Butch (lesbian slang)

Butch is most often a term used to describe a lesbian who exhibits a masculine identity or gender presentation.[1][2]

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Woman with a butch haircut, 2009 Vancouver pride parade

Since the lesbian subculture of 1940s America, "butch" has been present as a way for lesbians to circumvent traditional genders of women in society and distinguish their masculine attributes and characteristics from feminine women.[lower-alpha 1]

History
Main article: Butch and femme

Starting in the 1940s and 1950s, butch became a central identity in the lesbian community.[5] It was often understood in conjunction with femme identity, and butch-femme relations have been studied at great length.[6] As a result, butch identity on its own remains somewhat ill-defined.[6] Butch people are often described as sexually dominant lesbians who are interested in having sex with femmes.[6] The Queen's Vernacular claimed a butch was "a lesbian with masculine characteristics."[7] In Of Catamites and Kings, Rubin describes a butch as those lesbians who use masculine mannerisms, and/or who wear traditionally male clothing, and/or who experience gender dysphoria[8] . The defining characteristic that most scholars agree on is that butch people are lesbians who are to some degree aligned with masculine traits.

In the mid 20th century, butch people were usually limited to a few jobs, such as factory work and cab driving, that had no dress codes for women.[9] During the 1950s with the anti-gay politics of the McCarthy era, there was an increase in violent attacks on gay and bisexual women, 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 gay women's space.[10] The prevailing butch image was severe but gentle, while it became increasingly tough and aggressive as violent confrontation became a fact of life.[11] Leslie Feinberg's novel Stone Butch Blues is a predominant piece of butch literature, and offers a window into butch bar culture, police brutality towards transvestites (both drag queens and butch people), and butch eroticism in the 1970s.[12]

Transgender Butch Identity

One of the subcategories of the butch identity was and is people who experience gender dysphoria.[8] In the mid 20th century, butch was a group that included most lesbians who identified with masculine characteristics; unsurprisingly, this was a space that included many transmasculine identities.[13] In the words of butch, transgender man S. Bear Bergman, "butch and transgender are the same thing with different names, except that butch is not a trans identity, unless it is." [14] However, there is something of a "boarder war" between butch and FTM identities, as renowned butch scholar Jack Halberstam put it in Transgender Butch.[13] Some butch people identify as women and undergo some amount of medical transition, and some FTM individuals identify as butch men.[15] The difference between the two groups is nuanced and has as many interpretations as there are butch people.[8] Halberstam argues that in "making concrete distinctions between butch women and transgender males, all too often such distinctions serve the cause of heteronormativity."[15]

See also

Notes
  1. According to Heidi M. Levitt and Sara K. Bridges: "The terms femme and butch began infiltrating bisexual communities, and women began writing about their experiences as bisexual femmes...Although essayists have begun to explore this identity, very little empirical research has been conducted looking at the expression and experience of gender expression and gender identity within bisexual women."[3] According to some academic studies about the butch/femme subculture, "Femmes were sometimes bisexual."[4]

References
  1. Bergman, S. Bear (2006). Butch is a noun. San Francisco: Suspect Thoughts Press. ISBN 978-0-9771582-5-6.
  2. Smith, Christine A.; Konik, Julie A.; Tuve, Melanie V. (2011). "In Search of Looks, Status, or Something Else? Partner Preferences Among Butch and Femme Lesbians and Heterosexual Men and Women". Sex Roles. 64 (9–10): 658–668. doi:10.1007/s11199-010-9861-8. ISSN 0360-0025. S2CID 144447493.
  3. Firestein, Beth A., ed. (2007). "16. Gender Expression in Bisexual Women: Therapeutic Issues and Considerations". Becoming Visible: Counseling Bisexuals Across the Lifespan. Columbia University Press. pp. 301–310. ISBN 978-0231137249.
  4. Ukockis, Gail (2016). "5. Lesbians and Bisexual Women: Concerns of Lesbian and Bisexual Women: Butch/Femme Stereotypes". Women's Issues for a New Generation: A Social Work Perspective. Oxford University Press. p. 136. ISBN 978-0190239411.
  5. Kraus, Natasha (1996). "Desire Work, Performativity, and the Structuring of a Community: Butch/Fem Relations of the 1940s and 1950s". Frontiers: A Journal of Women Studies. 17 (1): 30–56. doi:10.2307/3346893. ISSN 0160-9009.
  6. Inness, Sherrie A.; Lloyd, Michele (1995). ""G.I. Joes in Barbie Land": Recontextualizing Butch in Twentieth-Century Lesbian Culture". NWSA Journal. 7 (3): 1–23. ISSN 1040-0656.
  7. Rodgers, Bruce (1979). Gay talk : formerly entitled The queens' vernacular : a gay lexicon. Internet Archive. New York : Putnam. ISBN 978-0-399-50392-4.
  8. "Of Catamites and Kings", Deviations, Duke University Press, pp. 241–253, November 28, 2011, retrieved October 6, 2023
  9. Kennedy, Elizabeth Lapovsky; Madeline D. Davis (1993). Boots of Leather, Slippers of Gold: The History of a Lesbian Community. New York: Routledge. pp. 82–86. ISBN 0-415-90293-2.
  10. Kennedy, Elizabeth Lapovsky; Madeline D. Davis (1993). Boots of Leather, Slippers of Gold: The History of a Lesbian Community. New York: Routledge. pp. 90–93. ISBN 0-415-90293-2.
  11. Kennedy, Elizabeth Lapovsky; Madeline D. Davis (1993). Boots of Leather, Slippers of Gold: The History of a Lesbian Community. New York: Routledge. pp. 153–157. ISBN 0-415-90293-2.
  12. Feinberg, Leslie. Stone Butch Blues.
  13. Halberstam, Jack. "Transgender Butch: Butch/FTM Border Wars and the Masculine Contiuum" (PDF). GLQ: A Journal of Lesbian and Gay Studies.
  14. Bergman, S. Bear (2010). Butch is a noun. Gender Studies (2. ed.). Vancouver, B.C: Arsenal Pulp. ISBN 978-1-55152-369-9.
  15. Alley, Jason, ed. (January 1, 2018). "GLQ Forum/Aftereffects". GLQ: A Journal of Lesbian and Gay Studies. 24 (1): 1–2. doi:10.1215/10642684-4254378. ISSN 1064-2684.
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