"Butch" and "Femme" - Truly Antiquated Terms or More Marginalization?

[Mister Bent]

Originally Posted by Selenay

You know, we really don't listen to certain types of music. I haven't really heard baroque music on z100 recently. . . And I can't really tell you the last time I heard a friend tell me that they were going to go study their hurdy gurdy or harpsichord. They aren't extinct, no, but they are for all cultural purposes dead.

There is room for all, of course, but if the youth does not embrace a term, it will die. Just like with language, or clothing, or music, it needs a base to create it and a youth to continue the tradition. Or are we going to go back to Latin now?

I never said that I, or anyone else, doesn't respect the path that has been paved, but I'm willing to bet that if you ask 80% of the people on my extremely queer college (and by extremely queer, I mean the only state university in New York that offers a G/L Studies major, which coincides with the GLBTU, trans-action, drag queen fall ball, ad nauseam...) what the butch/femme dynamic is, they wouldn't have any idea.

While you may not hear harpsichord music on z100, there is still music being composed for the harpsichord, and there are, like um, a bazillion more radio stations (and satellite!) than z100.

Perhaps it's true 80% of the people at an "extremely queer" school that offers G/L studies as a major don't know what the butch/femme dynamic is. I would expect that to probably be true just about anywhere. What would be pathetic, however, is if those numbers were reflected in said G/L program. You can't study a thing without knowing its history.

It seems unlikely to me that things have changed so much in the past year since I moved from New York. When I spoke to a group of high school students in Manhattan about gender identity, though they were every single one of them POC, at least half knew the terms butch and femme, and of course, now all of them know it, thanks to me. (*pat pat*)

Once again, I disbelieve that "if the youth doesn't embrace a term it will die." That statement is myopic, at best. Why do so many terms and fashions become reborn? Why do ancient religions, art and musical forms survive? In part because the young don't exist in a void, We're still here, telling our stories, writing them down, passing them on. Our youth are fundamental to change and growth, but they also grab hold of a thing, sometimes a piece of the past, an out dated fashion, and make it new again.

I welcome whatever new language comes into use, but I don't think it will be at the exclusion of "old" terms for identity. No, we're not going to start speaking Latin, but consider how many of our languages would be different, or non-existent if not for Latin.

These terms come about because they signify who we are - that's not going to change. Historically, lot of young queers follow the androgynous route as they "find" themselves (just because they ID as "genderqueer" today, doesn't mean they always will). Other terms may come about to speak to evolved identities, but that doesn't herald the erasure of butch and femme.