Lesbian Butch/Femme Society march in New York City's Gay Pride Parade.

Butch and femme (French term for woman) are terms often used in the lesbian and gay subcultures to describe the queering of traditional masculine and feminine gender roles. Femme is also frequently used in the transgender community, see En femme. Kamen Rider Ryuki , Masked Rider Ryuki) is a Japanese tokusatsu television series. ... Kamen Rider Femme (仮面ライダーファム) is one of the 13 Kamen Riders in the tokusatsu production Kamen Rider Ryuki. ... Butch is a gender role, which may be expressed in the context of a butch and femme relationship. ... Image File history File links Metadata Size of this preview: 800 × 385 pixelsFull resolution (2979 × 1432 pixel, file size: 505 KB, MIME type: image/jpeg) File historyClick on a date/time to view the file as it appeared at that time. ... Image File history File links Metadata Size of this preview: 800 × 385 pixelsFull resolution (2979 × 1432 pixel, file size: 505 KB, MIME type: image/jpeg) File historyClick on a date/time to view the file as it appeared at that time. ... 2004 Gay Pride Parade in São Paulo, Brazil. ... This article is about same-sex desire and sexuality among women. ... GAY can mean: Gay, a term referring to homosexual men or women The IATA code for Gaya Airport Category: ... In sociology, anthropology and cultural studies, a subculture is a set of people with a set of behaviors and beliefs, culture, which could be distinct or hidden, that differentiate them from the larger culture to which they belong. ... “Manliness” redirects here. ... In some cultures, makeup is associated with femininity. ... A bagpiper in Scottish military clan-uniform. ... A transgender woman at New York Citys gay pride parade Transgender (IPA: , from trans (Latin) and gender (English)) is a general term applied to a variety of individuals, behaviors, and groups involving tendencies that diverge from the normative gender role (woman or man) commonly, but not always, assigned at... The term en femme is used in the transgender community, usually by male crossdressers, to describe wearing feminine clothing or expressing a feminine personality. ...

Butch and Femme attributes

The terms butch and femme are often used to describe lesbians, but also occasionally gay men.

Stereotypes and definitions of butch and femme vary greatly, even within tight-knit gay and lesbian communities. "Butch" tends to denote masculinity displayed by a female beyond that of what would be considered a "tomboy". It is not uncommon for butch-looking females to meet social disapproval. A butch woman could be compared to an effeminate man in the sense that both genders are historically linked to gay communities and stereotypes, whether or not the individuals in question are homosexual. For other uses, see Tomboy (disambiguation). ... Effeminacy is character trait of a male showing femininity, unmanliness, womanliness, weakness, softness and/or a delicacy, which contradicts traditional masculine, male gender roles. ...

For western lesbians, butch-femme has had varying levels of acceptance throughout the 20th century. The practices of 'femme on femme' and 'butch on butch' sex preferences are sometimes repressed by cultural mores, notably in cultures where masculine tops who have sex with feminine bottoms or transwomen are considered straight and in the mid-twentieth century U.S. working-class lesbian butch-femme scene. Mores are strongly held norms or customs. ... In the context of human sexual behavior, especially anal sex among gay men, a top is an insertive partner, or a person who prefers the insertive role. ... In the context of human sexual behavior, especially anal sex among gay men, a bottom is a receptive partner (i. ... Transwomen or trans women are transsexual or transgendered people who were assigned male sex at birth (or, in some cases of intersexuality, later) and feel that this is not an accurate or complete description of themselves. ...

