ok horrible lesbian discourse time. so because this is tumblr.net i am primarily talking about fictional characters and fan culture here, with an aside that some of this is still relevant in real life if this information helps you find yourself or whatever. but AS A DISCLAIMER i am not talking about real people because real people live nuanced lives with nuanced identities and people CHOOSE what to call their identities. characters do not. characters are tools.
i think people really, really have a fundamental misunderstanding of what (specifically wlw) butch and femme identities are and how they utilize them in fandom. because being butch or being femme is like... very intentional. i can't really speak to the femme experience personally. (my brief stint as a femme was one i spent feeling like i was wearing an ill-fitting costume, and it was an identity i felt compelled to call myself simply because i was mostly attracted to butches. this was primarily because butch4butch is still not a very well-received identity within lesbian culture both online and offline. once i learned about that i was kind of like HEY WAIT WHAT THAT'S ALLOWED? and now we're here. anyway.) however, my femme friends that i've talked to have always stressed how being femme is like, you're being feminine but Camp and you're doing it On Purpose and it's Fun and you're using your femininity to protect others, including gnc and masculine lesbians and wlw, from the violence that gnc people receive from the public. like, that is a deeply important and valuable identity.
and then you go online and people are like "i think this character is femme because she wears a dress in chapter 28" or "i think this character is femme because she has long hair" or "i think this character is femme because she likes flowers" and i'm just like. people have lost the fucking plot. it's like the people that post the motorcycle girl from riverdale(?) like "this is the butchest people can handle" like okay you can recognize that doing A Masculine Thing does not make a wlw butch. can you also recognize that doing A Feminine Thing does not make a wlw femme. these identities are much larger and deeper than a surface level of a character's haircut or outfits or hobbies. sometimes people are just more masculine or more feminine and neither of those things make a character specifically butch or femme. sometimes people are literally just being fucking racist and bigoted about it too, like why is that black character butch to you or that east asian character femme. why is the fat character butch to you but the skinny character femme.
these words and identities aren't aesthetics, they fucking MEAN something. being butch MEANS something to me, it's not just clipping a carabiner on my belt loop and shaving my head. it's protecting my community and my friends and looking out for people, it's speaking up for myself and others, it's taking every expectation society has for what women should do and look like and act like and saying fuck you, you're going to take me seriously anyway. like, it's not just a fucking aesthetic or even a sexual position thing like top or bottom. can we please go into 2026 recognizing this. you don't have to categorize every wlw character into these two identities, most of these characters (and plenty of wlw in real life) are neither and that's fine!
