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Stud and Femme Identities in Chicago

Selection from "Black lesbian gender and sexual culture: celebration and resistance," by Bianca D.M. Wilson, published in Culture, Health & Sexuality, Vol. 11, No 3, April 2009.

One of the main questions of the focus group protocol was, ‘Are roles or labels like butch or femme or aggressive or passive important in sex and sexuality? How so or why not?’ This question was eventually rephrased to include the term stud as another term for butch since this was the term most often used by participants to describe masculine gender identities, reflecting ethnic differences in masculine identity terminology in the city. Every focus group chose to devote significant time and energy to answering this question. Participants consistently highlighted lesbian gender roles as a key organizing construct of African American lesbian sexual life. Four participants claimed these labels for themselves. Several other participants supported women’s adoption of these roles. The ways in which participants spoke about stud and femme categories indicated that these ways of constructing lesbian gender were part of an overarching sexual cultural norm of which all were aware. Within every focus group, participants conveyed a sense that the expectation to adopt a label and to operate within the category was a strong message throughout the Black lesbian community. Hence, expectations to be a femme or stud appeared to be a sexual cultural script for this Black lesbian community. Participants indicated that this cultural script was communicated in several contexts, including romantic relationships and community settings. [...]

The deep roots of the social pressure to date within these roles were also evident within my observations at the open mics. Most women that appeared to be coupled off, as evidenced by them kissing or cuddling with each other, were a clear butch and femme couple. Using the language suggested by Moore (2006), only one couple was a ‘gender-blender’ couple. They were a younger couple, maybe in their early twenties, and were each dressed in both feminine and masculine clothing. I did not observe any couple that was composed of two women who were traditionally feminine and observed only one couple in which both were dressed and acted in traditionally masculine ways. An inherent aspect of sexual discourse and cultural scripts are the potential disconnects between expected norms and individual transgressions against those norms (Parker 1991; Schifter and Madrigal 2001). This one masculine-masculine couple appeared to be participating in this type of transgression. Recognizing the discrepancy between their coupling and the cultural sexual scripts expectations, I asked that couple that night whether they had experienced negative reactions to their being a couple in which both women appeared masculine identified. They explained that they had received harsh reactions and lack of understanding from other African American lesbians. However, they felt that they were no longer into labels and loved each other. They had been together for over eight years and people knew them as an established couple so left them alone.

Constructing the dichotomous stud-femme label system With regard to non-sexual roles within romantic relationships, the extreme stud and femme labels carried expectations around partner choices. In particular, femmes are supposed to date studs and vice versa. Focus group participants and my participant observations suggest that there is little tolerance for femmes or studs dating one another. Once choosing a partner of the other lesbian gender, participants mentioned a few relationship roles that each person was expected to fill. Participants within several groups talked about being with a stud or femme partner who was disappointed that they would not follow the ‘rules’ of lesbian gendering. For example, Dalia indicated that she was expected to act more ‘mannish’ in her gestures when she was with a femme partner (FG3). Another participant, who was partnered with someone who identified as a hard stud, in turn expected her partner not to cry in order to live up to the masculine image (FG4, Cynthia). Similarly, participants who were with partners that were studs were expected to act in certain ways to be considered good femmes, such as in the case of Bré who reported that she was expected to sleep on the inside of the bed in order to be protected (FG7). The expectations and tendencies to date within a stud-femme dyad participants reported were very similar to those reported in Moore’s (2006) study of New York Black lesbians, suggesting Black lesbian cultural script that spans the boundaries of one city. [...]