Alternate conceptualizations of femme-butch persons suggest that butch and femme are, in fact, not hetero-mimicries or attempts to take up so-called 'traditional' gender roles. In the first instance, this argument situates 'traditional' gender roles as biological, ahistorical imperatives - a claim that has been contested by writers from Sigmund Freud to Judith Butler, Jay Prosser, Anne Fausto-Sterling, and many others. These authors take up gender as both socially and historically constructed, rather than as essential, 'natural', or strictly biological. Specifically with regard to butches and femmes, lesbian historian Joan Nestle argues that femme and butch may be seen as distinct genders in and of themselves (See The Persistent Desire, 1993). Elsewhere, it has been argued that butch and femme are 'read' as imperfect copies of heterosexual gender roles due to the uncritical assumption that masculinity and femininity are inseparable from genetic male-ness or female-ness. For example, to suggest that a butch woman is attempting to annex heterosexual male power or privilege - a claim leveled by some radical feminists (see Sheila Jeffreys and others) - fails to take note of the social censure leveled at individuals who reject social and cultural imperatives that link biological sex with what Judith Butler calls 'gender performance' (see Bodies that Matter, 1993). Sigmund Freud (IPA: ), born Sigismund Schlomo Freud (May 6, 1856 – September 23, 1939), was an Austrian neurologist and psychiatrist who founded the psychoanalytic school of psychology. ... Image:J Butler. ... Anne Fausto-Sterling, Ph. ... Joan Nestle (b. ... Year 1993 (MCMXCIII) was a common year starting on Friday (link will display full 1993 Gregorian calendar). ... Radical feminism is a branch of feminism that views womens oppression (or patriarchy) as the basic system of power upon which human relationships in society are arranged. ... Sheila Jeffreys (born 1948) is a well-known and controversial radical lesbian feminist. ... Image:J Butler. ...

History

It is difficult to determine how long butch and femme roles have been practiced by lesbians as prior to the middle of the 20th century in Western culture, gay and lesbian societies were mostly underground or secret. Photographs exist of butch - femme couples (transvestites, as they would have been called then) in the decade of 1910-1920 in the United States.^[1] Butch and femme roles date back at least to the beginning of the 20th century. They were particularly prominent in the working-class lesbian bar culture of the 1940s, '50s, and '60s, where butch-femme relationships were the norm, while butch-butch and femme-femme were taboo.^[2] Those who switched roles were called "ki-ki", which was considered a pejorative term; they were often the butt of jokes.^[3] It has been suggested that this article or section be merged with pejoration. ...

In the 1940s in the U.S., most butch women had to wear conventionally feminine dress in order to hold down jobs, donning their starched shirts and ties only on weekends to go to bars or parties. The 1950s saw the rise of a new generation of butches who refused to live double lives and wore butch attire full-time, or as close to full-time as possible. This usually limited them to a few jobs, such as factory work and cab driving, that had no dress codes for women.^[4] Their increased visibility, combined with the anti-gay rhetoric of the McCarthy era, led to an increase in violent attacks on lesbians, while at the same time the increasingly strong and defiant bar culture became more willing to respond with force. Although femmes also fought back, it became primarily the role of butches to defend against attacks and hold the bars as lesbian space.^[5] While in the '40s the prevailing butch image was severe but gentle, it became increasingly tough and aggressive as violent confrontation became a fact of life.^[6] McCarthyism, named after Joseph McCarthy, was a period of intense anticommunism, also (popularly) known as the (second) Red Scare, which occurred in the United States from 1948 to about 1956 (or later), when the government of the United States was actively engaged in suppression of the Communist Party USA, its...

Starting in the 1970s, some feminist theorists pronounced "butch-femme" roles politically incorrect, because they believed that all butch/femme dynamics by necessity imitate heterosexist gender roles, leading to butch-femme relationships being driven underground.

However, "inherent to butch-femme relationships was the presumption that the butch is the physically active partner and the leader in lovemaking....Yet unlike the dynamics of many heterosexual relationships, the butch's foremost objective was to give sexual pleasure to a femme. The essence of this emotional/sexual dynamic is captured by the ideal of the "stone butch," or untouchable butch....To be untouchable meant to gain pleasure from giving pleasure. Thus, although these women did draw on models in heterosexual society, they transformed those models into an authentically lesbian interaction."^[7]

Antipathy toward female butches and male femmes could be interpreted as transphobia, although it is important to note that female butches and male femmes are not always transgendered or identified with the trans movement. In the field of astrology antipathy is the conflict in the natal horoscopes of two people who feel an aversion to each other. ... Manifestations Slavery · Racial profiling · Lynching Hate speech · Hate crime · Hate groups Genocide · Holocaust · Pogrom Ethnocide · Ethnic cleansing · Race war Religious persecution · Gay bashing Pedophobia · Ephebiphobia Movements Discriminatory Aryanism · Neo-Nazism · Supremacism Kahanism Anti-discriminatory Abolitionism · Civil rights LGBT rights Womens/Universal suffrage · Feminism Mens/Fathers rights · Masculinism Children...

