What did you learn from the butches in this project?
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Butches are not trying to fit into heteronormative societal ideals.
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Butch [boo ch] | noun (butches) Someone who identifies and presents as masculine.
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Or just more open to trans community and maybe have, like, butches.
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There are 14 butches in this project, and their stories are so varied.
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You say the family is often the initial place of rejected masculinity for young butches.
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For many butches, and in my own experience, society has such prejudices towards masculine women.
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I really wanted to show examples of butches with these meaningful communities of people around them.
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"She used to sing for all us stone butches," a community elder tells her, and Cheryl is shocked.
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"HAGS in Your Face" is an unparalleled account of HAGS, a lesbian gang of San Francisco tough butches.
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Let those young butches know that we're out here and that you can live and be butch and be happy.
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His actors are colorfully styled as lesbian archetypes, with soft butches sprinkled in among the eye-shadowed punks and earth mothers.
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Other butches noticed how people treated the more masculine woman in the relationship differently, assuming they would be less nurturing with the kids.
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Soft butch [sawft boo ch] | adjective (soft butches, soft butch people) Used to describe a queer woman who presents masculine, but also slightly feminine.
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I knew that hot older butches, even single ones, were out there, in my city and beyond, but I didn't know where to find them.
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She writes the lives of the SM dykes, the trans women excluded by normative lesbians, the poor butches who are for some reason never, ever on television.
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We're a diverse group of people, with butches and femmes and lots of people whose gender presentation falls somewhere in the middle, and we all deserve to be seen.
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The closest thing I had to representation in media was the cult classic The Aggressives, a homage to the handsome Black butches of New York City in the 90s.
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Not only because I had no intention of falling in love with anyone else, but because I thought hooking up with hot older butches would remain the stuff of my fantasies.
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While it may have felt that femmes were defined by their butches in the past, "femme" is now a term that many queer people relate to regardless of the relationships they're in.
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The deck is somewhat tongue-in-cheek, and each suit represents a different lesbian stereotype — couples, jocks, femmes, and butches — but it serves as an iconic documentation of queer life in the '90s.
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So many femmes I knew were straight-A students, girls who knew how to put food on the table, like the femmes of decades past who'd done sex work to keep their unemployable butches in whiskey.
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It's a violation of consent that feels awful regardless of sexuality, I'm sure, but being a butch lesbian with chest dysphoria makes it worse, especially while knowing the history of butches' bodily autonomy being violated by the state.
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Created by Meaghan O'Malley of Butches and Babies and Katie Horowitz, the account celebrates the femmeness at the heart of bird identity: "Birds just don't give a fuck, which I think is inherently femme," O'Malley told Mashable in a phone interview.
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"Her gender does not fall within 'Chicano' and the people she studies with her camera are butches and femmes and gender-nonconforming," said Ms. Gómez-Barris, the head of social sciences and cultural studies at Pratt Institute in New York.
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There's a bit in Stone Butch Blues by Leslie Feinberg about the revolution around gay identities that happened in the '70s and '80s, which saw far more middle-class lesbians taking over the community and rejecting the butches and femmes.
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There were baby dyke couples twinned out with matching tongue rings and spiky hair, uniformed post office ladies, construction workers, power lezzies in Paula Poundstone blazers, and butches taking up space at the bar or around the pool table, manspreading because they could.
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The former relationship is one of the tenderest and most interesting arcs in the whole show, and here these two sweet, tall, soft butches got to gaze into one another's eyes (they're the same height) and get kinky with their power dynamic.
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I've happily participated in lesbian meme culture that celebrates thirsting after middle-aged actors; I've swooned over historical photos of '70s butches in three-piece suits; I get particularly flustered whenever I watch or read anything about queer relationships with age gaps, like in Chloe Caldwell's iconic novella Women.
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It should be a place to feel the flutter of our hearts as Dykes on Bikes roar their engines at the start of the parade, while we commemorate the 1969 Stonewall riots sparked by trans street queens like Marsha P. Johnson and black butches like Stormé DeLarverie, working together against police brutality.
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One major theme is appearance-based discrimination against people whose appearances are additionally marginalized, which the panelists reference in relation to their experiences: Within the fat-positive community, hourglass figures that come closer to recalling femme beauty standards receive more attention than those that do not; in butch circles, femmes tend to pursue the same few coventionally handsome butches.