Masculine expression Lesbians who expressed a highly masculinised gender were labelled ‘hard studs’ and hard studs had relatively strict guidelines for sexual practice. For example, participants talked about the, ‘hard studs that will come out and say, ‘‘I don’t want my woman to touch me. I want to be the total pleaser’’’ (FG2, Leslie). Contrasting femmes and hard studs, another participant claims:

“… because studs mostly in traditional situations, they’re usually the one who initiates, they’re usually the one, who, if you have oral sex, they usually the one who would initiate having oral sex on that particular person, when they want, on a femme. I know a lot of studs. They don’t like to be touched to a certain point, you know, you can touch them in certain places, but you know, you can’t really touch them like on, on their, you know, vagina or so things that may make them feel feminine.” (FG5. Jay)

These participants’ descriptions of the hard stud with which they were familiar is similar to the stone butch described in the fictional autobiography of Feinberg’s (1993) ‘Stone Butch Blues’ and discussed in Halberstam’s (1998) critique of the tendency to pathologize the stone butch in her book Female Masculinity. As such, it is possible that the language of hard stud is an ethnic-specific term that denotes a lesbian gender category identified in other ethnic communities. While a few participants who identified themselves as either aggressive, tomboy or dominant volunteered that they usually or rarely allowed partners to penetrate them, it is important to note that focus group participants were not asked to describe their own sexual lives. Hence, data from this study cannot confirm or disconfirm the extent to which these ‘hard’ or ‘stone’ sexual scripts resonated with the sexual practice of the women in the study.

Illustrating how hard stud sexual scripts were understood by many Black lesbians in the community, two primary reasons were provided by participants for why hard studs would demand that they not be touched during sex. One explanation was that hard studs were not comfortable with the parts of their bodies that defined them as female, mainly their breasts and vaginas. As such, a successful performance of the ‘male’ role during sex required that the hard stud’s female body parts not be touched. Another reason concerned the meaning of being touched and seduced. That is, participants talked about the importance of maintaining the appearance of dominance in the sexual act for hard studs and how being touched sexually or being the ‘bottom’ took away that sense of dominance and control. The vulnerability of being sexually aroused and pleasured threatened the image of the dominant sexual partner. The contrast between these two explanations is significant. The first explanation, rejecting femaleness, is similar to the comments made by some transgender people regarding discomfort with their biological body parts that dictate mainstream society’s current gendering system. However, the second explanation, maintaining dominance, is not about denying one’s femaleness as expressed through the body but instead about accepting a view that being sexually pleasured and aroused by another makes a person vulnerable. Being vulnerable does not fit with the hegemonic masculine image and, hence, does not fit with the image of a true stud.

This study was designed to examine sexual discourses – essentially, how Black lesbians discussed sex and what cultural level sexual scripts were recognized in the community. While examining conflicts between cultural level norms and individual behaviour was not the aim of the current study, some participants noted that there is some evidence of transgressions. Participants in two focus groups (FG1 and FG9) discussed studs they knew who had recently had vaginal sex with men and had children, behaviours that did not fit into the masculine lesbian gender identity role. It is quite likely that many studs and many ultra-femmes engaged in sexual behaviour that transgressed expected community norms (beyond the mainstream norms they already transgress through sexual orientation and gender presentation), as was found in a study of the level of congruence between butch global presentation and actual self-presentation in sexual settings within a predominantly White sample (Rosenzweig and Lebow 1992).

Feminine expression Within the masculine/feminine dichotomy that was discussed by participants, there were also the pillow princesses and ultra femmes at the other end of the lesbian gender spectrum. Similar to the hard stud category, these extreme femme labels have clear sexual behaviour roles. In this study ‘Ultra femme’ was a label given to women who expressed themselves in high-fashion feminine ways, usually including heels, make-up and contouring or revealing clothing. Relevant to the current study, ‘pillow princess’ was a special label for the ultra femme that alluded to the sexual context. In particular, this label described a lesbian who prefers to be the receiver of sexual pleasure and acts, such as having oral sex performed on her. She is not expected or likely to perform any sexual acts on her partner. In a sexual encounter, the expectation is that ultra femmes are the ones that will be vaginally penetrated with sex toys or fingers. While not all participants spoke to the relationship between sexual penetration and femme identities, one group agreed that a requirement to being labelled femme was that an individual liked penetration (FG1). It is notable that outside of acknowledging that this role may be a little selfish, no pathology related to body image or gender identity was ascribed to the role of pillow princess. In general, it was the role of hard stud that engendered the most resistance, as will be described in the next section.

