i’m a (non-wlw) trans butch, genderqueer, and intersex. i’m ace, bi, polyam, and quoipunk and i’m in a polyam relationship with a trans femme woman and a nonbinary man. this blog is about butches, femmes, aspecs, polyams, and queers of all stripes.
i use more than one name, a few of which you can see on my pronouny. generally, will is my default name, but if you use any of the others that’s great too.
i also use more than one pronoun set, which you can also see on my pronouny. my default pronouns are they/them, and my auxiliary pronouns are he/him.
Hey I just wanted to say as s butch lesbian I support you so much and this is probably my favorite blog about butch experiences even if other experiences differ
As of recently I’ve been seeing a lot of posts trying to define asexuality to a specific definition. Which I find counterproductive and reactionary. The main reasons that ace exclusionists exist is because asexuality opens the door to queerness for a great deal of people. (This is likewise, why they often reject the term queer). Asexuality is a vast spectrum and that’s a good thing. It may now be controversial in the asexual community to state this, but anyone can be asexual for any reason. An innate non attraction to people, is not the only definition of the asexual identity.
You can be asexual because you have never felt sexual attraction.
You can be asexual because you never want to have sex.
You can be asexual for trauma related reasons.
You can be asexual because you find the identity best suits the way you experience sex or attraction.
You can be asexual because you are aromantic, even if you still experience attraction to others - because yes, aromanticism falls under the asexual spectrum.
You can be asexual because you are celibate, whether that’s because of personal or yes, even religious reasons.
You can be asexual because you lack a sex drive or because you have lost your sex drive.
Asexuality is not a monolith or a single experience and people have the right to self identify for any reason they feel the need or want to.
Before we begin, a key detail is
that ‘lesbian’ originally was a synonym for ‘tribade’, meaning any woman who
was intimate with another woman. Lesbianism was something someone did. You
could have been ‘a lesbian’ and be romantically involved with a boy. Think of
‘lesbian’ and ‘lesbianism’ in these early times as being a synonym for ‘WLW’
(women loving women); a blanket term. It wasn’t until 1892 that neurologists
used bisexual. And even then, it wasn’t until the 1960s (and no sooner) that the usage of ‘bi’ became common in a
non-academic context. It wasn’t until 1988 that bisexual women and lesbians
were ‘officially’ separated (though the movement to separate them began
beforehand), and it was also this time that ‘lesbian’ began to mean ‘a woman
exclusively attracted to women.’
There are multiple incidents and people credited with the coining of ‘butch’ and ‘femme’. I will go through all of the possible origins, before getting to what is, fairly obviously and easily, the actual origin of the terms.
The coining of the term ‘femme’ is often
accredited to historical lesbian, Anne Lister. However, what is often left out
of this statement is that the original use of ‘femme’ in the context of describing
her partner, Marianna Lawton, who was also involved with a man. It wasn’t even
Anne Lister saying it; rather, it was a woman friend who said to Anne about
Marianna, ‘Plus femme que moi,’ which translates to, ‘She is more womanly than
me.’ If one is saying that ‘femme’ was coined by Anne Lister, they are also
saying that ‘femme’ was originally directed at and used to describe a woman who
had some sort of romantic relationship with a man.
Butch is said to be a term coined by gay
men to mean ‘masculine’ in a type of slang called Polari, otherwise known as
Palare. Whilest the exact timeframe of this phrase becoming popularized is
unclear, it was popular before the radical feminist movement had separated
lesbians and bisexual women, meaning that, even if it did mean ‘masculine
lesbian’, it would refer to all WLW, as that is what ‘lesbian’ meant at the
time. Butch came into common use with lesbians in the 1940s; again, before the
separationist movement came to split up the WLW community into ‘lesbians’ and
‘bisexuals’. There were plenty of butch non-monosexuals (which was the term
back then for what we now know as bisexuality).
