Doing Better by Butches and Femmes

Tal Woods

Butch and femme identities have an undeniable presence on queer social media. And while the internet gives us an opportunity for connection and a queer education we are often denied, we should handle this space with care. Lately, I’ve noticed something femmes and butches have seen before: debate around our identities, including who the terms belong to and what they represent. I understand the delicacy. These identities are sacred. But we do our history and community a disservice when we gate keep.

According to the most inclusive definitions of “butch” and “femme,” the terms belong to all members of the LGBTQ community — as the different identities under that umbrella subvert cis/straight ideas of masculinity and femininity. And yet, attempts to gate-keep these terms from trans and bi people have been a major inter-community issue.

Bar culture among gay women in the 1940s is often cited as the beginning of butch and femme (although butch and femme go back as far as the early 1900s) and used as evidence of them being “lesbian-only” terms. Only, these “women’s nights” were comprised of working-class women-who-love-women, so of course it wasn’t just lesbians, but also bisexuals and other LBT identities. Unfortunately, since these terms weren’t widely used yet, everyone just assumed these women were lesbians. But in reality…