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gray-warden · 4 years

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can u explain how butches and femmes are counterparts and not opposites? or how femmes arent like lipstick lesbians? im not trying to be argumentative im just a very confused gay girl who Wants to Understand

First of all, sorry for taking like 50 years to answer your ask! I hope you still see the answer, though femmes and butches come from the same piece of history, where they were two sides of the same coin, a sort of “ying and yang”, if you’ll forgive the cliché. it’s more of an attraction to something that’s different but also the same in some ways, someone who might balance you out in a way in their differences but still gets where you’re coming from. it’s not uncommon for femmes to have previously thought they were butches because they felt a connection to the butch/femme history and dynamic but also felt alienated from womanhood due to their lesbianism. plus, two things being seen as opposites kinda often implies that there’s something in between those things, which isn’t the case here. butch/femme isn’t a “lesbian gender binary”, and the whole “futch scale” thing isn’t how it works, it was sort of a joke that got out of hand and led to many people misunderstanding identities that are important to many people. a stone butch isn’t just a super masculine and tough butch. “soft butch” meaning “butch who isn’t super muscular and who is sensitive” ignores that those things don’t make any butch less butch in the first place.femme is just an older identity and it just kinda goes hand-in-hand with butch because they have shared origins, and originally, in the past, the typical dynamic was a butch and a femme being together or seeking each other. it’s about complementing each other by having differences that work with each other, rather than differences that clash, and by having similarities that bring deeper understanding. of course stuff has changed, butches can date other butches ofc (there’s not really a different term for “gnc lesbian who exclusively or mostly seeks other gnc women”, and butchness, while it is a specific identity and a sort of “role”, is very associated with a specific kind of appearance. plus, many butches hear some dumbass shit about butchness even among wlw, so some of us might seek other butches so we finally feel understood. or just because they find other butches hot, which, in my opinion, is very understandable lol).also, a femme doesn’t necessarily have to always be super typically feminine, there’s an association with an older type of identity or role, so many femmes these days might incorporate a few things that could be considered gender nonconforming, like not shaving, not wearing makeup, having super short hair or buying some clothing articles from the men’s section (usually not all at once i guess? idk, i’m just giving a few examples). some might not use “she/her” and might not really see themselves as part of womanhood.or they might be very traditionally feminine, as many are.of course there are lesbians who might do any of those things but aren’t femmes, but that’d be because they just aren’t drawn to the identity, don’t long for a certain type of dynamic in their life, don’t feel connected to that part of history. most lesbians just aren’t butches or femmes. it’s not a bad thing, or a deep thing, most lesbians just aren’t! it’s a subculture, and that’s for a reason.but basically, butches and femmes just have more in common than we have differences. they’re complementary identities.originally, in specific contexts where those terms came up, butches and femmes were just seen as the possible different “types” of lesbians who seeked each other for relationships, sex, companionship, understanding, etc. it was originally a thing that came from lesbian bars, frequented by working-class women. so many butches and femmes worked in the same types of places (factories, often), so they still lived in the same type of context (though many femmes were sex workers, and that’s also an important thing to know, i don’t wanna seem like i’m ignoring it, but i’m not going deep into it bc in that case what they shared was still that they were also working class). of course many butches and femmes now aren’t working class, but those are the origins of those identities, and we should never forget who came before us.of course there are lots of differences between how lesbian working class bars were a few decades ago and how butch/femme is as a subculture now. the current subculture largely relies on writings from people who were always butches and always femmes back in the day, rather than those who sort of had to make themselves fit into one of those things because that was the expectation in those bars but otherwise didn’t feel connected to a certain identity or role outside of the specific context of the bars and relationships. so the modern butch/femme thing is, first of all, a subculture, because we don’t want people who don’t really connect to being a butch or a femme to feel like they have to fit in there, because if you don’t then you just don’t and there’s obviously nothing wrong with that, that’s why it’s a subculture, most lesbians just aren’t part of it, the same way most people aren’t parts of other subcultures. and since it’s so very based on the historic records left by people who were always butches and always femmes, regardless of where they were, who they were with, etc, it’s also about a constant identity now, rather than being someone who calls themselves a butch in a context where it’s about women seeking women but otherwise doesn’t really feel a connection to the identity in my experience, many femmes get annoyed at women who say they’re femme4femme bc they say that that’s why the term “lipstick lesbian” exists in the first place, as most women who call themselves “femme4femme” usually just mean “feminine woman seeking feminine woman”, using “femme” to just mean “feminine”. so that’s why there’s often an annoyance there.i’m not saying that a femme has to /exclusively/ be into gnc women to be a femme. just that being a femme and being a feminine lesbian don’t mean the same thing, and generally, femmes in the current butch/femme subculture often have at least a preference for butches, due to a desire for a specific kind of dynamic in relationships and anything surrounding that. there’s just a specific kind of historical connection and a sort of role connected to butchness and femmeness. it’s a subculture that’s more than just about what you look like and what the people you’re into look like. “butch” gets tied to a certain kind of appearance a lot more than femme does, as it’s a kind of appearance that stands out on its own, without the person saying anything about their identity, so many femmes rely on that connection to a specific part of history and certain desires and dynamics and roles a lot when it comes to their identity as femmes.lipstick lesbian is a term that sometimes just refers to very feminine lesbians, but very often specifically to feminine lesbians who exclusively or at least mostly seek other feminine lesbians. and to my knowledge there’s not any kind of deeper connection to any older identity or culture there, it’s like “masc4masc” or something like that, it’s just a description of your personal kind of aesthetic and the kind of aesthetic you find desirable (i’m not trying to imply there’s anything wrong with that, of course! just that it’s not the same as being a femme, but of course two things not being the same doesn’t automatically mean one is better than the other, which is something i want to make clear throughout this whole huge answer to your ask).idk, i’m no expert or anything, and i’m also just not great at explaining things, i tend to ramble a bit and i sometimes express myself in a way that was clear enough for other people, and sometimes i end up talking a lot. also, there just isn’t much butch/femme history where i’m from, at least not any /recorded/ history, there aren’t always words that describe the exact same things (of course there are people like me and people who are like many femmes, though, we’ve always existed, but there’s not really much of a butch/femme type of community thing because our history and words are different, and there’s generally fairly little LGBT or specifically wlw or lesbian history recorded), so this is about what i know of butch/femme culture in the US and online (since the latter relies on the former).there are a lot of people out there who talk abt butch/femme a lot, people who have read and watched and experienced more stuff connected to that, so you could ask people like that if you need more information (you can ask me, of course, i’m just saying they’ll know more), esp when it comes to femmes, since i don’t have their specific perspective on differences between femmes vs feminine lesbians who aren’t femmes, or on the femme4femme thing, which means i’m only talking based on my understanding of what they say, rather than from personal experience as a femme, just because i’m not one. (part of the reason why it took me a while was bc i asked some people i know, one butch and one femme, both have more knowledge about this stuff than me, esp the latter, to see if there were any inaccuracies they could see or something i didnt express well)

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