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The “Lesbian-Only Term” Myth: A Comprehensive Historical Essay on ‘Butch’ and ‘Femme’

CARRD VERS. (still with sources, updated more frequently)

INCLUDES (in this order):

Essay

Sources

FAQ

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 more or less ‘officially’ separated (though the movement to separate them began beforehand), and it was also at 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.

This is, of course, not to say that bisexual people did not want their own community. Bisexuals had been fighting for their visibility for a long time before this! And, looking back, the separationist movement did end up giving us bisexuals our own community. However, that does not change the biphobic intentions of this movement, nor does it mean that bisexuals have to sacrifice years of shared history that they were purposefully erased from.

This is also not to say that there were not bisexual political lesbians, either. As many as one-fourth of bisexuals identified as a lesbian and as bisexual simultaneously, in the transitional period between lesbian being an umbrella term for all WLW, and lesbians and bisexuals being considered two separate things. These simultaneous identities were, of course, a product of their era, and were often bisexual radical feminist’s way of making their attraction to women a political statement. However, this information is even more proof of the era where those known as “lesbians” now and those known as “bisexuals” now lived comfortably under the then-umbrella term of “lesbian”.

In the words of Paula C. Rust’s 1995 book, 'Bisexuality and the Challenge to Lesbian Politics’: “Bisexuals were not outsiders… But insiders who were finally being honest about themselves.” Yes, indeed, we were insiders; we were always a part of the lesbian and gay communities.

With all of that historical context out of the way, it is time for the actual 'proof’, per say. LGBT+ newspapers and books are very important to LGBT+ history. They are snapshots of the culture at the time, and are crucial to preserving history; and this is true with butch and femme.

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 main character 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.

The writer of these books (Leslie Feinberg, in case you missed it; radical butch lesbian and trans activist) later had this to say in an interview: “And I would say that people who were referred to as drag queen, shemales, female impersonators, drag kings, diesel (d-slur)s, butches, et cetera, uh… Nowadays we think of them as being synonymous with a certain kind of sexuality, but in fact there’s a lot of butch women who sleep with other butches, or who are bisexual, and the same thing is true with feminine men.”

Again-again, with men using these terms, we have 'The Butch Manual’, published in 1982, which features men.

(ID: A picture of a butch woman in a newspaper, in black and white. 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 [email protected] will win a copy of ‘Hot & Bothered 4: Short Short Fiction on Lesbian Desire.’)

Now, going back to female bisexual butches, there is this newspaper from the 90s:

(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 [email protected] will win a copy of ‘Hot & Bothered 4: Short Short Fiction on Lesbian Desire.’)

Next, we have screenshots from the QZAP, which is an LGBT+ zine archive. The following are excerpts from 'Femmes Unite!’ and 'Mutate’. (Warning: These screenshots and transcripts hold reclaimed words that may be triggering. Each word in the transcript was written by someone who can reclaim it.)

(ID: A screenshot of an archived zine, in black and white. It reads: “F. A. G. PDX (Femme Affinity Group Portland) is a radical ACTIVIST AND SOCIAL group that seeks to create solidarity among femmes, promote femme visibility and combat femme phobia in the community at large. The group is open to self-identified femmes of all genders.”)

(ID: A screenshot of an archived zine, in black and white, with hearts above the text. It reads: “My new friend was a fabulously femme fag who had amazingly over the top fashion sense, wore a lot of glitter all the time, was a sassy bitch and on top of all that he was a sweetheart. I learned so much about the kind of person I wanted to be from him and even today hold my high school image of him as one of my gender role models. He was male assigned and skinny while I was female assigned”. At the end the text cuts off.)

(ID: A screenshot of an archived zine, in black and white. It reads: “femme this way, the persona appears to be unconvincing, unappealing to other female butches or femmes and gay men confirmed in those roles-I don’t come across as a "real” femme. Perhaps the". The text cuts off at the end.)

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.

Continuing on, in the 1985 documentary titled 'Gay Tape: Butch and Femme’, a femme asks another femme what her favorite part about being a femme is. She replied, “I love to flirt. I flirt with everyone… I flirt with anything that moves.” 'Anything that moves’ implies not only attraction to men, but is also a phrase generally associated with specifically bisexuality, thanks to the famous bisexual magazine titled that phrase.

