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

[PapaC]

man there sure would be a hell of a lot of chest hairs to navigate around if someone were to "motorboat" my breasts(ticles). just sayin'

<giggle>

Carry on!

This drive by brought to you by,

[Kosmo]

Originally Posted by PapaC

man there sure would be a hell of a lot of chest hairs to navigate around if someone were to "motorboat" my breasts(ticles). just sayin'

<giggle>

Carry on!

This drive by brought to you by,

That someone would need one of these then:

[Cyclopea]

LOLOLOLOLOL
OMG
LMAO

yooze are too freakin' funny!

[Toughy]

see this is what I dont get..........

All of us suspend reality and believe a penis shaped dildo is actually a real live cock.....butch cock. I know for myself when I strap on it's my cock. A blowjob I can feel on this detachable butch cock because that butch cock is real in my mind and her mind.

I also have had my clit be a clit and my clit has also been a cock. It all depends on what's going on (energy wise) between me and the femme in my (or her) bed. She can suck my clit or suck my cock. Whichever it is is real in my mind and her mind.

Sometimes suspending reality is (in my mind) part and parcel of this erotic dance called butch/femme.

I also know that my sexual boundaries are different with every femme I have ever been with. I have had what is typically thought of as stone relationships as well as relationships where all parts are accessible all the time. And relationships that fall in the middle. As I said my sexuality is pretty fluid.

I'm done with this derail.

oh...........frisky..........I'm not offended in any way........takes a lot more than this to offend me.

[Words]

Originally Posted by PapaC

man there sure would be a hell of a lot of chest hairs to navigate around if someone were to "motorboat" my breasts(ticles). just sayin'

<giggle>

Carry on!

This drive by brought to you by,

B's make me sneeze. A lot.

Very sexy (the sneezing that is). Not.

Words

[SuperFemme]

Originally Posted by Toughy

see this is what I dont get..........

All of us suspend reality and believe a penis shaped dildo is actually a real live cock.....butch cock. I know for myself when I strap on it's my cock. A blowjob I can feel on this detachable butch cock because that butch cock is real in my mind and her mind.

I also have had my clit be a clit and my clit has also been a cock. It all depends on what's going on (energy wise) between me and the femme in my (or her) bed. She can suck my clit or suck my cock. Whichever it is is real in my mind and her mind.

Sometimes suspending reality is (in my mind) part and parcel of this erotic dance called butch/femme.

I also know that my sexual boundaries are different with every femme I have ever been with. I have had what is typically thought of as stone relationships as well as relationships where all parts are accessible all the time. And relationships that fall in the middle. As I said my sexuality is pretty fluid.

I'm done with this derail.

oh...........frisky..........I'm not offended in any way........takes a lot more than this to offend me.

Toughy said blowjob. <insert beavis and butthead laugh here>

[Apocalipstic]

Originally Posted by Toughy

see this is what I dont get..........

All of us suspend reality and believe a penis shaped dildo is actually a real live cock.....butch cock. I know for myself when I strap on it's my cock. A blowjob I can feel on this detachable butch cock because that butch cock is real in my mind and her mind.

I also have had my clit be a clit and my clit has also been a cock. It all depends on what's going on (energy wise) between me and the femme in my (or her) bed. She can suck my clit or suck my cock. Whichever it is is real in my mind and her mind.

Sometimes suspending reality is (in my mind) part and parcel of this erotic dance called butch/femme.

I also know that my sexual boundaries are different with every femme I have ever been with. I have had what is typically thought of as stone relationships as well as relationships where all parts are accessible all the time. And relationships that fall in the middle. As I said my sexuality is pretty fluid.

I'm done with this derail.

oh...........frisky..........I'm not offended in any way........takes a lot more than this to offend me.

That, except for I have the dick.

[Toughy]

Originally Posted by apocalipstic

That, except for I have the dick.

I have always wondered how a femme relates to her dick/cock. It can't be the same as the way a butch relates to her/hys cock.....or can it?

anyway that would be a total derail and doesn't require an answer.....

[Bob]

Originally Posted by apretty

Part 1

('what if i said i was going to 'finger bang' you?'

Maybe E'd like it better coming from Eric Cartman:

[ame="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3O37DFSa7fs"]YouTube- SOUTH PARK-FINGERBANG[/ame]

[apretty]

Originally Posted by Bob

Maybe E'd like it better coming from Eric Cartman:

YouTube- SOUTH PARK-FINGERBANG

dear chef period-casserole,

shouldn't you be working instead of causing dissent?