However, the first usage of ‘butch’ and ‘femme’ is actually ball culture. Ball culture was widely dominated by LGBT+ youth of color. The terms including ‘butch’ and ‘femme’ included:
Butch queen: cis MLM
Femme queen: trans and feminine woman
Butches: masculine-presenting women
Butch queen schoolboy realness: A cis MLM. The ‘realness’ refers to being able to ‘pass’ as a heterosexual male.
Femme queen realness: A trans woman. The ‘realness’ refers to being able to ‘pass’ as a cis woman.
Femme queen face: a category trans woman, highlighting their face.
Butch face: a category for masculine cis women, highlighting their face
Butch queen face: a category for cis men, highlighting their face
Vogue femme: a vogue category for cis MLM and trans men
Femme queen performance: a vogue category for trans women
As you can see, ‘butch’ and ‘femme’ applied to a wide variety of LGBT+ people! It’s easy to dismiss ball culture in the modern era, as it appears to have mostly been taken over by cishets at this point, but when it began, ball culture was for LGBT+ folks; a safe haven for trans, nonbinary and GNC people of color.
So, the terms ‘butch’ and ‘femme’ started off as slang and/or categories in a culture where the L, the G, the B, the T and the plus to all preform. Not even mildly close to lesbian-exclusive in that regard. But I’m sure, when you think about femme and butch history, you think of bar culture.
‘Butch’ and ‘femme’ labels closer to how we know them today started in lesbian-only gay bars, around the 1940s. However, ‘lesbian’, at this
point in time, was still just a term meaning ‘WLW’, which means that lesbian
bars were frequented by women exclusively attracted to women and women
attracted to multiple genders. This means that not only were bi women there
during yet another situation often accredited to coining these terms but, since
these terms would have been born from bars where bi women would have been, that
would have literally meant that bi women also helped to coin these terms, as
well.
It wasn’t until the 1960s (and no
sooner) that the word ‘lesbian’ began known as being exclusively attracted to
women, and not to men whatsoever. The separationist movement between lesbians and bisexuals can be largely
attributed to TERF Shelia Jeffery’s manifesto. It says, rather bluntly, ‘Our
definition of a political lesbian is a woman-identified woman who does not
(want to be intimate with) men,’ and describes bisexual women as ‘collaborating
with the enemy’. Women who took this stance on being attracted to only women as
a political statement are often referred to as ‘political lesbians’. That is to say, of course, not all lesbians who defined lesbianism this way were radical feminists or political lesbians. However, for a, if not large, than extremely vocal, group, that is what lesbianism was to them; a political statement. By the
80’s, there was a firm split between bi women and lesbians, who proceeded to ignore
the fact that the ‘traitorous’ bi women had ever been there at all. They
successfully erased bi women’s history. After all, all of their history and
culture had ‘LESBIAN’ written in big, bold, capital letters! This is why now,
people can easily think that ‘femme’ and ‘butch’ are lesbian-exclusive; because
radical feminists were purposefully trying to erase bisexual women’s part in
their history.
And, again, on usage of ‘femme’ outside of women exclusively being attracted to women; James McDoland’s Dictionary of Obscenity, Taboo and Euphemism, published in 1988, defines ‘fem’ like this:
“Fem (col.) A passive homosexual.
The
term may be applied to both men and women, but more usually to men. It
Australia it is generally applied only to men.
It is based upon the French word
for women, femme, and indeed, in English, this
spelling is sometimes used for passive lesbians, in preference to fem.”
Continuing with usage of fem(me) to describe men in books, is this quote from Leslie Feinberg’s ‘Stone Butch Blues’ (published in 1993):
“Jacqueline patted my thigh and flashed me a sweet smile. The other femmes - male and female - looked at me differently. As the world beat the stuffing out of us, they tried in every way to protect and nurture our tenderness.”
And, from the same book: “I ran my fingertips over the dark wood near my thigh. “I love them so much, too. But when gets it for me is high femme. It’s funny - it doesn’t matter whether it’s women or men - it’s always high femme that pulls me by the waist and makes me sweat.”