Today

Many young people today (in the homosexual community) eschew butch or femme classifications, believing that they are inadequate to describe an individual, or that labels are limiting in and of themselves. Some people within the queer community have tailored the common labels to be more descriptive, such as "soft stud," "hard butch," "gym queen," or "tomboy femme." Comedian Elvira Kurt contributed the term "fellagirly" as a description for queer females who are not strictly either femme or butch, but a combination. The word queer has traditionally meant strange or unusual, but it is also currently often used in reference to lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender, intersex, and asexual communities. ... Image:Elvira kurt. ...

Lesbians and genderqueers who identify as Butch or Femme have experienced a renaissance as the Internet has brought the butch-femme community together. To be either butch or femme challenges traditional gender roles and expectations about appropriate gender presentation and desire, and expands the concept of what it means to be female. Some femme men, femme women, and butch women regard themselves thus as genderqueer for that reason, but many others do not. Moreover, some genderqueer people identify their gender primarily as butch or femme, rather than man or woman. Genderqueer or intergender is a gender identity of both, neither or some combination of man and/or woman. In relation to the gender binary (the view that there are only two genders), genderqueer people generally identify as more both/and or neither/nor, rather than either/or. ...

It is also important to note that those who identify as butch and femme today often use the words to define their presentation and gender identity rather than strictly the role they play in a relationship, and that not all butches are attracted exclusively to femmes and not all femmes are exclusively attracted to butches, although this was traditionally the norm.

Butch women in arts and popular culture

• The Well of Loneliness, one of the first English language novels to explore the butch femme theme.
• The Beebo Brinker Chronicles, a set of lesbian pulp fiction novels from 1957 - 1962 in which a butch woman is a major character, and who became an archetype of butch identity in the US.
• Sarah Dowling, a character in the 1969 novel Patience and Sarah by Isabel Miller, set in 1816 Connecticut, is brought up by her father as a boy since he had no sons.
• Jess Goldberg, a character in the novel Stone Butch Blues by Leslie Feinberg published in 1993.
• HBO-produced movie If These Walls Could Talk 2 presented a segment set in the early 1970s where a butch woman has a relationship with a feminist uneasy with the masculine-feminine power structure.
• Nan Astley/King, a character in Tipping the Velvet by Sarah Waters, published in 1998. Nan finds her affinity for dressing as a man by surprise, but she is more surprised by how natural it feels.
• Kit on The L Word has a relationship with a performance drag king named Ivan in Season 2.

The Well of Loneliness is a 1928 lesbian novel by the English author Radclyffe Hall. ... Ann Bannon (pseudonym of Ann Weldy) wrote a series of six lesbian pulp fiction books from 1957 to 1962 known as The Beebo Brinker Chronicles. ... Pulp Fiction is an Academy Award-winning 1994 film directed by Quentin Tarantino, who co-wrote the screenplay with Roger Avary. ... Year 1957 (MCMLVII) was a common year starting on Tuesday (link displays the 1957 Gregorian calendar). ... Year 1962 (MCMLXII) was a common year starting on Monday (the link is to a full 1962 calendar) of the Gregorian calendar. ... Patience and Sarah is a 1969 historical fiction lesbian novel written by Alma Routsong as Isabel Miller. ... Alma Routsong (26 November 1924 - 4 October 1996) was an American novelist best known for her lesbian works, published under the pen name Isabel Miller. ... Official language(s) English Capital Hartford Largest city Bridgeport[3] Largest metro area Hartford Metro Area[2] Area  Ranked 48th  - Total 5,543[4] sq mi (14,356 km²)  - Width 70 miles (113 km)  - Length 110 miles (177 km)  - % water 12. ... Stone Butch Blues is a novel written by transgender activist Leslie Feinberg. ... Leslie Feinberg (born 1949 in Kansas City, Missouri, USA) is a transgender activist, speaker, and author. ... Year 1993 (MCMXCIII) was a common year starting on Friday (link will display full 1993 Gregorian calendar). ... For other uses, see HBO (disambiguation). ... If These Walls Could Talk 2 is an Emmy Award-winning 2000 television movie in the United States, broadcast on HBO. It follows three lesbian stories in three different time periods. ... The 1970s decade refers to the years from 1970 to 1979, also called The Seventies. ... Tipping the Velvet is a novel written by Sarah Waters and published by Virago. ... Sarah Waters is a British novelist. ... The L Word is a television drama series on Showtime that portrays the lives, loves and learnings of a group of lesbian and bisexual women and their friends, family and lovers in Los Angeles. ... A drag king performance troupe NYC Drag King Alliance Switch NPlay photo:Jenny Norris Drag kings are mostly female-bodied or -identified performance artists who dress in masculine drag and personify male gender stereotypes as part of their performance. ...

