Butch and Femme / Dom and Sub

[Anniejustagirl]

I also want to add to this thread that in my 25 odd years of living life as a dyke i am seen as the tom boy type. Im too girly to be butch. But because of the tomboy thing i am expected to go for femmes and for me to make the first move. Ive been very attrated to soft butches and wouldve loved for them to make the first move.

This brings up an interesting thought for me.

I never cease to be amazed by the fact that many, not all, lesbians see the natural order of relationships as butch/femme. Is this something that we have borrowed and bought into from the het community, or is it simply the natural order of things with some people?

I self describe as soft butch. I have dated femme, butch and andro. But when i am with another butch... the Crap we take is amazing? I have also seen two femme friends together take grief from many in the community. What is That about? Isn't it inherently our 'sameness' that is the attraction? Why do some feel that you have to be as far apart as possible from one another's self-id to be accepted for the couple that you are?

And as i said... i know this does not happen with everyone in the community, but the numbers that DO seem to buy into this butch/femme requirement, just floor me.


Oh, and femininity Could you possibly consider this my first move?! or second or third?!

 

[Equinoxe]

I never cease to be amazed by the fact that many, not all, lesbians see the natural order of relationships as butch/femme. Is this something that we have borrowed and bought into from the het community, or is it simply the natural order of things with some people?

Now, there is something I think that we agree on. I am downright offended by that idea, as I said earlier in the thread. It is complete and utter nonsense, which is, in my opinion, a ridiculous borrowing from the heterosexual community -- and the sooner that idea dies, the better. Masculine/feminine polarity is barely applicable in opposite-sex relationships, it's completely extraneous and unsuited to same-sex ones.

Which is not to say that there is anything wrong with personal preference along those lines, but it is personal preference, and when people pretend that it is somehow more and somehow their personal preference is the natural order of things, I can get a little offended. I am no fan of that contrived same-sex heteronormativity.

 

[Nirvanadragones]

I can understand that entirely and I can appreciate that mindset and world-view.

You're welcome and I hope my response didn't seem too scolding, it's just that particular generalisation (when meant with conviction and not incidental) happens to be something I have fairly recently come to dislike -- I was just having a similar discussion the other week. I should say that right after I had finished and posted that, I really did not wish to actually have to debate that topic, so I was hoping selfishly the the thread would die, but I'm pleased that it didn't.

As for yin and yang, I like a little wu wei.

Your responce was not scolding at all. As I said, my statement was unclear to begin with.

P.S. If you are Wu Wei, nothing cannot be accomplished
Wu Bu Wei.

 

[Equinoxe]

Your responce was not scolding at all. As I said, my statement was unclear to begin with.

P.S. If you are Wu Wei, nothing cannot be accomplished
Wu Bu Wei.

Excellent, I am pleased to hear it.

Be still like the mountain and flow like the great river.

 

[amysecret]

What a wonderful thread. So many thoughtful opinions.

 

[Queersetti]

What a wonderful thread. So many thoughtful opinions.

I agree. I have nothing to add to it, but I've enjoyed reading it.

 

[SophiaY]

Some random thoughts

(For what little that they are worth)

1. Butch and femme are more “how I see myself in the world” than specific sexual inclinations.

2. What is most attractive about butch women is their bravery. The courage it takes is something some of us, ahem, older women, can and do deeply respect and appreciate.

3. Labels are simply shorthand – with all the faults and advantages of being able to quickly describe. (laughing – I’ve been called, not inaccurately everything from a lippie to a power femme)

4. For better or worse, we are meshed into a larger cultural gestalt – a symphony with themes and harmonies that make us vibrate in inescapable ways (I like to think of us as being a wonderful, stirring, melody within – but that is my prejudice)

 

[hugo_sam]

If I may interject a moment:
I have no opinion on the subject, but as some others have said, I have enjoyed reading this thread immensely and found it very educational and informative.
Several friends have directed me here and I thank them.
A healthy, polite and courteous discussion is a breath of fresh air. Thank you.

JMHO

Hugo

 

[Anniejustagirl]

(For what little that they are worth)

1. Butch and femme are more “how I see myself in the world” than specific sexual inclinations.

2. What is most attractive about butch women is their bravery. The courage it takes is something some of us, ahem, older women, can and do deeply respect and appreciate.

3. Labels are simply shorthand – with all the faults and advantages of being able to quickly describe. (laughing – I’ve been called, not inaccurately everything from a lippie to a power femme)

4. For better or worse, we are meshed into a larger cultural gestalt – a symphony with themes and harmonies that make us vibrate in inescapable ways (I like to think of us as being a wonderful, stirring, melody within – but that is my prejudice)

Look Cupcake... please do not undervalue your thoughts, hippie woman!

