#butch discourse

[lovesickdipshit]

guys how tf do i explain what being butch means to my straight friends?? (im aware i dont *have* to explain myself to them but some are genuinely curious and it'd be nice for them to understand, especially since idk fellow butches irl)

[cliffsecord]

I’m feeling spicy this evening: what are your favorite examples of characters who people have complained are “too butch”? Bonus points for discussing why people have insisted the character is butch

[thesassiestcolor]

Just one more thing that bi women absolutely can use butch/femme because they ARE wlw and if you think that it's "tricking" lesbians is.....biphobic! Bi women love women just as much as lesbians and we can dress to show it!

[valkylander]

Any rules for who can use butch/femme that suggest Lucrezia Noin is not a butch woman, whether because she's bisexual or because she has a boyfriend, are bad rules and they aren't worth following

[jackawful]

Okay so I know the Bi Butch Discourse is like, Internet Old now, but every so often I lie awake at night thinking of exactly this post where, in 2017, to justify her insistance that butch and femme are lesbian-only, Lane Localhorrorlesbian/mascpriv/female-husband cites:

A book that only uses the term "bisexual" to refer to women who were married to men, not a self-labeled identity, and then discusses their participation in the exact bar scene where butch and femme arose

A book that explicitly excluded from its sample the narratives of women who had Left The Lesbian Community despite having participated in it...i.e. ostensibly bisexual women who eventually married men

A book that contains a prominent side character who could be construed either as a trans man OR a butch who keeps her attraction to men secret

"Butch is a Noun," a book that contains one of my favorite poems about butch identity & arguments over its boundaries as the first fucking piece in the goddamn table of contents. The piece as a whole is a very tongue-in-cheek sequence of the speaker continually setting hard boundaries around the use of "butch" and then adding a bunch of exceptions, making it clear that those hard boundaries don't apply to how the term works in real life. One of those sequences is this paragraph: "Butches are always tops. They always fuck the girls, and, for that matter, their partners are always girls; there is no such thing as a butch who is attracted to men. Well, transmen, but that’s just butch-on-butch repackaged as faggotry. But no non-trans-men. Unless the butch in question is a non-trans-man, then it’s okay. Except that non-trans-men cannot be butches, because butch is a queering of gender that assigned-male people cannot embody, unless they occasionally can, in which case they have to be gay men. Or the partners of femmes. Or not. But no one with an assigned- female body can be a butch and do it with assigned-male men. Unless they’re femmes. Or butches. I’m really putting my foot down on this one."

It's the perfect, perfect example of how no one throwing these "sources" at bi/pan/queer butches like. Actually bothered to read them closely, or with bisexuality in mind, or...maybe at all.

(Incidentally, that paragraph from "Butch is a Noun" also defends all sorts of trans uses of the word "butch," and guess who's a big 'ol transmisogynist against trans women calling themselves butches or lesbians? Lane! And a lot of other folks who throw around these sources. And...not a lot of the folks who actually wrote them, especially Bergman, who now primarily identifies as a trans man & has collaborated w multiple trans women for other projects.)

[earlgraytay]

[earlgraytay]

lesbiankatebush replied to your post

“hot take: there need to be more butch women in media that are...”

h...how can you be butch AND Straight

butch is a form of gender expression, not a sexuality

many lesbians are butch, so some people on Tumblr believe that butchness is a form of gender expression only limited to lesbians

but gay men have been using the word butch for ages, especially in the leather scene.

this is an article from 2009 about how gay men relate to masculinity; gay men often use the word ‘butch’ to describe a traditionally masculine man

another article, this one from 1997, using the same terminology

the university of montana has a definition of ‘butch’ in their glossary of LGBT terms:

“ Butch – A person who identifies themselves as masculine, whether it be physically, mentally or emotionally. ‘Butch’ is sometimes used as a derogatory term for lesbians, but it can also be claimed as an affirmative identity label. “

a straight person can be butch if they perform masculinity, especially if they’re not a cis straight man. because it’s a form of gender expression. it’s not limited to lesbians, and never has been.