Other terms and identities

Among the subcultures composed of butch gay men is the "bear community". Gay men who are more femme are sometimes described as "flamers". Femmes are sometimes confused with "lipstick lesbians" which generally are understood to be feminine lesbians who are attracted to and partner with other feminine lesbians. Conversely butch lesbians may be described as a "bulldyke" or simply just "dyke." The usage of "dyke" has widened in recent years to encompass gay women in general. At one point both were considered derogatory; "dyke" has become a more neutral term, but may still be taken as offensive if used in a derogatory manner or by those outside the LGBT community. The Bear community is a subculture in the gay community. ... This article does not cite any references or sources. ... Dyke is a slang term for a lesbian. ... The initialism LGBT also GLBT is in use (since the 1990s) to refer collectively to Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual, and Transgender people. ...

Banjee or banjee boy is a term from the 1980s or earlier that describes a certain type of young Latino or Black man who has sex with men and who dresses in urban fashion for reasons which may include expressing masculinity, hiding his sexual orientation or attracting male partners. The term is mostly associated with New York City and may be Nuyorican in origin. Attitude, clothing, ethnicity, masculinity, physique and youth are all elements of what has been called banjee realness. Banjee or banjee boy is a gay slang term from the 1980s or earlier that describes a certain type of young Latino or Black man who has sex with men and who dresses... For the Brazilian pop singer, see Latino (singer). ... Though most indigenous Africans possess relatively dark skin, they exhibit much variation in physical appearance. ... Men who have sex with men (MSM) is a term used to classify men who have sex with men, regardless of whether they self-identify as gay, bisexual, or heterosexual. ... Hip hop fashion is, according to KRS One, one of the nine extended elements of hip-hop culture. ... “Manliness” redirects here. ... Sexual orientation refers to the direction of an individuals sexuality, usually conceived of as classifiable according to the sex or gender of the persons whom the individual finds sexually attractive. ... New York, New York and NYC redirect here. ... Nuyorican Poets Cafe. ...

"Homomasculinity" is a term coined by gay activist editor in chief of Drummer magazine Jack Fritscher in 1977. ^[8] The term describes a subculture of gay men who prefer masculine-identified men as legitimately as some men prefer effeminate men and drag queens. Equating the three self-fashioning identity labels "gay," "homosexual," and "homomasculine," Fritscher also coined "homofemininity" for lesbians to whom he opened Drummer magazine in the late 1970s by publishing writing about the Society of Janus and writing from Samois, a group founded by gay activists Patrick Califia and Gayle Rubin. Humanist Fritscher intended "homomasculinity" as an identity concept and never as an exclusionary concept as promulgated by Jack Malebranche in his latter-day book Androphilia. The term "homomasculinity" grew out of the gay-identity movement and the leather subculture of 1970's San Francisco. and is detailed in Fritscher's gay linguistics essay "Homomasculinity: Framing Keywords of Queer Popular Culture" presented at the Queer Keyword Conference, University College Dublin, Ireland, April 2005.^[8] LGBT rights Around the world By country History · Groups · Activists Declaration of Montreal Same-sex relationships Marriage · Adoption Opposition · Discrimination Violence This box:      LGBT social movements share related goals of social acceptance of homosexuality, bisexuality, or transgenderism. ... In sociology, anthropology and cultural studies, a subculture is a set of people with a set of behaviors and beliefs, culture, which could be distinct or hidden, that differentiate them from the larger culture to which they belong. ... Society of Janus Booth at the 2004 Folsom Street Fair The Society of Janus is a San Francisco, California based BDSM education and support group, and is the second oldest BDSM organization in the US. It was founded in August 1974 by the late Cynthia Slater and Larry Olsen. ... LGBT rights Around the world By country History · Groups · Activists Declaration of Montreal Same-sex relationships Marriage · Adoption Opposition · Discrimination Violence This box:      LGBT social movements share related goals of social acceptance of homosexuality, bisexuality, or transgenderism. ... The Leather Pride flag, which has become a symbol of the BDSM and fetish subculture. ... Year 1970 ([[Rf 1970 == January 1 - The Unix epoch begins at 00:00:00 UTC January 2 - The last studio performance of The Beatles oman numerals|MCMLXX]]) was a common year starting on Thursday (link shows full calendar) of the Gregorian calendar. ... This page is a candidate for speedy deletion. ...