It is the obvious statement that men can use ‘femme’ that we are mainly interested in here. However, this means that the writer of ‘Stone Butch Blues’, who is, as the name implies, a butch, is attracted to both men and women, as stated in the second quote.
Speaking of bisexual butches in the 90s, there is this newspaper:
(ID: A picture of a butch woman. The caption of the photo reads: Name that Butch. The first one to correctly identify this local Boston bi in her butch attire and email nellythrustmor@aol.com will win a copy of ‘Hot & Bothered 4: Short Short Fiction on Lesbian Desire.’)
All of this is why the claim ‘butch and
femme arose from the LESBIAN community for LESBIANS exclusively about the
LESBIAN experience’ is misleading; lesbian communities were shared with
bisexuals from the very beginning. ‘Lesbian’ meant all WLW. So, that means that
butch and femme arose from the WLW community for WLW exclusively about the WLW
experience. Bi women who are attracted
to women and lesbians share the exact same history; the same history which
created these terms. And it didn’t even just belong to WLW, historically! It was originally used in ball culture before anything else, which included the entire LGBT+ community.
The Evolution of Femme: As the user states, “In this project I hope to explore the evolution of femme identity and the changes it has gone through… I argue that femme is a term that has history in many parts of the LGBTQ community.“ A thoroughly interesting read, which dives into the different contexts of the femme identity.
A Brief His and Herstory of Butch And Femme: An article written by a nonbinary lesbian, talking about the ‘lesbian exclusive’ myth, calling out biphobia, and the irony of the “white butch and femme” ideal of terms that were originally made by QTPOC.
Why Butch/Femme Belong To Bisexuals As Well: An article written by a bisexual woman, which links to a multitude of sources, including books, essays and her other articles on bi matters.
And now, a FAQ, to debunk
misinformation and common biphobic sentiments!
Q: I heard that bi women called
themselves a part of the LGBT community when they were in a relationship with a
woman, but called themselves straight when with a man.
A: This is misinformation. As I
said before, ‘lesbian’ was not an identity; it was something you did. If you
ever were in a relationship with or had attraction to a woman, you were a
lesbian. They didn’t consider themselves a lesbian at some point, or straight
at another; much more common was the phrase ‘non-monosexual lesbian’, if they
even bothered to make a distinction at all. Again, I feel like I must compare
how ‘lesbian’ was used to the term ‘WLW’ nowadays; even bi women nowadays who
are in relationships with men are WLW. That’s how the term ‘lesbian’ worked.
Q: Uhhh, ‘doe’ and ‘stag’ were
LITERALLY made for this reason. Use your OWN terms.
A: Yes, you’re right. ‘Doe’ and
‘stag’ WERE made out of pressure put on bi women to not ‘steal lesbian
culture’. But do you realize how insanely dehumanizing it is to say, ‘You’re
not allowed to identify as these terms with your history behind them, go
identify as an animal instead’? Many WOC are uncomfortable with these terms,
because they are animal terms. Plus, we never should have had to make those
terms. ‘Femme’ and ‘butch’ belong to us, too. And we shouldn’t have to make up
new terms with no history behind them just so people won’t bully us for using
our terms. Bi women can identify as a stag or doe IF THEY WANT. It is not your
place to tell them how to identify.
On this subject, the creators of the
term ‘doe’ had this to say: “Why is there a perceived divide between ‘bi’ and
‘lesbian’ history? We share history. We run in the same circles. Usually
kissing!… It (doe
and tomcat discourse) exists within a framework that already posits bi women
and lesbians as exclusive circles that sometimes overlapped, when really we
have always been one circle, and radical feminism warped us… I created it (doe) as an alternative to
femme because lesbians voiced discomfort with bi women using their
self-identifiers. But what is yours and what is ours? Why are we inventing new
language when we should be consolidating, reuniting, and celebrating one
another?” (Source)
While I do not agree with everything that is said in that post, it is important
to note that even one of the creators of these terms seems to be upset about
having to create whole new terms for the bisexual community when bi women and
lesbians share so much history.
