femme bi pride 💖

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See, that’s what the app is perfect for.

Sounds perfect Wahhhh, I don’t wanna
altinbi
altinbi

image

femme bisexualgender flag

a combo of two flags, both originally by @nbgender

(& a newer alt 2 this femme bisexualgender flag tha used his older femme flag)

[Image description:

A flag with 7 horizontal stripes. The center stripe is the thickest, then on either side of it is a thin stripe, then two medium stripes on either side of those.

The colors, from top to bottom, are dark blue, blue, light blue, light lavender-pink, light purple, purple, dark purple.

End description.]

transfemtiara

Why Butch & Femme are not lesbian exclusive terms

transfemtiara

Quick note: This is not including the term “stud,” as I found there is not enough research documenting its usage outside of black lesbian circles. That is not to be said it is lesbian exclusive necessarily, I just do not have an opinion.

Before writing this article, as a transgender lesbian myself, I was pretty on the fence about whether or not non-lesbians could use the terms femme/butch. 

The terms “butch” and “femme” are terms that describe an LGBT person’s relationship with their gender and/or presentation. Currently, it is a topic of heavy debate whether or not it is an exclusively lesbian term. I am here to show sources and evidence which suggest that it has been historically used to refer to any LGBT person, and not just lesbians.

“Stone Butch Blues” is a book that people like to quote a lot, which is fair, because it is an amazing book! This book does seem to use the term “femme” for both men and women, seen here. (pictures by @bisexualfemme​, Stone Butch Blues by Leslie Feinberg, p. 32 & p. 300) Leslie Feinberg grew up during the Stonewall period, which makes hir a primary source.

The LGBTQ+ zine “Femmes Unite!” from 2007 shows more usage of the terms “femme” and “butch” for non-lesbians, such as quotes like “My new friend was a fabulously femme fag… I learned so much about the kind of person I wanted to be from him.” and the poem titled “femmes love boys too” by Katrina Enyeart. It is also commonly used for LGBTQ+ ballroom terms, seen here, most notably the term “butch queen.” It is also found in this book about ballroom culture in Detroit.

Numerous modern sources have used the term “femme” to describe non-lesbians, such as this academic paper which states that “…femme is an identity that transgresses gender and sexuality and is not limited solely to cis gender lesbian and bisexual women.” GLAAD  also includes two-spirit and “masculine people” in their definition of butch seen here, and Queer Voices writes “…butch-femme identities are very stereotyped to the lesbian community. However, this can be seen throughout the queer community” on this article about femme and butch identities.

One woman wrote about her experience being a lesbian in the 1970s here, writing “Through my associating with lesbian feminists, I learned to regard bisexual women…as “fence sitters,”…untrustworthy because of their association with men.”

So why do most pages talking about butch and femme labels exclusively use it to mean lesbians? There are a few reasons for this, a big one being the lesbian separatist movement and political lesbianism, which later evolved into the TERF movement you see today. Taking an excerpt out of @star-anise‘s post here, ““Lesbian” used to be a word that simply meant a woman who loved other women. Lesbian groups turned against bisexual and pansexual women as a class in the 1970s and 80s, when radical feminists began to teach that to escape the Patriarchy’s evil influence, women needed to cut themselves off from men entirely.”

In summary, “butch” and “femme” are terms that can be used to describe any member of the LGBTQ+ community, and the notion that they can’t has ties to the lesbian separatist and TERF movements.

bisexualfemme

Thank you so much for tagging us! This is a wonderful thinkpiece 💕