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Other notable events include a theatrical LGBTQ History Tour on June 3, written by the late, celebrated author Stuart Timmons; Migration of the Monarchs, a three-part costumed performance by trans artist Yozmit that fuses Cabaret with Butoh and Kabuki; the exhibition Lesbians to Watch Out For which explores the history of '90s queer activism in LA; and the world premiere of Jeanne Cordova: Butches, Lies, and Feminism, a new documentary about the life of this influential activist on June 29.
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100 Butches has been awarded grants by the Canada Arts Council and the Ontario Arts Council.
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Soft butches might want to express themselves through their clothing and hairstyle in a more masculine way, but their behavior in a more traditionally feminine way. For example, these traits of a soft butch may or may not include short hair, clothing that was designed for men, and masculine mannerisms and behaviors. Soft butches generally appear androgynous, rather than adhering to strictly feminine or masculine norms and gender identities. Soft butches generally physically, sexually, and romantically express themselves in more masculine than feminine ways in the majority of those categories.
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Oklahoma Biological Survey: Carya illinoinensisBioimages: Carya fruitsCollingwood, G. H., Brush, W. D., & Butches, D., eds. (1964). Knowing your trees. 2nd ed. American Forestry Association, Washington, DC.
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"Butch" can be used as an adjective or a noun to describe an individual's gender performance. The term butch tends to denote a degree of masculinity displayed by a female individual beyond what would be considered typical of a tomboy. It is not uncommon for women with a butch appearance to face harassment or violence. A 1990s survey of butches showed that 50% were primarily attracted to femmes, while 25% reported being usually attracted to other butches.
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Lim's upcoming graphic novel, 7 Dreams About You, is about the author's "effort to quit identity economics", and nightmares arising from past romantic relationships. Their first graphic novel, 100 Butches, is a collection of queer portraits and anecdotes amassed while travelling around the world. It was due to be released in 2008 through Alyson Books, but many of Alyson's contracts were suspended as the publishing house sought a new buyer. When negotiations failed, its parent company switched Alyson to e-book only publishing in 2010, and several titles including 100 Butches were dropped.
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Feminist scholar Sally Rowena Munt described butches as "the recognizable public form of lesbianism" and an outlaw figure within lesbian culture. BUTCH Voices, a national conference for "individuals who are masculine of center", including gender variant, was founded in 2008.
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On the other hand, writer Jewelle Gomez mused that butch and femme women in the earlier twentieth century may have been expressing their closeted transgender identity. Antipathy toward female butches and male femmes has been interpreted by some commentators as transphobia, although female butches and male femmes are not always transgender, and indeed some heterosexuals of both genders display these attributes. Scholars such as Judith Butler and Anne Fausto- Sterling suggest that butch and femme are not attempts to take up "traditional" gender roles. Instead, they argue that gender is socially and historically constructed, rather than essential, "natural", or biological.
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Butch and femme lesbian genders were only starting to become apparent in the 1940s, since it started to become common to allow women to enter bars without men. In the 1940s in the U.S., most butch women had to wear conventionally feminine dress in order to hold down jobs, donning their starched shirts and ties only on weekends to go to bars or parties as "Saturday night" butches. Butches had to take a subtle approach to butchness in order to exist in society.Genter, Alix. “Appearances Can Be Deceiving: Butch-Femme Fashion and Queer Legibility in New York City, 1945–1969.” Feminist Studies, vol.
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Femmes still combat the invisibility their presentation creates and assert their sexuality through their femininity. The dismissal of femmes as illegitimate or invisible also happens within the LGBT community itself, which creates the push for femmes to self-advocate as an empowered identity not inherently tied to butches.
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A soft butch, or stem (stud-fem), is a lesbian who exhibits some stereotypical butch traits without fitting the masculine stereotype associated with butch lesbians. Soft butch is on the spectrum of butch, as are stone butch and masculine, whereas on the contrary, ultra fem, high femme, and lipstick lesbian are some labels on the spectrum of lesbians with a more prominent expression of femininity, also known as femmes. Soft butches have gender identities of women, but primarily display masculine characteristics; soft butches predominantly express masculinity with a touch of femininity. The "hardness", or label depicting one's level of masculine expression as a butch is dependent upon the fluidity of her gender expression.
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The 1950s saw the rise of a new generation of butches who refused to live double lives and wore butch attire full-time, or as close to full-time as possible. This usually limited them to a few jobs, such as factory work and cab driving, that had no dress codes for women. Their increased visibility, combined with the anti-gay politics of the McCarthy era, led to an increase in violent attacks on gay and bisexual women, while at the same time the increasingly strong and defiant bar culture became more willing to respond with force. Although femmes also fought back, it became primarily the role of butches to defend against attacks and hold the bars as gay women's space.
