Butch 101:
What is "butch"?
Butchness is masculinity. Butchness is not the same as manhood nor as manliness but it can exist in relation to those.
“Butch” is a culturally diverse label used by many people in the conceptualization of their personal identity, both in the vein of gender and sexuality. Though it has historically been intrinsically linked with label of “lesbian” to a point where even now the two often appear simply as a compound as the identity umbrellas that make up the queer movement have developed over time in the modern age “butch” has grown to be a label for many things at once none of which are wrong or precluding of its other meanings.
“Butch” is a gender identity for some. It can fall under the “trans” umbrella, the “nonbinary” umbrella, the “transmasculinity” umbrella or the “transfemininity” umbrella. Butchness was very originally historically not discernible from transmasculinity and trans manhood as well as transfeminity and trans womanhood. When those labels first came to be a societally transgressively masculinely presenting person was simply that, since a crystallization of terminology had not yet happened. In the modern context butchness is claimed by many under many deeply personal modalities and although it is often distinguished from manhood many butches have identified and do identify as varying levels of closeness or relationship to manhood itself.
Some butches are women, some identify themselves simply and exclusively as “butch”, some are lesbians and dykes, some are transmasculine, some are transfeminine and some nonbinary.
Due to the long history and progressive diversification of the label no singular definition could exist but that doesn’t make the label any more valuable.
“Butch” came about as part of the Butchfemme dynamic in which one person would traditionally perform a masculine role while another performed a feminine role.
Butchfemme has been accused of perpetuating heteropatriarchical values by some reactionary self-described feminists which I would argue is completely false considering that Butchness is inherently counter the reigning values of the hegemony of our current society while being Femme is equally subversive in its own right.
Butches and Femmes have long been a part of the queer community and queer liberation movement which they helped build.
Butch identity is a rejection of the norms perpetuated by the hegemony of our current society in that it inherently constitutes a kind of masculinity outside of the traditional.
