Butch/Femme

History of Butch/Femme

Over the past several decades, butch/femme has fallen in and out of favor in response to sociopolitical currents affecting lesbian communities. In the 1950s, butch/femme was popular among lesbians, especially among lesbians of color and working-class lesbians, for whom gay bars and clubs were an important site for “coming out” and establishing social ties. Just as the performance of gender roles has been a defining feature of heterosexual courtship and public culture, butch/femme roles offered lesbians a system of social organization and a means of public recognition. Butch/femme subculture included clear “rules” about how to dress, behave, speak, and have sex in ways appropriate for either butches or femmes. Some lesbian bars went so far as to reinforce the butch/femme binary by designating different restrooms for butches and femmes. Many lesbians enjoyed what they understood to be a unique and playful gender dynamic between butches and femmes in the 1950s; however, others felt pressured to conform to butch/femme subculture even when they found these roles ill-fitting and uncomfortably similar to heterosexual gender roles. Yet the rejection of butch/femme was a privilege often available only to upper-middle-class lesbians who found the butch aesthetic “mannish” and unattractive, opting instead for a “classic” or “elegant” androgyny that had broader appeal in mainstream culture.

In the 1970s, at the height of the second-wave feminist movement, greater numbers of lesbians began to reject butch/femme on the grounds that it was modeled after heterosexuality. Lesbian feminists embraced a more androgynous and ostensibly “natural” aesthetic and advocated for the importance of being “woman identified” and creating “women-only” space. Though this trend infused lesbian subculture with vital feminist politics, it also alienated many butches and femmes who saw both personal and political value in challenging essentialist notions of womanhood and in bending gender and sexual rules. As a result, at the same time that a widespread backlash against the feminist movement occurred in the broader culture in the 1980s, lesbians also reacted against the rigidity of lesbian feminism. The 1980s and 1990s were witness to the emergence of lesbian S/M (sadomasochism) groups, the rise of a new and “raunchy” lesbian sex radicalism (characterized by the lesbian sex magazine On Our Backs), growing public interest in “lipstick lesbianism,” and the revitalization of butch/femme.

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