Lesbian Pride

Support lesbians who wear comfortable clothes

Support lesbians who aren’t soft or feminine

Support lesbians who don’t conform to society’s standards

use the word lesbian as much as you can. don’t skirt it with gay or queer. 

if you value our culture and continuity and want people to see vibrancy and youth and history and value in our language make yourself visible like that. 

butch and femme are a distinct identity framework that developed around certain forms of expression, presentation and interactions between women who loved and had sex with each other and that remains true now. butch falls within the category of gnc womanhood, but there are things specific to butchness that are not shared by every gnc woman. likewise, femme women may be feminine, but are not gender conforming. there are gender nonconformances that femme women share, culturally indicated behaviors, markers of expression etc that femme women engage in that do not read as gender conforming - which is why I can often (not always but often) tell a femme woman from a straight woman. not to say that one can always read an identity from stereotypes, but indicators/signals are a thing.  

the “futch spectrum” post(s) that went ‘high femme, femme, futch, butch, stone butch’ or w/e, was brought up as a lesbian tumblr joke, but ended up confusing a lot of ppl about what butch and femme are. ppl who took that spectrum seriously got this perspective of it as “super girly, girly, in the middle, not girly, really masculine” which is… not at all how butch and femme work as identifiers. if you don’t identify as one or the other you don’t have to pick an awkward spot on a spectrum between them because those things aren’t a spectrum. you’re either butch, femme, or neither and being neither and not identifying with that framework is just fine and not uncommon. 

I think in order for ppl to understand more about how “butch” and “femme” came into use (especially in the gay bar scene among other related places in the 60′s), and what those identities entailed, it’s important to read literature, for example, like Stone Butch Blues. that’s only one title and there are others but that’s the first one that pops into my head. feel free to reblog with others. the way butch and femme developed in the time portrayed in that literature are not necessarily reflective of the exact way they are today, but it does give a background context, and introduces the concept that not every gay woman identifies as butch or femme and that’s been true since the start of their use.

first off butch and femme have been around since before the 50′s/60′s, that was just one of the high points of butch/femme culture being well established in gay bars. the real point though, is that those cultures did not die.  there are still femme/butch identified women whose rich and complex identities are shaped by and tied to that long history, and continue to thrive to this day. those women still have spaces and communities, and to spread the inaccurate idea that those cultures died is so disrespectful. 

radfems and other groups wanted those subcultures to die, but they didn’t. yes it’s no longer the butch/femme bar hayday (largely due to the amount of violence and vitriol they received, and the changes in the women’s movement around them) but the framework of identity is still alive in its specific context! it’s changed and developed, yes, but butches and femmes are still here, and are still not just Girly vs Manly. the cultures remain important especially for working class women, women of color, etc. the idea that it’s a distant relic, and that “butch” + “femme” are now watered down completely to feminine and masculine and nothing more, is an insult to so many women (my butch self included). “let it go”, what, let myself go? let my butch and femme friends and loved ones go? let ourselves be forgotten and close down every last space we still have and extinguish our complex forms of expression? fuck that. 

I’m not just distinguishing femme/butch from fem/masc in order to be “Invalidating” or exclusionary or whatever, it’s because those terms literally do have other meanings that are important to people’s identities, you can’t get rid of that just because you don’t care about us. “stone butch” shouldn’t be reduced to “super masc”,  it’s a term for butches who want to have sex with other women but don’t want themselves to be touched sexually, either because of trauma or dysphoria or other reasons. that isn’t just “back then”, I know multiple stone butch women now, who aren’t just ~very masc~. “baby butch” doesn’t just mean “someone who’s a little masc”, it’s a term of endearment for younger women entering into butch culture relatively new. etcetera etcetera. just taking those terms and acting like none of that context matters at all anymore is disrespect.

of course femme and butch have changed since the gay bars of the 50′s, 60′s etc. I’m not saying time froze, or that those words should be used exactly the way they were then, the ONLY point I made here is that they shouldn’t be boiled down to JUST “feminine” and “masculine”, both because of the rich history that says otherwise AND the contemporary extensions of those subcultures that are still more complex than that. not that no one can have fun, or that no one can reblog a femme butch spectrum meme, I was just trying to stress that those posts aren’t a serious representation of femme/butch, and I have seen some serious misunderstandings about it beyond joke posts.  I really don’t think those are such ~invalidating~ awful statements. “don’t ignore LGBT women’s history, don’t ignore modern butch/femme women whose identities extend beyond just fem/masc, also don’t tell me my beloved communities died in the 60′s” makes me a mean hateful butch I guess…..