to the essentially conservative nature of a minority group as it attempts to create legitimacy for itself by fabricating traditions and rules. One woman, who is 5â 10â and of stocky build, remembers going to a lesbian bar in Springfield, Massachusetts, in 1967, that had two restrooms. âI stood in line for a couple of minutes and then the girl in front of me said, âYou have to get out of here. This is the femme line.â She pointed to the signs on the rest room doors. One was marked âbutchâ and the other was marked âfemme.ââ
I just wish we would be more honest about the history of butch/femme. As I said in that post, I think the radfem hatred for the terms wasn't great, but people talk about these terms as if they are holy labels descended from heaven which could never possibly be anything but queerly liberatory, & I feel like a lot of people enjoy larping as 50s butches and femmes without ever reflecting on the actual culture these terms came from and the real problems that were present, and still are today.
I say this as a person for whom butch identity was a vital part of my self-understanding and self-acceptance growing up and today. But I know damn well I would've been kiki as fuck in the 50s, in multiple ways. I know plenty of the butch and femme ancestors people idolize would've seen me and many others as freaks for not doing gender and sexuality "right," and there are clearly still plenty of issues in the modern queer community with exclusionism and exorsexism (and the behavior quoted above is, fundamentally, exorsexist). Maybe this is just a chip on my shoulder personally but I've been for years frustrated with the modern queer community's relationship with butch and femme as identities & them being treated as like, too pure to ever question and in constant need of policing to avoid being tainted.