!. i agree completely.

2. i do like that thought.

3. shorthand is an excellent term for it

4. i do like your prejudice.

and if i might add a 5. Could i get a nibble of that cupcake if i promise *fingers crossed* to leave the flower undisturbed?

 

[neonflux]

A very long response but I've been reading for a long time!

First, Etoile, thank you for letting this thread continue, and for renaming it - wouldn’t have found it otherwise and it’s fascinating. Please forgive my posting so much but I came to this late and just recently read through all of the other posts... Clearly, the discussion has sparked a lot of thought.…

While I realize you are discussing a one night stand, you raise a few interesting questions regarding fem/fem relationships. I have never met a femme who was domm, nor have I met a dyke who was ever polite to a chick in a mini-skirt, except maybe to get laid. I find the lesbian community is not much different than the heterosexual one. Just questions and observations.

Are there indeed the assumptions here that I seem to see on the relationship between gender, gender expression and power? Are you suggesting that to be “feminine” within a heterosexual context automatically implies submission and that those who play out the roles of butch and femme within a queer context are only repeating this heterosexual pattern?

First, I would suggest that even within a patriarchal heterosexual context there is room for women to express power and agency and to do so as women. Having just seen both “Capote” and “Good Night and Good Luck,” Babe Paley comes immediately to mind (responsible for the quote, “One can never be too rich or too thin”). She operated through the “traditional female spheres” of women’s organizations, dinner parties/salons, and charity work (open in the main to wealthy women, I will concede). For decades she openly exercised extraordinary power not only over social but economic interactions and relationships among the most powerful people in the U.S. Unless one immediately assigns power to masculinity (I can hear some people argue that Babe Paley was “masculine” in her exercise of power), then she epitomizes the “traditional” and “femme” woman capable of wielding extraordinary power.

The concept of submission is a tricky one within the context of traditional cultures. Take the role of the traditional Japanese woman. When I lived in Japan, I spent a lot of time studying Noh theatre with a group of older women who were some of the most enjoyably powerful women I have ever met. These women were now “in control” of their families. They not only ruled the relationships within the family, they took trips on their own and pursued their own interests without ever getting the “permission” of men. While traditionally, they might have been expected when out with their husbands to carry most of the packages and to walk 10 feet behind – the only picture that many non-Japanese folks see – they also had complete control over their family’s finances. Not only are stories of irresponsible men being foiled in their spendthrift plans by smarter and more level-headed women a comic staple of the culture, banks will actually call the wife to get her permission when her husband tries to withdraw any sizeable amount of money from the family bank account.

I present as femme – feel like I am in drag when I dress “butch.” While one of the two women I am seeing right now is just as femme as I am, I find myself most often attracted to women who present as either androgynous or “soft butch” – my other girlfriend at this moment very much fits into the other category. We met at a queer/alt sex party. Eyes met across a crowded room, etc. and the rest is history. We spent the rest of the evening together and have been seeing each other regularly ever since. Others who were there were actually laughing with affectionate amusement about the immediately evident “butch-femme” attraction we had for each other.

It [butch/femme] is complete and utter nonsense, which is, in my opinion, a ridiculous borrowing from the heterosexual community -- and the sooner that idea dies, the better. Masculine/feminine polarity is barely applicable in opposite-sex relationships, it's completely extraneous and unsuited to same-sex ones.

I disagree. Certainly, the interplay between masculine and feminine is extraordinarily complex both ourselves and between people, regardless of our gender identity or sexual orientation. And while the nature of this interplay is strongly influenced by culture, I would content that the concepts of masculine and feminine are not solely cultural constructs. Male/female is the primary division within a biological species – there is a biological basis to gender differences that we are only beginning to understand. While I would agree with feminist researchers such as Anne Fausto-Sterling (Sexing the Body) that much of the current research (questions and findings) is influenced by culture, this does not negate that biological differences exist and that there is some biological basis to both sexual orientation and the continuum of gender identity.

Case in point – the recent emergence of sex hormone research and the use of sex hormones to create biological changes in transsexual individuals. While the primary goal with such hormone therapy is to create visible changes in secondary sex characteristics, I have a number of friends, both MTF and FTM, whom I have supported through transition and to a one, they have said that the psychological and emotional changes they experienced while taking hormones far outweighed the physical ones.

If indeed all gender is then, a complex interplay between biology and culture, what better place to experiment with and explore such notions than in the queer community where we are not tied to traditional cultural notions of these concepts?

