Are butches butches because they love femmes or because there's something about our gender expression? It would seem to be just sort of a moot point, like how many angels can dance on the head of a pin; which came first, the butchness or the lesbianism? Except that there's another one of these great misunderstandings, if you simply identify that butch and femme go together like love and marriage, and horse and carriage, soup and sandwich, then it leaves out butches who are attracted to other butches. It leaves out femmes who want to be with other femmes. It leaves out bisexual butches. It leaves no area at all to define why some women are so masculine and yet are heterosexual. To me, being butch doesn't mean what you do in bed. I mean to be butch on the street, that's what being butch is to me.
—Outlaw (1994), Leslie Feinberg, butch lesbian author & trans rights activist