Also, getting back to racism, ‘doe’ and ‘stag’ are very uncomfortably close to the term ‘buck’. ‘Black buck’ was a racist term used to describe black men who refused to follow the law of white people and is painted as rude and violent. This is yet another reason why bisexual people of color do not want to touch these terms with a 5-foot pole. (Source)
Q: Why can’t lesbians have
something to themselves for once?!
A: Please, don’t pull the
oppression competition card on me. All LGBT+ people are oppressed. It shouldn’t
be a race of who is ‘the MOST oppressed’. Lesbians have a lot to themselves, and so do bi women. This not a matter of ‘letting a group have something for themselves’, or ‘we’re the most oppressed, you take everything from us’.
This is a matter of taking back something that was purposefully and maliciously
taken away from us by biphobic radical feminists.
Q: History doesn’t matter, it’s
the NEW definition that matters, and the NEW definition means it’s a LESBIAN
identity.
A: When bi women say that they
want to identify as femme or butch, people pull out the ‘it’s always been a
lesbian term, historically’ card. When we show said people the historical
facts, people pull the, ‘it’s the NEW definition that matters’ card. Please
choose one. Besides, if the definition changed one (from all WLW to lesbians),
then it can change again, if you allow it. Plus, it’s really crappy to say, ‘I
know you used to use these terms too, and they’re a part of your history, but,
you can’t use them because we decided we don’t want you to. These are ours
now.’
Q: But you are inherently
available to men! You can’t be a butch or femme if you can be in a straight
relationship!
A: Please, think about your
wording. ‘Inherently available to men’ is a term many bi women detest. It makes
us sound like an item for men to consume whenever they wish. Bi women cannot,
by definition, be in a ‘straight relationship’, because, by her being in it,
one of the parties is not cishet. Besides, some bi women aren’t even attracted
to men (I’ve met women who are attracted to nonbinary people and women and call
themselves bi). Even if a bi woman is currently in or looking for a
relationship with a man, bi women (who didn’t have that term at the time) who
were “available to men” identified as a femme or butch, when the terms were
created and popularized.
Q: But if a man is with a woman
who says she’s a butch or femme, that’ll perpetuate the stereotype that
lesbians can be with men!
A: If a lesbian is telling a man they
wouldn’t want to be with him, they wouldn’t just say, “I am a femme/butch.” They
would say, “I am a femme/butch lesbian.” And if a man still tries to be with them
after learning they are a lesbian, he is lesbophobic. That is not bi women’s
faults. Besides, ‘femme’ and ‘butch’ are terms meant to define ourselves in our own community, not to straight men.
Q: You can’t understand what
butch and femme REALLY mean unless you’re a lesbian.
A: So, we are ‘less WLW’ than you
because we may or may not be attracted to men, so we cannot understand, is what
you are saying? Or, more so that we aren’t able to understand it, but if we
identified as lesbians, we would magically gain the ability to understand,
because we’re lesbians? Definitions of words aren’t that hard to understand. We
don’t use them because they’re ‘cool’. Bi women are not too stupid to
understand, and it’s patronizing and INCREDIBLY rude to treat us like we’re too
dumb to understand terms we helped to create.
Q: You kept talking about bi
women in that essay. What about other LGBT+ people?
A: I talked specifically about bi
women, because that is what I am and what this blog is about. However, I
believe all LGBT+ people can use butch and femme. It was coined in ball culture, after all, which embraced all LGBT+ folks and their gender expression!
Q: Well, if it’s for all LGBT+ people and not just lesbians or WLW, what does it mean?
I believe that butch and femme are very contextual identities. There’s a lesbian context, a general WLW context, a trans context, a MLM context, and so on and so forth. However, generally speaking, I would say that a good definition for butch would be ‘a LGBT+ person whose masculinity is tied to them being LGBT+, and preforms masculinity for one’s self, and not because of societal pressure or the lackthereof.’ A good definition for femme would be similar, but replacing masculinity for femininity.