I never cease to be amazed by the fact that many, not all, lesbians see the natural order of relationships as butch/femme. Is this something that we have borrowed and bought into from the het community, or is it simply the natural order of things with some people?... I self describe as soft butch. I have dated femme, butch and andro. But when i am with another butch... the Crap we take is amazing? I have also seen two femme friends together take grief from many in the community.

Hi Annie, I love your comments. In my own experience, the ways we play with butch/femme questions the cultural foundations for conventional social notions about what male and female are, can and should be. Drag, gender-fuck, gender play in our communities – they all expand, subvert, extend, defy, and I find this playing out in my own sexual relationships. The response you get when with another butch is evidence of that. When it comes to that butch/femme mix, I am most often the “top” when my butch girlfriend and I have sex… We make decisions about where to go, what to do, when to do it etc. on a very equitable basis, but neither of these negate the fact that the “butch/femme mystique” is still very much at the core of our attraction to each other.

Regarding power…

Now, purely with regard to sex, you might have a slightly better case, but I think it would still be dependent upon the perspectives and intentions of the involved parties -- which need not even agree and that adds a wholly different element. If she feels that she's in control when she does something and you feel that you're in control -- which is it? Or if she has no sense of power being involved and you do -- which is it? Dominance and submission, power-play, is a purely subjective matter.

A point on which we definitely agree! The assumption that femme = submissive and butch = dom, others have already disputed so I won’t say more about that. However, the question of who exerts power in a sub/dom relationship can again be a complex one. Pat(rick) Califia, when he was still presenting as a woman wrote an amazing story about a woman (sub) who was treated to a night of whipping by a group of woman (doms). In the end, part of her assertion was that it was actually the sub who controlled all of the interactions and so exercised overt power in this scenario – it was her request for pain that drew the other women to her, it was her desires that they were fulfilling as they whipped her, and it was her and her capacity for pain that in the end the other women worshipped.

I don't think you (general you, not specific you) can prove that all human interaction involves power. If power is an element of all relationships and every single human interaction, then there either has to be an objective dominant and submissive role, which cannot be demonstrated, or everyone's subjective ideas of power would have to be innately tuned in to every interaction and everyone would have to, on an essential level, regard every interaction as being about power, which again cannot be proven.

When it comes to individual interactions, yes. However, when looking at human interaction within a larger context and over time, questions of power and submission (and yes, I’ve been rereading Foucault recently) are of utmost importance to consider if we are to ever move beyond traditional patriarchal notions of the same. While my ideal is a society in which relationships, from the most intimate to those which occur in our largest social and economic networks, are structured on equity, there are very few countries in which there are more than beginning, isolated movements towards this ideal. In the U.S., the Bush administration bases everything it does on traditional notions of power expressed as absolute dominance – this is also the prevailing business norm and I have found it to be the norm in much of the progressive political activist work I have done. I would also suggest that, as evidenced by the rates of relationship violence among both straight and queer folk in this country (I am bi and my one physically abusive relationship was with a woman), I would assert that things have changed significantly since the 1950’s, it is still a guiding force in a large number (perhaps the majority) of personal, intimate relationships as well.

~ Neon

 

[MissBri]

 

[Equinoxe]

I disagree. Certainly, the interplay between masculine and feminine is extraordinarily complex both ourselves and between people, regardless of our gender identity or sexual orientation. And while the nature of this interplay is strongly influenced by culture, I would content that the concepts of masculine and feminine are not solely cultural constructs. Male/female is the primary division within a biological species – there is a biological basis to gender differences that we are only beginning to understand. While I would agree with feminist researchers such as Anne Fausto-Sterling (Sexing the Body) that much of the current research (questions and findings) is influenced by culture, this does not negate that biological differences exist and that there is some biological basis to both sexual orientation and the continuum of gender identity.

I was talking about this thread earlier, and I was saying that no one took issue with what I said that was on topic and that everything I discussed at length was a tangent. It would seem that things have changed, although this is actually still a tangent, but I'm afraid I shall have to take issue with your taking issue with when I took issue (ha!).

Firstly, I would have to say that I am not disputing that there is a difference between sexes nor that there is a fundamentally biological aspect to sex and gender. If that is how that come across then I am afraid that was not entirely clear on the subject. What I was attempting to address in that portion of the diatribe was the idea that there are masculine people and feminine people and that masculine people are attracted to feminine people and vice versa -- which is, in essence, the oversimplified version that has been the mainstay of Western society, and many others as well.

