Butch et femme sont des expressions de genre enracinées dans la culture lesbienne et queer : butch puise dans la masculinité, femme dans la féminité, et les deux sont des identités à part entière, pas des copies des rôles hétéros.
Définition
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.
Le couple butch/femme est apparu comme dynamique sociale visible dans la culture des bars lesbiens populaires des années 1940 et 1950, aux États-Unis et au Royaume-Uni - des stratégies de survie et des structures communautaires pour des femmes qui n'avaient aucun autre cadre visible d'identité queer. Les Daughters of Bilitis (fondées en 1955) ont d'abord découragé l'expression butch/femme, car elle attirait l'attention de la police ; le féminisme lesbien des années 1970 l'a également critiquée comme une reproduction des rôles de genre hétérosexuels. Les années 1980 et 1990 ont vu une réappropriation et une célébration du butch/femme comme expressions authentiques de la culture de genre queer.
Idées reçues
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.
Personnalités
Leslie Feinberg (1949-2014) - Auteur·rice de Stone Butch Blues (1993) ; texte fondateur sur l'identité lesbienne butch
Joan Nestle (1940-) - Cofondatrice des Lesbian Herstory Archives ; essais sur l'identité femme et la culture butch/femme dans A Restricted Country
Amber Hollibaugh - Militante femme et réalisatrice ; a défendu la visibilité de l'identité femme au sein du féminisme