Q: This is implying that bisexuals aren’t different from
lesbians and don’t deserve their own spaces.
Using terms that we were there for the coining of and the culture of is implying that how, exactly? By using ‘femme’ and ‘butch’, we aren’t saying we should all be one label again. We’re just saying, “This is our history, too, and although we are separate now, that doesn’t change that we were there for the coining of these terms and thus get to use them.” I’m not saying that we aren’t different. I’m saying that back then, there was no differentiation, and that it’s our history, too. Blocking bi women off from our history under the guise of “actually you’re being biphobic” (usually to somebody not bisexual to a bisexual) is just choosing to care about biphobia when it’s convenient to use against bisexuals who want access to our history, and is virtue-signaling at its finest.
Q: When the bisexual identity was created, ‘butch’ and ‘femme’ remained as lesbian terms. If bisexuals used them, why didn’t it change?
Because when the term ‘bisexual’ was getting popular, the extremely popular radical feminist movement was trying to push them out of lesbian spaces purposefully, which previously belonged to them. It didn’t change because radical feminists (who held a LOT of power at that time) didn’t want it to, and because they were purposefully erasing bisexuals’ part in lesbian history, because we were 'traitors’. They hated us and wanted us out of their history. They made that painfully clear.
Q: I think that (x female historical figure or all female historical figures who was romantically with a man and used 'butch’ or 'femme’) was experiencing comphet or was forced to be with a man due to homophobia.
They might have been. But they might have also been bisexual. I don’t know for sure, and neither do you, and to be honest, I find debating dead peoples’ sexualities to be disrespectful (which is why I say 'was with a man’ rather than 'bisexual’ when talking about historical figures). Instead, I’ll just say: every single one? You really think that not a single one was bisexual? That’s… HIGHLY unlikely and bordering on implausible, which is not what you want a core part of your argument to be. (And I’m just going to mention real quick that ‘most/all people attracted to both men and women are with men due to comphet, they’re actually lesbians’ is a biphobic talking point, notably used by both the original radical feminist movement and the current one, and this argument is teetering DANGEROUSLY close to that.)
Q: Just say you hate lesbians and
go, lesbophobe!
A: Okay, so we’re going to try
and claim that one is bigoted for literally just knowing their history now?
Nowhere here did I say lesbians COULDN’T use these terms, either, which is,
ironically, better than what femme/butch gatekeepers are trying to do. So, by
this logic, maybe I should just reply to every femme/butch gatekeeper with
‘just say you hate bi women and go’!
Q: You’re not a femme or butch if
you’re not a lesbian, no matter how much you say you are.
A: Ah, I see, we’re deciding
other’s identities for them now? Alright. What if someone decided to say that
all gay people are actually bi? By this logic, if someone decided to say, ‘Gay
people are actually bi, no matter how much they say they are gay, so nobody can
identify as gay or a lesbian anymore,’ that must make them correct!
No. It doesn’t make them correct.
Just because you decide to say ‘you can’t be this thing no matter how much you
say you are’ doesn’t mean that anybody has to listen to you, or change their
label. And, before someone attempts to take this out of context; no, I don’t
believe in my example statement. I was trying to make a comparison of a
biphobic statement to what would be a lesbophobic/homophobic statement.
Q: I didn’t read this whole thing
because it’s too long and because I think you’re wrong, and I’m not going to
try and read obviously incorrect information.
A: I’ve gotten this response
multiple times. I can’t force you to read this, but I must say that refusing to
read historical facts because you can’t stand to be provided with evidence that
you may be incorrect is extremely telling to your state of mind involving this
topic. That’s basically just covering your ears, closing your eyes, and
screaming, “LALALALA! I’M RIGHT! I CAN’T HEAR YOUUU, LALALA!”
Q: But I-
A: I’m sorry, but ‘but’ nothing.