Speaking of that very magazine, there is this letter to the editor in Anything That Moves, from issue 15, and published in 1997:

(ID: A screenshot of the letter in question, in black and white. The title reads: “Bi Femme I Am”. In smaller text below the title, it reads, “I can’t thank you enough for your magazine. I am a bisexual femme myself, and I’ve struggled with the fact that I’ve only been out with one woman (i.e., no sex) but am now living with a man who could very well become my husband (and he’s a bisexual who’s only been with one man).

I’ve felt like a traitor to my people or something… felt like the lesbians don’t want me in their club because I’m with a guy, and felt like the straight girls don’t want me in their club because I can feel like for women. I don’t belong anywhere.

I feel like a traitor when all the lesbians I work with see me with a guy now, when three months ago they saw me with a woman at NCPride. I’m turned every which way, but your magazine has helped me out so much - especially things like "What Do Bisexuals Want?” by Jack Random and “Bi-Femme: On Being a Traitor and/or Revolutionary.” They’re right on the mark with how I feel.“)

Now, what’s that on 'Bi-Femme: On Being a Traitor and/or Revolutionary’? Excellent question. There is a whole article on a bisexual using the femme identity in the 12th issue of 'Anything That Moves’! Here are a few select quotes from that article.

"My mama is a very smart woman. When I was 12 years old and I told her I was bisexual, all she said was, “Fine. As long as they don’t look like truck drivers.” I don’t mean that she was smart because she didn’t want me to date butch girls. She was smart because I think she knew that I was going to do it anyway. I was going to grow up to be a femme.”

“And as I got into my teens, I dated a lot of boys. All of them identified as bisexual or gay. Most of them were very, very femme.”

“Davis, Hollibaugh and Nestle include both male and female gender rebels within this definition. Femme, they say, seems perhaps to originate in a feminine love of queer sexual deviance, in general, of, as I’ve put it, “the boys inside my girls, and the girls inside my boys.””

“The argument goes on to say that my femininity allows me the privilege of passing as heterosexual in general, at all times in which I am not with butch women or in queer spaces defined by their presence. These people defined queer as butch women or femme men – people who they saw as gender rebels, whose gender choice was an inversion of hegemonic standards.”

“… Femme is an attraction to queerness in any form that satisfies hunger. I believe that understanding this is crucial to opening up femme identity to independence from butch identity – as standing separate from our more visible partners. Butch girls can fuck boys casually, without threatening their (d-slur) identities? Well, I want that right too, as well as the right to define what that sex means to me.”

That’s a whole lot of evidence, no? And we’re not even done with this particular source!

Once again from 'Anything That Moves’, we have an article on the second annual Femme Conference in San Francisco. Amongst other things, this article includes the following quotes,

“"Well,” I ventured, “to me, a femme is someone who takes the characteristics and stereotypes associated with being a woman and uses them as a source of personal power. Like, if someone is gonna stare at my body anyway, I’m damn well gonna make them look, and once I have their attention, I’m gonna tell them something. Get it?”“

"The conference organizers aimed to welcome every kind of person with more than a drop of femme in their souls, and to make plenty of space to talk about how we are, perform, or just love femme. Girls, boys, (d-slur)s, bi-femmes, (f-slur)-femmes, people from communities of color, young femmes, trans-femmes, lesbians, drag-femmes, working class and rich femmes, parents, fat femmes, and a few garden-variety freaks like me crowded the 33 workshops.”

“Femmes flocked to sessions like Femme As An Evolving Gender Identity; Bisexual Femmes and Femme Bisexuals; (f-slur) and Drag Femme…”

Again, in historical bisexual readings, we have a whole passage on the politics of being a bisexual butch… That even claims that most bisexual women were assumed be femme! It even suggests that femme women face some sort of version of biphobia; stating that there was a stereotype that they weren’t really interested in the same gender. The passage in question is titled “Too Butch to Be Bi (or You Can’t Judge a Boy by Her Lover)”, by Robin Sweeney, published in the book “Bisexual Politics” by Naomi Tucker, published in 1995. Here are a few choice quotes from this passage.

“I am a butch bisexual woman whose romantic and sexual partners are primarily other butch women, with some notable exceptions. Frequently, I like to appear as masculine as I can, often passing for male on the street. I like to keep my hair short. I’d rather wear jeans and boots than anything else.”