Debate within the community about lesbian gender As Burch (1998) has noted, some activists and theorists argue that the adoption of femme and stud roles and labels is an attempt to replicate the gendered sexual norms in which lesbians were raised in the mainstream heterosexual society. Several community leaders and focus group participants thought similarly. For example, in FG7, Wanda talked about the differences between White and Black lesbians that she saw:

“They are, and not just Whites, but [also] other non-African American lesbians see it as we are just two women that love each other. Whereas Blacks say we are two women that love each other, however we do have roles. You know, and we are trying to in a sense maybe ascribe to a heterosexual way of life, or way of operating, in our relationship.” (FG7)

Similarly, one of the community leaders whose work focused on sexuality and spirituality, Vicki, discussed her own experiences with previously claiming a butch identity. She indicated that letting go of this identity represented seeing it for what it was, a replication of heterosexuality. Kendra, another community leader who works in lesbian and gay health arenas, also reported that she felt that femme and butch labels appear to mimic traditional gender roles. However, she cautioned against the assumption that mimicking traditional gender roles automatically made lesbian gender label expression ‘artificial’. That is, many African American lesbians genuinely feel masculine or feminine and are truly attracted to ‘opposite’ lesbian gendered women. Nonetheless, these same women who identify as butch or femme are sometimes frustrated with the strict rules regarding these labels and identities.

In contrast, one focus group participant, Gail, who identified as femme and as a member of the ‘butch-femme community’, also conveyed to the group that there was a renaissance in the butch-femme movement that included reconfiguring butch and femme to mean more than a replication of heterosexual gender roles. She felt that contemporary butch-femme communities were more egalitarian than they had been when she was younger, where femmes were no longer placed in a subservient or domestic role. Some scholars have argued that femme and stud labels do not attempt to replicate heterosexist norms, but serve as mechanisms for de-gendering gendered lines by claiming masculinity in women’s bodies. The butch lesbian in particular functioned as ‘images to contradict the prevailing image of female sexuality as passive or even nonexistent’ (Burch 1998, 361). However, this argument suggests that lesbians who adopt lesbian gender labels do so as a political statement. While a masculine identity may operate as a radical rejection of traditional female expectations, no data from this study suggest that the adoption of lesbian gender labels among African American lesbians was intended to be a purposeful and political affront to mainstream gender expectations.

Despite the large role that lesbian gender played in organizing Black lesbian sexual life, every focus group discussion revealed individuals’ (within the group or people known by group participants) conscious and purposeful rejection of femme and stud labels/roles. There were several strategies used to reject the femme and stud categories within African American lesbian communities: refusing to label oneself; feeling bothered by labels; feeling hopeful that the cultural scripts will change; and avoiding hanging out with people who like labels. [...] [S]ome participants refused the labels for themselves and also expressed being bothered or irritated with the community trend to adopt labels. However, they also conveyed acceptance or tolerance for those that chose the labels. Further, the comments made by Tracey in FG6 indicate that the choice to refuse labels for oneself is not incongruent with having an attraction to women who possess the characteristics those labels define.

In contrast, other focus group participants expressed rejection or avoidance of femme and stud identified women. As discussed above, Gail was a participant who had previously avoided Black gay spaces because she had experienced butch-femme culture as oppressive, but then later came to adopt a femme identity. In contrast, the two other participants in her same group expressed strong negative judgments of the lesbian gender labels, particularly those expressed by stud or butch women. In particular, Anna evaluated masculine identified women in this way by making racial identity confusion analogous to masculine expression (e.g. scratching your crotch) among women:

“…if I walked around saying, ‘I’m White, so please address me as such’ I think I’d have a mental problem. If I walk around as a woman … and I’m scratching something I don’t have, I also see that as a slight mental deficiency.” (FG8) [...]