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Ryann Holmes (born 1984) is an American consultant and the co-founder of bklyn boihood, a collective that empowers "masculine of center bois, lesbians, queers, trans-identified studs, doms, butches and AGs of color." Holmes' work has been recognized by Brooklyn Magazine, the Brooklyn Community Pride Center, and in a short documentary film, Portrait of Ryann Holmes.
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The London Dyke March was first organized in 2012 and is held each year in June. The 2012 march featured speakers, including a representative from the Safra Project, a charity for Muslim LBT women, and Sarah Brown, a transgender lesbian activist and former Lib Dem councilor. The London Dyke March emphasizes diversity, including bois, queers, femmes, butches, and lipstick lesbians.
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42, no. 3, 2016, p. 604., doi:10.15767/feministstudies.42.3.0604. They created outfits that were outwardly accepted by society, but allowed those who were butch to still present as more masculine than the norm- Alix Genter states that “butches wore long, pleated skirts with their man-tailored shirts, sometimes with a vest or coat on top” at Bay Ridge High school.
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Besides the toms of Thailand, the tombois of West Sumatra are also more appropriately identified as men. In her ethnographic fieldwork, during which she briefly dated a tomboi, Evelyn Blackwood realized that “tombois were not the Indonesian version of [the globally circulating category of] butches. They were men.”Evelyn Blackwood, “Tombois in West Sumatra: Constructing Masculinity and Erotic Desire,” Cultural Anthropology 13, No. 4 (Nov 1998): 496.
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The bar crowd learns of the Stonewall riot, and are further emboldened to stand their ground. Still, Jess continues to be arrested, brutalized, and raped by the police upon their bar-busts. Theresa cares for Jess following Jess's assaults, and Jess continues to love and trust Theresa. Theresa attends feminist meetings, where the other women accuse her love of butches as a betrayal to the feminine cause.
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210 However, the 1980s saw a resurgence of butch and femme gender roles. In this new configuration of butch and femme, it was acceptable, even desirable, to have femme-femme sexual and romantic pairings. Femmes gained value as their own lesbian gender, making it possible to exist separately from butches. For example, Susie Bright, the founder of On Our Backs, the first lesbian sex periodical of its kind, identifies as femme.
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Cheryl and Tamara go to see Lee, and he tells them about 1920s and 30s Black culture in Philadelphia. He explains to them that in those days, Black women usually played domestic servants. Cheryl meets her mother's friend Shirley, who turns out to be a lesbian. Shirley tells her that the Watermelon Woman's name was Fae Richards, that she was a lesbian too, and that she used to sing in clubs "for all us stone butches".
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Some local historians claimed that Tommy worked as a pimp. According to FoundSF: > "The 299 Broadway site was where businessmen from the nearby financial > district could find a willing hooker out of sight of prying eyes at places > like Paoli’s. Stevedores from the docks close by also partook of the hookers > on paydays. The hookers were the girlfriends of the butches who hung out > there." In 1952, the bar moved to 529 Broadway Street, where it was renamed Tommy's Place.
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Shortly thereafter, the two decide to live together. With Theresa, Jess grows up, learns to take responsibility for her behavior in intimate relationships, and learns how to soften her stony exterior in order to grow closer to Theresa. After a short while, Jess proposes to Theresa, and their unofficial wedding takes place at the bar, with a drag queen leading the procession. The cops continue their occasional raids of the gay bar, and the butches, femmes, and drag queens start fighting back.
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In addition to a soft butch's gender expression through her outward appearance, she also has a distinctive way of sexually expressing herself. Soft butch women might want to have a more passive role sexually or romantically in their relationships, which is generally associated with feminine sexual behavior. This is an example of how a soft butch's sexuality and outward appearance are not completely masculine, but have some feminine traits. Conversely, stone butches are less fluid in their sexuality and do not want to receive sexual contact from their sexual partners.
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The two have an emotionally intimate conversation, and then have sex—a first time for Jess. When Angie attempts to touch Jess, she cringes; Angie identifies Jess's reaction as that of a stone butch, and assures Jess that there's nothing wrong with being stone, and that her aversion to being touched is not permanent. In need of work, Jess gets a factory job, where she works alongside several older butches and gets involved in union organization. After standing up for union rights, Jess is alienated by male coworkers, who harass Jess on the job.
