#google chrome crashed when i was halfway through writing this because opening a new tab apparently required too much power im

[tenbees]

(1) i read your entire response to the butch/femme question and i completely agree! i was really having a lot of trouble putting it into words, but for some reason there’s sth which always bothered me about the butch/femme subculture and stereotypes. butches aren’t men, and i don’t want people to think i’m gonna police who other people date/what kind of “roles” they get into, but when you see a masculine woman who, at times, passes for a man, dating a very obviously feminine woman, it always

(2) rubbed me the wrong way. like, if you see this couple out in public, maybe w their backs turned, at first glance you would assume they were a het couple. why is it such an “iconic” and old part of lesbian culture and herstory to imitate heterosexuality and heterosexual dynamics? why does a feminine person have to be “soft”, sexy, wear red lipstick, and be “protected” by her masculine, “strong”, muscly, more stoic partner? it seems to me like a v obvious parallel to hetero dynamics

(3) and there’s also this weird surge in lesbian/wlw communities where some lesbians are stealing terms from gay men (top/bottom) as a way to allude to the dom/sub kinks they’re into. “i’m a strong butch and i love STRAPPING my girly sweet sexy feminine partner w my butch cock!” like, what’re y’all doing? what is this obsession w straps and not being able to talk about anything else? and why is there so much of an emphasis on masc/fem pairings rather than like, idk, regular lesbians who

(4) don’t really fit into either category? maybe some lesbians don’t particularly want a masc partner to “protect” them and “strap them down and rail them.” maybe some lesbians just present averagely, like wear jeans and have medium length hair and want to date other women who present casually and not overtly masculine or overtly feminine? what about butches dating other butches, or two regular feminine lesbians dating each other? this hyperfocus on butch/femme completely erases lesbians who

(5) don’t identify with that label, don’t care for being “soft” and weak for their masc partner, & aren’t at all interested in weird power dynamics n yin & yang roles within their relationships, which again, seems to keep alluding to heterosexuality and the complementary masculine, dominant, emotionless partner who “looks after” his feminine, girly, makeup-wearing, subservient wife/gf or something. some lesbians are just normal and don’t want to imitate hetero roles in their sex and love lives.

yeah butch/femme relationships make me... uncomfortable is a strong word, but maybe uncomfortable lite lol? in a way that relationships between two butches or two feminine women don’t, and i think it’s because of the parallels to het relationships. it’s not really clear what butch/femme is supposed to be, because some people will say that they aren’t playing any role and that they’re just naturally feminine and that they just naturally desire a masculine partner who they can stitch back together in private while being protected by them in public or something (which seems so fucking specific to be something that comes about naturally and isn’t influenced by literally anything lol) while others will say that it Is roleplaying specifically to facilitate women fucking women and will fucking. write guides for butches on how to act more butch when asking femmes out, which just seems So artificial and ridiculous to me. but whichever it is, i do feel uncomfortable every time i see, like, a femme saying that she never feels more femme than when she’s vacuuming in a dress and uses her ankle to lift up the cord or when she’s getting strapped into a mattress, or a butch saying she never feels more butch than when she’s packing or a femme is sucking her strap (all of which i’ve seen) because the parallels to heterosexuality are So fucking obvious.

i can understand why it’s iconic, especially because that sort of culture has sprung up all over the world and it seems common for budding lesbian communities to have some sort of heterosexual-esque roleplay, for safety and because they had no other relationship models, i just hate how it’s taboo to question it or to even insinuate that it imitates het relationships when it’s so blatant. i don’t understand how people can deny it? and i’m not talking about all masculine/feminine relationships--who cares if people who present differently are in a relationship--it’s just when they start talking about their roles and waxing poetic about how femmes and butches are meant for each other that i’m like... the fuck are you going on about lol.

also don’t get me started on the strap thing 💀 the phrase butch cock is my fucking power word kill i cannot express how ridiculous and revolting it sounds lol. i think like 99% if not all of the ‘lesbians’ obsessed with straps are bi, and it makes sense that it would be such a huge part of butch/femme culture because so many of the original femmes and even butches were bi. reading through the persistent desire, so many of the women mention having previous male lovers or knowing femmes especially who left butch/femme culture to marry men. not to be ~controversial~ but it would make sense if a wlw subculture that heavily involves strap ons and masculine/feminine yin/yang roleplaying was/is very popular among kinsey 4/5 bi women.