Between the extremes Despite a consistent description of femme and stud at the extremes of lesbian gender expression, participants also discussed several labels that fell between the ultra femme-hard stud ends of the continuum, such as ‘soft stud’ and ‘aggressive femme’. Labels like these represented lesbians that blended both masculine and feminine ways in their public expression and/or sexual behaviours, but with a purposeful leaning toward more masculine or feminine identity. The use of these terms appears contrary to the reports that there were dominant expectations of highly masculine or highly feminine modes of expression. Yet, the sets of sexual discourses that comprise a group’s sexual culture are inherently contradictory and often disjointed from one another (Schifter and Madrigal 2001). There was a collective acknowledgment that dominant sexual discourses in Black lesbian communities emphasized an expectation for choosing identities representing opposite sides of a single feminine-masculine continuum. Yet, this expectation did not prevent the existence of informal, less dominant sexual scripts that created room for blending characteristics along both masculine and feminine continua.

One of the community leader interviewees, Kendra, suggested that the mere presence of these alternative labels was evidence of a loosening of the hold that the traditional conceptualization of lesbian gender had on African American lesbians in Chicago. She asserted that the creation of new labels is one form of resistance to the strict dichotomy of stud and femme that arose out of the ‘old school’ African American lesbian sexual culture and provides more freedom for people to act in various ways and date different types of people. In this way, the development and adoption of more labels, and thus more roles and conceptualizations, could represent a quasi-organized movement towards changing the current gendered sexual discourse among Black lesbians.

Another core feature of sexual discourses, particularly those that are more formal (i.e. explicit) and dominant, is that they engender resistance (Schifter and Madrigal 2001). It was in the theme of lesbian gender that forms of resistance were most evident. As noted above, resistance strategies ranged from individual choices to not identify with femme or stud roles, to open rejection of other lesbians who chose those identities. Additionally, some Black lesbians discussed the adoption of labels that represented a blend of feminine and masculine traits which simultaneously embraced preferences for gendered ways of relating sexually and romantically and rejected strict rules for lesbian gender roles. Most of the resistance discussed centred on disagreements with the concepts of prescribed roles in romantic and sexual relationships. In cases where the frustration was directed specifically at those who identified with the labels, the discontent was with masculine women, not the femmes. This theme has been observed in other work documenting the experiences of Black studs and agressives (Moore 2006). This is notable because it indicates that resistance against femme-stud lesbian gender expression is not an unqualified rejection of all Black lesbians who express themselves in gendered ways. The Black lesbians in this study who disagreed with lesbian gender roles were not arguing for a movement toward the androgynous images that characterize many White lesbian communities (Taylor and Rupp 1993). Instead, the resistance is centred on the rejection of masculine women, studs, who dare to transgress the mainstream cultural expectations for proper female expression as well as a possible mainstream Black women’s cultural expectations of women to operate somewhere between gender-blending and feminine expression.

A radical side to lesbian gender sex roles The butch/stud and femme phenomenon as discussed by study participants also represents a shift from traditional notions of masculine and feminine expressions of sexuality, even though these views were not labelled as forms of resistance by participants. Though many focus group participants, community leaders and poets at the open mics argued that studs and femme roles were replications of heterosexual male and female sexual relationships, the sexual scripts for hard studs and pillow princesses appear to turn the traditional conceptualization of fe/male sex roles on its head. Heterosexual men may be expected to be the sexual aggressors (as studs were described to be by participants), but they are typically not socialized to view sexual pleasure of their female partner as the primary outcome. For example, in her historical analysis of the invention of the vibrator, Maines (1999) identified three steps of sex within the dominant US cultural script for sexuality: (1) foreplay or preparation for penetration; (2) penile intercourse; and (3) male orgasm. This type of sex is regarded as the ‘real thing’ in popular US culture. In contrast to this dominant script, masculine identified stud women prioritized the feminine partner’s orgasm. Similarly, whereas pillow princesses and other femmes appear to fall in line with heterosexual conceptualizations of sexual roles for women, where the woman’s role is the passive and non-assertive partner, they represent radical departures in other respects. In particular, participants indicated that ultra femmes and pillow princesses fully expected that the sexual act ended with their sexual climax. This appears to be a re-conceptualization of the connection between femininity and sexual prowess, deeming the feminine partner as the primary physical beneficiary. In essence, the feminine partner can be viewed as receptive, rather than passive (Burch 1998).

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