#butchfemme history

[androgynealienfemme]

"Painkillers. I think I must have taken every pill short of the ones they use for birth control. I mean, like, I wouldn't know how to begin to get pregnant, but I could deal with modern technology coming up with a treatment to ease this one pain that won't let me rest in peace sometimes.

I may not be anybody's prize-winning puppy, but I'm all I've got and I like to take good care of the old girl. It took me a long time to understand the kid and get used to my evil ways, but I came around, I like being a butch. I like being with other butches with our nicknames and ball games- women with muscles and pretty faces. I don't believe in bisexuals and cannot for the life of me find a femme. I don't like men and I don't let them fuck me.

For me to live in this man's world, I need some kind of painkiller, something I can pull out at a moment's notice and put between me and the men on the street, because sometimes, I could really kill 'em. They're just the foulest beasts walking on two feet and they're always in packs, just like dogs. It wouldn't be so bad if the women that like them so much would keep them on leashes, curb them, and shoot the strays, but the dudes be all over the place pissing and dropping their turds every which way. And even faggots piss on trees.

So, like, between the men and the dogs, I need some way to keep the weight off my head. I live in New York City, and we dykes may be everywhere like the t-shirts and buttons say, but there aren't that many of us running around loose and free. And I get tired of watching my back and front, and having to look sideways because these men are so damn crazy.

It's not like there's a neighborhood or a space that's all our own where we could have gone to, hung out at, and worked through our growing pains as baby butches. I guess a lot of us learned our ways alone and in secret and we still come out with all the different styles of butches. I really dig on how I can always tell another butch, even if she's in straight drag.

I know for me, I used to read a lot of books. They had this soft-core pornography in the sixties that I gobbled up as a young girl, with titles like Strange Friends, Forbidden Love, The Twilight World, and The Lonely People. On the covers there'd be these women looking very unhappy, like they were yearning for something they'd never be able to have. I could tell just by the titles which books were meant to be about me, and after a while, I knew that if the last page had a man and a woman talking together, it wasn't a happy ending.

It was hard buying the happy endings. I was in my early teens going to the counter with all the shame and fear that the man I'd have to pay would know what I was reading about, and by that, know what it was- something bad, a subject for pornography. I'd sneak the books into the house and wouldn't even want to share them with my brother, who'd been my first and best friend, and is one man I'd kill for still. I'd feel worse about myself, because he and I had always shared our various and assorted treasures like dirty books, but not these: I'd read them by myself under the covers with a flashlight and hide them under my mattress until Friday, when my mother would change the sheets, and on that day, I'd hide my secret life in the closet.

I used to buy the idea that I was "sick." The "sick" theory gave me some whys and wherefores about the way I had to take to bed to learn about what straight boys and girls are able to go find out with each other in alleyways, backyard, parks, and the movies. I didn't know then that what I was reading was truly the perverted version. That pornography was written for straight men- including all the psycho-socio-anthropological scientific bullshit studies on gay women were written by Ph.D.s.

I look back now and see where those books and their ideas rotted my guts and crippled my moral structure. The real crouch and limp came from the drafting of my people - women-loving women- as the whipping girls so that straight society could feel high and holy.

Folks can see the most honorable and upright butch bopping the streets, minding her own business, and they can have a righteous fit over her. We don't have to do anything except be our natural selves and some of these people will think they have a perfect right to use us as toilet paper and then go home to plot us into their fantasies. Men always do this to women any which way: wiping all their mess on some woman who is by herself and they're in a bunch in front of their corner store. After they make their little comments and noises, they're all smiling and at ease and feeling good and cooled out with each other.

