Butch & Femme

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 emerged as a visible social system in working-class lesbian bar culture in the United States and the United Kingdom in the 1940s and 1950s. In an era when there was no public language for being a lesbian, butch/femme functioned as recognition, as a way of finding each other, and as a structure of mutual protection in bars subject to police raids.

It has been argued about ever since, mostly from inside. The Daughters of Bilitis, founded in 1955, discouraged butch presentation on the grounds that it attracted police attention. Lesbian feminism in the 1970s criticised butch/femme as replicating heterosexual roles. From the 1980s onwards it was reclaimed forcefully, particularly through writing: Joan Nestle's essays, Leslie Feinberg's Stone Butch Blues in 1993, and Amber Hollibaugh's work on femme desire all argued that butch/femme was an authentic queer gender culture rather than an imitation of anything.

The vocabulary has continued to expand: stone butch, soft butch, futch, high femme, tomboy femme. Butch and femme are also used by non-binary and trans people, which some see as a natural extension and others contest, and that argument is live rather than settled.

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.

• Leslie Feinberg (1949 to 2014), author of Stone Butch Blues (1993), the foundational novel of butch experience.
• Joan Nestle (born 1940), co-founder of the Lesbian Herstory Archives and author of A Restricted Country.
• Amber Hollibaugh (1946 to 2023), femme activist, filmmaker and author of My Dangerous Desires. She died on 20 October 2023, aged 77.