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A quest for authenticity: contemporary butch gender

Sex Roles: A Journal of Research, May, 2004 by Heidi M. Levitt, Katherine R. Hiestand

Within the last 15 years, there has been an explosion of writing on butch and femme experience. Much of this literature is in the form of theory, biography, poetry, fiction, and erotica (e.g., Burana & Due, 1994; Butler, 1991; Harris & Crocker, 1997; Munt, 1998; Nestle, 1992), and it describes the great enthusiasm with which gender is being explored and challenged across lesbian communities. In contemporary feminist writing, "gender" commonly is distinguished from the biological "sex" to delineate it as a cultural construct that is socially developed (e.g., Unger & Crawford, 1993). Similarly, in this emerging body of literature, "lesbian genders," such as "butch" and "femme," have been assigned the status of genders. Like heterosexual genders, these lesbian genders can function culturally to structure expectations of personal identity, social interactions, and romantic play, and allow for communities composed of participants who ascribe to one sex, "female," but to a diversity of gender identities. The experience of claiming a lesbian gender, however, has rarely been explored empirically, which leaves questions about its interaction with personal, interpersonal, and cultural factors unanswered.

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The Politics of Lesbian Gender

The study of lesbian gender is complicated by a history that has attributed different political meanings to these genders, which has led to varied degrees of acceptance and suspicion across decades and across lesbian communities. The genders "butch" and "femme" arose in the United States in the 1940s and 1950s, in the aftermath of World War II--when women's roles shifted and allowed them to don pants and create the possibility of a subsequent butch aesthetic (see Feinberg, 1996, for a history of cross-dressing before this period). The ability to "pass" as men offered butch women opportunities for employment, a safety from harassment, as well as an identity within the lesbian community.

To participate in the lesbian community, working class women of this era adopted either a butch or femme appearance and interactional style (e.g., Lapovsky-Kennedy & Davis, 1993). Whereas femme women exaggerated signs of traditional femininity, butch women's adoption of a style read by heterosexuals as "masculine" marked them as lesbian and left them subject to frequent discrimination. The emerging visibility of the butch-femme culture was too threatening for many middle- or upper-class lesbians--as they had more to lose should their names be publicly disclosed, as often was the case following police raids of bars (Faderman, 1991).

There are many documentations of the radical change in lesbian culture in response to the feminist movement of the 1960s (e.g., Feinberg, 1993; Halberstam, 1998a; Kane & Coolidge, 2000). Both heterosexual and lesbian feminists at the time viewed butch/femme dynamics as mimicking the patriarchal relationships that they were challenging. Lesbians who presented their gender in these forms were viewed as atavistic; butches were accused of claiming male privilege, and femmes were accused of encouraging the objectification of women. These feministlesbians adopted an "androgynous" aesthetic that minimized gender-cues and embodied their resistance to the social restraints of masculine and feminine genders, which differed from Bem's (Bem, 1974) later use of androgyny that referred to individuals who have both masculine and feminine gender traits. During this era, butch and femme women either withdrew or adopted the androgynous aesthetic of that culture, as a choice preferable to facing exclusion from the feminist-lesbian community.

In the 1980s, the butch/femme culture began to reemerge in selected communities as women reclaimed these identities (e.g., Faderman, 1991). This resurgence of butch-femme, however, occurred within a feminist lesbian context as well as a more progressive mainstream culture. As a result, there was greater flexibility in constructing butch and femme identities (e.g., Nestle, 1992). Although traditionally this culture was associated with the working class, there is some evidence that the class divisions that existed until recently (Weber, 1996) may be fading today (Levitt & Horne, 2002). This movement reconstrued butch-femme as lesbianism motivated by sexual desire--in stark contrast to the political lesbianism of the early feminist movement.

Although butch/femme may have been shaped by the images of heterosexual gender at the time (e.g., Halberstam, 1998a; Strickland, 2002), this culture remained radically different in a number of ways. It allowed women to form lesbian relationships, to resist public discrimination, and to develop gender categories that were distinct from either male or female genders. Today, the positioning of butch-femme genders has been complicated by its history, as many lesbian communities reject these genders and uphold early feminist values, whereas others celebrate the possibilities of adopting and shaping lesbian gender identities. Questions remain about how women who reclaim these identities reconstitute their meaning in our postmodern age.

Health Care Industry

A quest for authenticity: contemporary butch gender

Sex Roles: A Journal of Research, May, 2004 by Heidi M. Levitt, Katherine R. Hiestand

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