If you watch the woman, she looks embarrassed and angry. She feels stupid and she's usually trying to cover that up and pretend that none of it affects her. Now if she's the type of butch who won't calmly take the shit, the men will have to work harder to take it to another level if they want the satisfaction that comes from wiping a person away. They have to go and tell each other that she wants to be a man, or they can act as if they just can't understand "freaks" and how, "If she wants to be a man so bad, why doesn't she come out and fight like one?" Then that dude's brothers can go into their man act and have the pleasure of holding him back from suppposedly going after her ass. They'll be soothing themselves while trying to pull this one and be saying, "Hey, man. You got to be cool, because that is a woman and when she meets the right fella, she'll straighten up and fly right." And he says, "Yeah, man, I just got all beside myself. Bulldaggers and faggots, jim. Hey: you know they both use toilet paper for padding," and they laugh and slap five and their eyes are shining. Their whole beings lighten up. They've jerked off and are relieved.

Okay, that's them. They got to feeling whole and healthy, but the butch-type woman who said, "Fuck y'all. You can keep your shit and kiss my ass behind it," is mad as hell and fit to be tied. She doesn't have anybody on hand that she can make sense to. There's no dog she can kick or make a nigger out of to transfer her shit to, so she's got to carry the load and steam with those juices, sweating it out alone. She probably takes it home and finds it in the mirror in frowns and frustration.

So you can see why I talk about a painkiller. I would like to have a pill that I could share with everybody fair and square. We'd all pop it and come the next day, the streets would be cleared of men, the straight women would loosen up, and the butches would be at least with each other. That's what I would call medical attention for a serious disease that's getting epidemic. I think we should give the afflicted hope: let them know: homophobia can be cured."

"Butch on the Streets, 1981" by Donna Allegra, The Persistent Desire: A Butch/Femme Reader, edited by Joan Nestle (1992)

[aerithpilled]

the butch/femme scene of 1990s san francisco by chloe sherman

[the-sappho-of-lesbos]

Source: On Our Backs Guide To Lesbian Sex, edited by Diana Cage

[grimoiresheart]

nothing will ever put into words how beautiful, rich and complex the history of butches and femmes is. the way these identities encapsulate the nuance of dyke gender, affection and the inherent longing to be seen - truly seen for who we are, in a world that often times, seems to have forgotten us.

thinking of those who came before us, how the ofos butches would curl a cigarette in their hands, and watch a femme from across the bar with long nails tap her glass, in anticipation of that one moment that tells them both it was all worth it. the gentle smearing of lipstick, the confidence from straightening out a tie. we have always performed for one another, and known each other far beyond the capability or understanding of anyone outside of our community.

i long to see the theatrics, the drawn out gazes filled with the possibilty of something more. the love letters adorned with perfume and spring violets, a gentle hand finding its way underneath the hem of a worn out vest. i long to love and be loved in the only way that we have ever known, with unbridled fervor spilling out at the edges, with the intimacy found beside candlelight and intertwined between satin sheets. the promise that we will always find each other.

[lovergirldyke]

Realizing I identified as a femme was like coming home, realizing that what I am was loved and celebrated by so many before me is so beautiful and an honor that is so hard to express in words <3

[brattyfemmebaby]

“Valentine’s Day. That’s a high femme holy holiday.” Leslie Feinberg, Stone Butch Blues

[jouch-blog16]

🌈 Introduction 🌈

My name is Johana (they/she) and I’m a 22 year old femme lesbian! I decided to make this account to promote my lesbian book club Our Lesbian Library which started out on Twitter and is now living on Discord! Every lesbian or queer/sapphic person interested in reading lesbian literature is welcome! We do monthly Zoom live shows where we discuss the book we have picked for that month, and we’re also thinking about doing lesbian movie nights as well!

Also this blog is very safe for work 😈

[transfagfemme]

I wish people would stop using femme as synonymous w "woman" and I wish people would stop using butch as synonymous w "lesbian"

[sapphicsundial]

I’ve become obsessed with decorating and collaging my sketchbooks, I hope I eventually actually draw in them though lmao ♡

[dykedearest]

3. what does being butch/stud/femme mean to you?

it means being part of a community bigger than me and being authentic to my own self expression. finding freedom through the label of butch and companionship through shared experiences. carrying the rich history of the lesbian community on my shoulders and keeping it alive for another generation.