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In the 21st century, some writers and commentators began to describe a phenomenon in the lesbian community called "The Disappearing Butch." Some felt butches were disappearing because it had become easier for masculine women who might have previously identified as butch to have sex reassignment surgery and live as men. Others claimed the Disappearing Butch was the result of lesbian 'commodification' in the media, influenced by the viewing public's desire to see lesbians as 'reproductions of Hollywood straight women'. One writer noted that in the increased drive for LGBT 'normalization' and political acceptance, butch lesbians and effeminate gay men seemed to be disappearing.
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The Butch Cassidy Sound System is an alias used by the UK's Michael Hunter who has composed music for the Grand Theft Auto computer games San Andreas and IV. His rendition of the song "Cissy Strut" featured in series 4, episode 14 of the BBC TV show Waterloo Road, and has been featured on a compilation album compiled by Belle & Sebastian. The song "The Putney" was featured in Babylon Central, a film written and directed by Eric Hilton of Thievery Corporation. Echo Tone Defeat, the follow up album to the debut Butches Brew, was released in 2012. He also records under the pseudonym Pablo.
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Jess reaches puberty, develops breasts, and begins to feel the weight of gendered difference, expressing guilt and self-loathing in moments when ridiculed for not conforming to the standards of femininity. Jess gets an after-school job at a print shop, and learns from a coworker of a gay bar in Niagara Falls; when Jess finally makes it out to the bar, she meets drag queens, butches, and femmes, and feels validated in the company of other gender nonconforming individuals. Jess is adopted by an older lesbian couple, Butch Al and Jacqueline, who give Jess a butch haircut, help her shop for masculine clothing, and teach her how to approach women.
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As a reflection of categories of sexuality so sharply defined by the government and society at large, lesbian subculture developed extremely rigid gender roles between women, particularly among the working class in the U.S. and Canada. Although many municipalities had enacted laws against cross-dressing, some women would socialize in bars as butches: dressed in men's clothing and mirroring traditional masculine behavior. Others wore traditionally feminine clothing and assumed a more diminutive role as femmes. Butch and femme modes of socialization were so integral within lesbian bars that women who refused to choose between the two would be ignored, or at least unable to date anyone, and butch women becoming romantically involved with other butch women or femmes with other femmes was unacceptable.
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In the first half of the twentieth century, when butch-femme gender roles were constrained to the underground bar scene, femmes were considered invisible without a butch partner - that is, they could pass as straight because of their gender conformity. However, Joan Nestle asserts that femmes in a butch-femme couple make both the butch and the femme exceedingly visible. By daring to be publicly attracted to butch women, femmes reflected their own sexual difference and made the butch a known subject of desire. Butch lesbian (left) and femme lesbian (right) The separatist feminist movement of the late 1960s and 1970s forced butches and femmes underground, as radical lesbian feminists found lesbian gender roles to be a disappointing and oppressive replication of heterosexual lifestyle. p.
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Praising the publication of Ivan Coyote's Persistence: All Ways Butch and Femme in 2011, Bornstein said, "The butch/femme dynamic is a conscious, loving binary of desire and trust ... it's a dance of love and outlawed romance. Butches and femmes share a sense of tribe, extended family and kinship—no matter what our genders might be." Since the late 2010s, influenced by the emergence of queer and transgender culture on sites such as Tumblr, Everyday Feminism, and Autostraddle, femme has been expanded to describe feminine people across gender and sexuality categories including heterosexual women, cisgender men and transfeminine people. The postmodern queer conception of femme is a femme-identified person who does not always dress or act in a "traditionally feminine" (meaning a feminine aesthetic, such as wearing makeup, heels, and numerous accessories) way, but who expresses femme identity through feminine-associated behaviours, interactions and political views.
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Supporters, however, counter that they are highly visible icons of gay pride who refuse to assimilate and conform to mainstream society gender roles, and indeed remind of the butches and queens who helped lead the Stonewall riots launching the modern gay-rights movement. The Dykes on Bikes have been criticized for using the term dyke in their name. When registering their name as a trademark in the United States, the group faced a battle to demonstrate that the word dyke, and related terms such as terms diesel-dyke, bull-dyke, and bull-dagger, have in fact been re-appropriated as self-referential terms of endearment and empowerment distinct from lesbian and indeed awards and events utilizing those names are now used by the LGBT community. In keeping with the tradition of motorcyclists' rejection of the norms of middle-class, middle-America, the Dykes on Bikes teach, by example, that women can be masculine and challenge the dominant sexual and cultural expectations of what a woman is and what she can do and achieve.
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