[Kosmo]

Originally Posted by Toughy

I have always wondered how a femme relates to her dick/cock. It can't be the same as the way a butch relates to her/hys cock.....or can it?

anyway that would be a total derail and doesn't require an answer.....

*jumping on the derail track for a sec*

However a femme wants to relate would be my opinion

*jumps back off*

[friskyfemme]

Good day to all...

As it is with my thought patterns...this thought just came to mind with relationship to labelling...it seems that persons label themselves based on the event taking place when they discover themselves...similar to the Native American tradition of naming a child based upon the awareness of the name giver at the time the individual presents his/her self. Or, as in religious ceremonies, where the celebrated one receives or choses another name that personifies who they are...I personally believe that we identify with the energy related to our name (label). stonefemme=7. Lucky! Now on a tangent
putting numerical value to labels here!

[Dex]

The site is called Butch Femme Planet . I identify as femme, I don't conform to any labels other than that. I have an identity, I know where I fit in, I don't need others approvals or acceptance, no matter how old or young they are.
THere is too much dicing and splicing, and I never understand how things get heated so over all the labels.

The sun is old but it shines just as bright. It is our most valuable antique.

[hippieflowergirl]

Originally Posted by Kosmo

*jumping on the derail track for a sec*

However a femme wants to relate would be my opinion

*jumps back off*

wait Kos...what is it you're jumping on and off of exactly?

[Apocalipstic]

Originally Posted by Toughy

I have always wondered how a femme relates to her dick/cock. It can't be the same as the way a butch relates to her/hys cock.....or can it?

anyway that would be a total derail and doesn't require an answer.....

Ha, I just saw this.

I think it can be the same way. Heh!

I know not every Butch relates to her/his dick in the way way either. For some it is a sex toy, for some it's an always there body organ, for some its there when it's there, for some it's mental.

All I know is it makes the top of my head blowoff (Pun intended) and makes me feel invincible, powerful, hot, sexy and in control.....smirk.

[LieslKate]

Originally Posted by NotAnAverageGuy

can someone put into laymans terms what antiquated means so I can understand, when I looked it up it confused me, I ain't the smartest ya know!!!!

if anyone has answered this 'cause I've not finished all the pages of the Thread... basically if something is 60+ years old its considered an antique... me in SIX.FIVE years !!!!!!!!!! So something that is an antique or antiquated ( the adjective conjugation or discriptive version of the word antique ) is older than that... the Butch/Femme social/sexual dynamic fits that !

I am happy to be an antiquated FEMME Lesbian...

[LieslKate]

Originally Posted by Blue_Vegan_Daddy-O

Sure Apocalipstic.... I LOVE antiquated Femmes !!!

I love that you love antiquated Femmes

[LieslKate]

Originally Posted by Isadora

... the whole discussion brings up issues and fears for me cause I have already been through this once in the 70's during the feminist era when I was called a "pawn of the patriarchy" and "copying heterosexual relationships".

The pressure then was no labels. The ugliness of either be andro or you are not welcome in our community and I mean we were ostracized, was sometimes violent. Ever have an angry feminist lesbian pull your hair (too long and girly), push you down and take your heels and throw them, or take your lipstick and write all over your face? I heard in 1970's "butch/femme is dead and old." All these things happened.

Those of us who lived through it know that to see it come around again seems dismissive and hurtful all over again. To write us off as too boxed in is unfair and truly offensive. Gender queer works for some, but to say it is more label free or more andro, and imply that it is better and younger and m ore hip, dismisses my history, dismisses me as a vital person in the universe. There is not, for me, a better form of self description.

Being ridiculed for being femme or butch and appreciating those descriptors was the norm in the 70's. I published and article about 10 years back about this part of the b/f past, one butch said "Everyone wanted to fuck me but they wouldn't walk down the street with me the next morning. No one would talk to me at meetings. I would walk in and there would be a dead silence."

As I said in my first post, I find it very interesting that the discussion is about the alternative terms for butch and none for femme. I agree with Unndunn, about femme invisibility. I, also believe that butch/femme is part of the queer paradigm. For me, a person who is not queer/gay/lesbian/dyke/transensual is not femme, she can be feminine but not femme. Besides, I don't want to change my descriptor.

*sits back and waits for it*

Then too, I heard b/f is dead or dying. Still here. Still alive. Still kickin!

Oh GAWD I remember those days... I would have done ANYTHING to find a Butch then... I not only wanted to fuck them I wanted to marry them, walk down the street with them, bring them home to my Mum, proudly would have taken them anywhere... still would... Butch loving Femme Lesbian that I am.

Butches til the end of time !

[LieslKate]

Originally Posted by Victoria

Please keep in mind that I am young and haven't had much experience befriending other LGBT people. This is just my two cents, but I find that definition really wierd. There's just too many categories.