[androgynealienfemme]

"When I was eleven or twelve years old, I used to shop in the boy's department at Bloomingdale's, just as the other prepubescent private school girls did. That was where you could purchase polo shirts, Shetland sweaters, and all the other socially acceptable androgynous clothing for our age group and gender. They fit and suited me just fine, but what would have suited me even better was nothing other than an actual suit: the three piece variety mad of thin-wale, beige corduroy with brown simulated leather buttons.

I knew exactly where they hung in the boys' department, and I paid them a visit each time I was in the vicinity. It's funny, but though I can't remember at the time ever seeing a girl or woman in one of these suits, that did not hinder my imagination of what that would look like. Neither did the shortage of real life models ever lead to any questions about why exactly there was one. Somehow I had simply gotten it into my head that such a sight would be wonderful. And, though once again I felt no need to ponder precisely how I knew this, clearly, the most appropriate person to wear such a suit would be me.

Picturing myself in the suit, I was suddenly a lot taller and older and stunningly sophisticated,. The suit seemed to have the almost magical power to make me strong, wise, just. The vision of myself naturally included physical as well as mental capabilities well beyond those of an eleven-or twelve-year-old, but who was I to disbelieve the suit's mystique?

I never tried one on. Although the desire to own one felt perfectly natural to me, it had been met with a mixture of mocking laughter and horror by my mother. Something about her response definitely said, "No." and, "Tell no one." So the suits, like forbidden fruit, remained there untouched by me for years, moved at times from one corner of the department to another, but always just out of reach of my young body's many secret yearnings.

Roughly fourteen years later, as I was walking in the rain, I suddenly realized I was butch. Everything made sense. My butchness came as much more of a surprise to me than my lesbianism, which, despite some years of procrastination on my part as to actually adopting it as a daily lifestyle, I always knew and comfortably accepted.

The way I ever so swaggered and stomped my clunky boots when I walked, and felt sort of proud of it, now made sense. The way I firmly held the umbrella over the woman I love and protected her from the rain as I guided her down the Brooklyn street took on new clarity. The freedom and invincibleness I feel after a close haircut I better understood. The pleasure and vanity I indulge in when I stretch my muscles to lift something that looks heavier than I can manage all at once held new meaning. The childlike glee I feel every time I discover something needing to be fixed in the house and the puffed=up self-importance that fills me each time I fix it had new significance for me. Even my tremendous need for control could now be explained. And my assertive overtures of passion in the dark where I gently bur firmly demand submission most of all seemed to fit.

I gripped the handle of the umbrella tighter and walked along with, I'm sure, the stupidest grin on my face, flashing the woman I love periodic glances of affection as she continued to talk happily, oblivious to the volcano that had just erupted beside her. There, in the rain, as a flood of feelings and enlightenment washed my insides, I had one final glimmer of insight. I at last understood that without ever actually buying the three-piece suit made of thin-wale, beige corduroy, with the brown, simulated leather buttons, I had been wearing one all along."

-"Sweet Suit Suite" Audrey Grifel, The Persistent Desire, (Edited by Joan Nestle (1992)

[literary-butch]

Does anyone know of the zine that went around about 3-4 years ago about transfem lesbian sex with diagrams and discussions of the effects of estrogen and sexual practices???

(I cannot remember its name or find it anywhere)

[the-sappho-of-lesbos]

Source: On Our Backs Guide To Lesbian Sex, edited by Diana Cage

[butchctrl]

I'm attending a Zoom panel with Joan Nestle as a panelist, and every time she speaks, I just start tearing up. I feel so lucky and grateful to hear a butchfemme lesbian elder talk in real-time.

[degenderates]

Fuzz Box, summer 1991 issue

[journeysendinlovers]

Looking for an archive of On Our Backs that doesn't need an institutional log in I'm going to declare war