“But being a butch woman who is also bisexual can be difficult. It feels sometimes that the the idea is so challenging - since the assumptions in our communities are that all butch women are lesbian women and all femme women are bisexual women - that often a butch woman trying to come to terms with being bisexual is stuck.”

“The ideas about femmes (femme women aren’t really interested in other women, and femme men aren’t really interested in women at all) and butches (butches are always the aggressors in sex, whether they are men or women) permeate our queer culture. These ideas make it difficult for us to explore who we are and who we want to be.”

Going back to men in the butch / femme scene, we have these two quotes from a 2005 paper written about the rise of the macho biker image among gay men in the 60s:

“The homosexual ‘man in leather’ remains one of the more disproportionately visible and controversial members of the LGBT community. He is the antithesis of the feminized drag queen. He seeks to defy the stereotype of homosexual men as effeminate, limp-wristed, and ‘nelly.’ The leather-clad man presents himself as self-assured, assertive, dominant, or ‘butch.’”

“Homosexual men whose public identity more nearly conformed to mainstream constructions of masculinity referred to leather-men as ‘butch.’ The leather–man’s presentational strategies were and are regarded by some as deviant and unacceptable, especially to those homosexuals eager to ‘pass’ as ‘normal.’”

Again, in regards to bisexual history, we have the following quote from “Bi Any Other Name” (affectionately nicknamed 'the bisexual bible’, and originally published in 1991), from the point of view of a bisexual woman contemplating her identity:

“… I lay there on the mattress with Annah’s head upon my lap and my head drawing circles in her hair, imagining a world of only Annah and me. Nothing needed to matter, whether I was straight or lesbian, masculine or feminine, butch or femme…”

In the same book, we have a bisexual woman writing, “I began to reclaim what I had previously rejected as male identification, even renaming it 'butch identification’,” essentially stating that, in relation to her relationship with maleness and masculinity, she took on the label of 'butch’. She then proceeds to describe “fantasizing about getting a short haircut like my brother’s.”

In the same book again, we have a bisexual man describing his bisexual female partner as a butch, with the quote, “Her jeans and shirt complementing her blonde buzz-cut hair, she’s the only butch member of our household.”

We have definitions of these words from a text file from textfiles.com, an archive of textfiles originated from the 60s to the 80s. This textfile, titled “LesBiGay and Transgender Glossary” and originating from 1992, it defines the words as follows:

“Butch: 1. Masculine or macho dress and behavior, regardless of sexor gender identity. 2. A sub-identity of lesbian, gay male, or bisexual, based on masculine or macho dress and behavior. (See femme.) 3. (butch it up) To exaggerate masculine behaviors, usually for others’ entertainment. (See camp it up.)”

“Femme: 1. Feminine or effeminate dress and behavior, regardless of sex or gender identity. 2. A sub-identity of lesbian, gay, or bisexual, based on feminine or effeminate dress and behavior. (See butch.)”

These definitions, and this source in general, is of interest. Not only does it explicitly include bisexuals and make a point to say that these terms apply regardless of gender, but they also list 'butch’ and 'femme’ as examples of gender identities. It also uses 'butch’ in reference to drag in the reference for 'in drag’.

From the 1997 book Femme: Feminists, Lesbians and Bad Girls, we have this quote:

"Negative Message number three: “Don’t date a femme, because she’ll leave you for a man.’ […] I know tons of butches who have slept with guys, and for some reason there’s not some big stigma attached to that. That doesn’t threaten their membership in the lesbian community, but with us [femmes] it does.””

From a 2000s issue of 'Bi Women: The Newsletter of the Boston Bisexual Women’s Network’, we also have this quote: “But I also think bi women like to experiment with the wide range of possibilities along the butch/femme continuum without feeling confined by them. And that’s fun to watch! And I think many people assume that because bi women are also interested in men that they all would be femmes. Oh, how wrong they are—hallelujah for butch bi women!”

Hallelujah for butch bi women, indeed!

SOURCES:

(Source 1) (Source 2) (Source 3) (Source 4) (Source 5) (Source 6) (Source 7) (Source 8) (Source 9) (Source 10) (Source 11) (Source 12) (Source 13) (Source 14) (Source 15) (Source 16) (Source 17) (Source 18) (Source 19) (Source 20) (Source 21) (Source 22) (Source 23)

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