Butch und Femme sind Geschlechterausdrücke, die in der lesbischen und queeren Kultur verwurzelt sind: Butch schöpft aus Männlichkeit, Femme aus Weiblichkeit, und beide sind eigenständige Identitäten, keine Kopien heterosexueller Rollen.
Definition
Both are more than style descriptions: for many people they are core identities with their own history, culture and codes, and neither one is an imitation of a straight role.
Butch names a masculine way of being in the world that developed inside lesbian and queer communities. It can describe how someone dresses and carries themselves, and for many butches it is closer to a gender than a style: something that would still be true if nobody else were looking.
Femme names femininity claimed on queer terms. The distinction femmes usually draw is between femininity performed for men and femininity that exists inside a queer context and is directed at other queer people. Femme is not the same as simply being a feminine woman who happens to be a lesbian, and femmes have spent decades explaining that difference.
Neither word requires the other. Butch/butch and femme/femme relationships are ordinary, and plenty of people are neither.
Flags
Distinct community flags exist for butch and femme, neither with a single universally adopted version. The butch flag in circulation is a five-stripe design in oranges, tan, white and dark blue, generally dated to 2019. The femme flag in circulation is a five-stripe design running from dark pink through white to purple, generally dated to 2017. Documented designers are not reliably established for either.
Butch/Femme entstand als sichtbare soziale Dynamik in der lesbischen Bar-Kultur der Arbeiterklasse der 1940er und 1950er Jahre in den USA und Großbritannien - Überlebensstrategien und Gemeinschaftsstrukturen für Frauen, die keinen anderen sichtbaren Rahmen für eine queere Identität hatten. Die Daughters of Bilitis (gegründet 1955) rieten zunächst vom Butch/Femme-Ausdruck ab, weil er polizeiliche Aufmerksamkeit erregte; auch der lesbische Feminismus der 1970er kritisierte ihn als Wiederholung heterosexueller Geschlechterrollen. In den 1980er und 1990er Jahren wurden Butch/Femme zurückerobert und als authentische Ausdrucksformen queerer Geschlechterkultur gefeiert.
Häufige Mythen
Myth: butch lesbians want to be men
Gender expression and gender identity are separate. Most butches are women and identify firmly as such. Some butches are non-binary, and some trans men have a butch history they still claim. None of that makes masculinity in a woman a sign of anything.
Myth: butch/femme copies straight roles
The similarity is surface. A butch is not a stand-in for a husband, and femmes have historically been the ones with the social cover and often the ones doing the protecting. Both roles developed inside a community organising itself, not by borrowing from outside.
Myth: femmes are not visibly queer, so they have it easier
Femme invisibility cuts both ways: less street harassment, and also being read as straight inside queer spaces and having to come out repeatedly to your own community. Femmes have written about this for forty years.
Myth: butch/femme is outdated
It is older than most identity vocabulary in this guide and still in active use, which is roughly the opposite of outdated.
Bekannte Personen
Leslie Feinberg (1949-2014) - Autor:in von Stone Butch Blues (1993); grundlegender Text zur butch-lesbischen Identität
Joan Nestle (1940-) - Mitgründerin der Lesbian Herstory Archives; Essays über Femme-Identität und Butch/Femme-Kultur in A Restricted Country
Amber Hollibaugh - Femme-Aktivistin und Filmemacherin; setzte sich für Femme-Sichtbarkeit innerhalb des Feminismus ein
