"Although I know my identity to be femme, I am not saying that all lesbians are either butches or femmes, nor am I saying that they should be. Many lesbians seem to be perfectly comfortable being androgynous, being femmes with femmes or butches with butches, or just being "themselves." I am not trying to fit all of the lesbian nation into my paradigm; what I am trying to do is broaden the lesbian paradigm so that women like me not only fit but are celebrated in our own right, and not derided for not being real lesbians.
I am also aware that some lesbians change their identities depending on their lovers or the time of their lives. These roles are not static, nor should they be. I know a handful of butches who have gone femme and a few femmes who have gone butch, and I say mazel tov. I also know quite a few butches who, in the privacy of their own homes, like frilly teddies and makeup (butches in drag, or transvestite femmes?). And many, many femmes who are carpenters and softball players and who like butches on their backs in bed.
I also need to say that it is not only butches who attract me. All kinds of women attract me, and for that matter, femme women who have a particular attraction for me, because they validate me by being role models who teach me that femininity is not weakness.
We have limited our options by desexualizing our community. The rhetoric says that we develop our politics from our personal experiences, except, of course, when our personal experience is too sexy. In our effort to examine the sexual exploitation of women, we have denied our lesbian heritage, as well as our current options.
Discerning what is femme and what is butch is very difficult, since most of us who use these terms use them to define who we feel we are, and do not mold our behavior to fit existing stereotypic roles. I call myself femme because it describes who I feel I am, once I figured out it wasn't a bad word. It does not mean that I love to cook, or that I never wear pants, or that I can't paint a house or seduce a woman. It does mean that I love in the feel of my femininity, that I experience my essential self, sexually and socially, ad female.
I love to dress up pretty for my lover. I love the feel of lace on my body against the feel of strong woman hands. I love to curl up in my lover's arms. I love our oppositeness- her starched white shirts against my silky ones, her sneakers and loafers in the closet next to my girly shoes, her short, neatly trimmed nails against my longer polished nails. I love the power of my femmeness, the traditional feminine power to seduce and over-power her with a gentle touch."
"Femme-Dyke", Arlene Istar, The Persistent Desire, (Edited by Joan Nestle) (1992)