See also

• Slut Night Butch-Femme.com traditional celebration
• S. Bear Bergman, author of Butch Is A Noun, Suspect Thoughts Press 2006, ISBN 0-9771582-5-X
• Lipstick lesbian
• Tomboy
• Boi
• Bear Community
• Sissy
• Girly girl
• Stone Femme
• Effeminate
• Amazon feminism
• Masculinity
• Femininity
• Judith Halberstam
• Lesbian-identified
• Soft butch
• Stone butch
• En femme
• Drag king

Slut Night is a Butch-Femme social gathering to celebrate gender expression and the Butch and Femme gender roles. ... Cover for the 2006 book Butch Is A Noun S. Bear Bergman (b. ... This article does not cite any references or sources. ... For other uses, see Tomboy (disambiguation). ... This article does not cite any references or sources. ... The Bear community is a subculture in the gay community. ... For other uses, see Sissy (disambiguation). ... Kellie Martin in a caricature of a girly girl in Joe Dantes Matinee. ... Stone Femme has been used to describe several different kinds of femme (feminine) identities, usually within a broader Dyke identity or culture. ... Effeminacy is character trait of a male showing femininity, unmanliness, womanliness, weakness, softness and/or a delicacy, which contradicts traditional masculine, male gender roles. ... Amazon feminism is dedicated to the image of the female hero in fiction and in fact, as it is expressed in art and literature in the physiques and feats of female athletes, martial artists, and other powerfully built women, and in gender-related and sexual orientations. ... “Manliness” redirects here. ... In some cultures, makeup is associated with femininity. ... Judith Halberstam is Professor of English and Director of The Center for Feminist Research at University of Southern California. ... One who identifies in whole or in part as a lesbian. ... A soft butch — also known as a chapstick lesbian — is a woman who exhibits some stereotypical butch lesbian traits without fitting the masculine stereotype associated with butch lesbians. ... A Stone Butch is a woman or Genderqueer person who is strongly masculine in character and dress, who tops her partners sexually (and sometimes emotionally), and who does not wish to be touched genitally. ... The term en femme is used in the transgender community, usually by male crossdressers, to describe wearing feminine clothing or expressing a feminine personality. ... A drag king performance troupe NYC Drag King Alliance Switch NPlay photo:Jenny Norris Drag kings are mostly female-bodied or -identified performance artists who dress in masculine drag and personify male gender stereotypes as part of their performance. ...

References

glbtq. ... Year 2007 (MMVII) is the current year, a common year starting on Monday of the Gregorian calendar and the AD/CE era in the 21st century. ... is the 25th day of the year in the Gregorian calendar. ...

External links (alphabetical order)

• Butch/Femme Society
• Butch-Femme Network
• Butch-Femme Socials of the San Francisco Bay Area
• Butch-Femme.co.uk
• Butch-Femme.com
• Daddy Rhon writer/artist and webmaster of Butch-Femme.com
• Straightacting.com
• Trans Butch Femme site with Information and forums