I agree that there is a biological basis to sex and gender identity and that there is a biological basis to sexual orientation, although the mechanism for the latter two is not well understood. However, as with most facets of the nature/nurture debate, both the strict nature and the strict nurture position are incomplete. It is not purely a biological matter, nor is it purely a cultural and cognitive matter (the role of the individual being often overlooked).

Nature is not terribly precise, and while there is clearly a trend within nature towards male and female and the necessity of producing young, often things aren't that simple. Sex, such as we conceive of it, is determined in human beings by several factors, which may or may not agree with each other. A person has sex chromosomes, gonads, external sex organs, hormones, secondary sex characteristics, and a gender identity -- there are several possibilities for each within the continuum of male and female and while they are not completely independent each other, they are not fully dependent upon each other either. There, of course, the cultural idea comes in very strongly, as there are no third options in society -- you mentioned Anne Fausto-Sterling earlier and her ideas fit in here rather well. I know that you're aware of all of that and I'm not sure that we need to go into a tangent about things like Swyer Syndrome or XX Male Syndrome, fascinating though though that topic is (if you'd like to discuss things like that though, I would be more than willing), so I think we can move to the crux of the matter.

None of that has anything to do with same-sex relationships. There is no [known] biological basis for a gender duality within a single gender. While it is perfectly understandable given the cultural precedent and the emphasis placed upon masculine and feminine and a supposed dynamic between that the idea would become so deeply ingrained and would carry over when it has lost all basis, unless one wishes to maintain that there is a fundamental biological difference, analogous to sex, between women who are butch and women who are femme, the idea can only be regarded as a cultural artefact. The biological bases of masculine and feminine qua male and female are only valid when discussing male and female -- they have nothing to do with female and female.

If indeed all gender is then, a complex interplay between biology and culture, what better place to experiment with and explore such notions than in the queer community where we are not tied to traditional cultural notions of these concepts?

The straight community. They can keep their cultural ideas, and biology is a non-issue in same-sex relationships. You're right in that we are afforded the opportunity to be free of those traditional cultural notions (as much as is possible at any rate), I'd prefer it that we not squander that freedom in recreating those notions haphazardly re-made to our own perceived realities.

Personally, I'd rather live my life than spend it as an experiment to test the validity of someone else's ideas about humanity -- but there we are back to Lao-Tzu (who, incidentally, considered feminine and masculine to be opposites inherent to nature and tended to group feminine with everything that people are less than fond of, but we'll ignore that for now) and his idea of Wu Wei. I shall spend more time being myself and less time worrying about who and what I am.

 

[amsubone]

For what it's worth...

I'm bi and a switch. I've been with girly girls, butch women, effeminate men and burly guys.

For me, it's easy to be with a genuine person. As I've said elsewhere, it's what's in your heart, not in your pants.

Well said! Thank you.

While at times it seems we need descriptors so that we can communicate our thoughts and bring some order into our thinking. I think we need to be careful that we don't allow them to become labels that allow us to pigeon-hole people.

It seems we are always trying to fit people into little boxes by sexual proclivity, by personality, by whatever manner or means we may use. Whenever we do that, we begin to lose the fullness/wholeness of who that person really is. When you label me as fat, or gay, or dom, or Hispanic, or whatever that label might be that does not represent all of who I am, only a that portion you have labeled.

Sadly, all too often, once the label is attatched, I can become nothing more than what that label allows me to be in your mind without creating stress and difficulty in our relationship, sometimes to the failure of what was started as a good thing.

 

[kbate]

Sadly, all too often, once the label is attatched, I can become nothing more than what that label allows me to be in your mind without creating stress and difficulty in our relationship, sometimes to the failure of what was started as a good thing.

I think the label also works in that, once you accept the label "butch" or "femme" you tend to adapt to match the label. The desire for acceptance is strong, and perhaps no stronger anywhere than in the glbt community. Those who do not fit into the norms, are often pushed into the fringes or left in the cold.

Too often I see people moving toward stereotypical definitions as they progress in life, and in my opinion it is a loss for all involved.

 

[amsubone]

I think the label also works in that, once you accept the label "butch" or "femme" you tend to adapt to match the label. The desire for acceptance is strong, and perhaps no stronger anywhere than in the glbt community. Those who do not fit into the norms, are often pushed into the fringes or left in the cold.

Too often I see people moving toward stereotypical definitions as they progress in life, and in my opinion it is a loss for all involved.[/QUOTE

Relationship is hard work and, unfortunately, in our desire for acceptance we can be as guilty of doing this to ourselves as we are of allowing others to do it to us. Or guilty of the same to others we care about.