Even if I hadn’t supplied you with a humongous essay about the history of
bisexual women and how they helped to create the culture around the words
you’re trying to keep from us, you still wouldn’t try to control how bisexual
women experience femininity or the lack thereof. Our history was purposefully
erased by radical feminists who considered us traitors. We’re taking our
history AND our terms back, and there is nothing that anyone can do to stop us.
One reason I identify as a lesbian is because I still feel a connection to womanhood. I still feel a connection to women, I feel the most comfortable around women, and feel the most comfortable in women’s spaces. Also because the term makes it clear that I’m not into men and am exclusively into women.
I also identify as nonbinary for a couple reasons. One, I used to identify as genderqueer (and actually still really like the term and see it as an accurate descriptor) but I like the nonbinary flag better. Also it’s to callout the binary system. I dont fit binary womanhood but I’m also definitely not a binary man. I’m a little bit of both but also neither at the same time. Also did I mention we have a super rad flag?
I also use the term transmasc to connect myself with people who transitioning in ways similar to me. But words like transmasc and transfem arent perfect because they treat male and female as opposites. And it also implies that transmascs and transfems transitions are completely different from each other and that we cant find wisdom in each other.
Anyways just a little ramble about why I’ve chosen the words I have chosen to describe myself.
“Butch is a trickster gender—and so, in a similar way, is femme. Lesbian gender expressions do not emulate heteropatriarchy, they subvert it. Femme removes femininity from the discursive shadow of masculinity and thereby strips from it any connotation of subordination or inferiority. Butch takes markers of “masculinity” and divests them of their association with maleness or manhood. Butchness works against the gender binary—the masculine/feminine paradigm—and reclaims for women the full breadth of possibilities when it comes to gender expression.”
biggest L on this website is seeing 20 year old lesbians talking down to bi wlw for using the terms butch/femme. if you do your research into lgbtq+ history you’ll find that, in their first popularization:
the terms originated among working class people, especially in communities of color
the terms were used by wlw *and mlm* to describe different roles played in the community. some gay men used ‘butch.’ some drag queens used ‘femme.’
the terms were used by cis and trans people, including nonbinary people
the terms were popularized in an era of lgbtq+ history before the label ‘bisexual’ saw regular use. historically this is an era during which bi wlw were lumped in with ‘lesbian’ and bi mlm lumped in with ‘gay.’ this contributes to bi erasure to this day.
***bi wlw using butch/femme were among many who used the term, especially in the ‘lesbian only’ era that biphobes cite to shut people down. bisexual people did not ‘spring into existence’ in 2005, use your fucking head.***
basically: bi people aren’t your fucking enemy and if you’re one of the 20 year olds i mentioned; i can tell you that there are bi wlw, mlm, and nonbinary people, who’ve been using the labels longer than you’ve been alive.
bi exclusion is fucking horrible and pushing bi members of our community to the margins of spaces that *bi people were a part of creating* has got to stop. if you’d rather be shitty to bi people than do a little research, please unfollow me until you figure out that the community is a little bit bigger than it looks on a tv screen.
just thinking about how fucked up it is that transition is almost always exclusively framed in terms of negative health consequences which usually in context arent actually that negative. for example, before starting hrt trans men are frequently warned that testosterone will significantly increase their risk of blood clots–whats often left out is the context that their risk profile is simply increasing to match cis men’s risk profile; and additionally, i have never heard of trans women being told (although maybe it does happen) that their risk will decrease from hrt. in the same vein, i frequently see trans women being warned about the increased risk of breast cancer from hrt (which in context is…duh because you are increasing the amount of breast tissue) but rarely see any mention of trans men’s risk decreasing after a mastectomy, even though its literally the same surgery (with a few alterations) that breast cancer patients undergo to reduce their risk. i realize that a lot of these things havent been researched well and of course negative side effects are going to be more important to disclose to patients, but regardless i still think the framing has a lot more to do with transphobia/transmisogyny than genuine oversight
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