Then, what is the true meaning of butch and femme? I mean, universal meaning, or scientific?


Of course. Transgender = one who doesn't identify (gender-wise) as male or female, and/or shares elements of both genders... right? I'd consider myself transgender... but I don't. It's all just too complicated... I don't know. And of course transsexual... and there is such thing as transsexual lesbians... however, if I knew a male who switched to being a female, I'd refer to that person as a regular female regardless without the use of that word transsexual. Just my two cents.

and if you would like to learn more about where Butch / Femme came from a great starting place is "Boots of Leather, Slippers of Gold" written by:
"Elizabeth Lapovsky Kennedy and Madeline D. Davis. Boots of Leather, Slippers of Gold: The History of a Lesbian Community. New York: Publisher: Penguin (Non-Classics) (March 1, 1994) Language: English, ISBN-10: 0140235507, ISBN-13: 978-0140235500
Kennedy and Davis look at a group of lesbians in this book that are largely under-studied. Specifically, they examine working-class lesbians from the mid-1930’s to the early 1960’s in Buffalo, New York. Boots is actually the result of a thirteen-year-long oral history research project designed to focus on the culture of survival and resistance of older, working-class lesbians. What this focus revealed was the centrality of butch-fem roles. A major assumption that Kennedy and Davis work from is that these women’s openness about their lesbianism was crucial not only to the communities they helped form in their own time, but to all lesbian communities which they have provided a model for that have emerged since. They even go so far as to posit that these older lesbians and their lives constitute a prepolitical stage of the 1970’s gay rights movement. Approaching their project from such pre-determined celebratory standpoints drives Kennedy and Davis’ research in a biased manner. While not without its limitations, this study remains groundbreaking work.

In regards to Boots’ relevance to cultural landscape studies, Kennedy and Davis discovered that in their search for working-class lesbians, they found them in public spaces, primarily bar communities. Furthermore, when seeking to uncover lesbian cultures of survival and resistance it was exactly the bar communities that proved to be sites of such politics. Particularly useful to cultural landscapes scholars are chapters 2-4, which “explain the growth and development of the lesbian community, culture, and consciousness in the bars and open house parties of the 1940’s and 1950’s” (25). More specifically, chapter 2 concentrates on the establishment of public lesbian communities; chapter 3 describes the growing public resistance to heteronormative society and the expansion of lesbians’ public presence via lesbian bars; and, chapter 4 examines with more depth how race and class affected community formations within lesbian communities as bars were desegregated and class stratification emerged. Chapter 5, which focuses on how visibility affects the formation of community, identity, and consciousness, may also prove useful to those interested in lesbians (especially butch lesbians) within traditionally defined “public” spaces such as the street. [J. Sapinoso]"

Publisher Comments:
When most lesbians had to hide, how did they find one another? Were the bars of the 1940s and 1950s more fun than the bars today? Did Black and white lesbians socialize together? Boots of Leather, Slippers of Gold is a ground-breaking account of the growth of the lesbian community in Buffalo, New York from the mid-1930s to the early 1960s Drawing on oral histories collected from 45 women, it is the first comprehensive history of a working-class lesbian community. These poignant and complex stories provide a new look at Black and white working-class lesbians as powerful agents of historical change. Their creativity and resilience under oppressive circumstances constructed a better life for all lesbians and expanded possibilities for all women. Based on 13 years of research, Boots of Leather, Slippers of Gold ranges over topics including sex, relationships, coming out, butch-fem roles, motherhood, aging, racism, work, oppression, and pride. Kennedy and Davis provide a unique insider's perspective on butch-fem culture and trace the roots of gay and lesbian liberation to the determined resistance of working-class lesbians. The book begins by focusing on the growth and development of community, culture, and consciousness in the bars and open house parties of the 1930s, '40s, and '50s. It goes on to explore the code of personal behavior and social imperative in butch-fem culture, centering on dress, mannerisms, and gendered sexuality. Finally the book examines serial monogamy, the social forces which shaped love and break-ups, and the changing nature and content of lesbian identity. Capturing the full complexity of lesbian culture, this outstanding book includes extensive quotes fromnarrators that make every topic a living document, a composite picture of the lives of real people fighting for respect and for a place that would be safe for their love. "

"Based on 13 years of research, Boots of Leather, Slippers of Gold ranges over topics including sex, relationships, coming out, butch-fem roles, motherhood, aging, racism, work, oppression, and pride. Kennedy and Davis provide a unique insider's perspective on butch-fem culture, and trace the roots of gay and lesbian liberation to the determined resistance of working-class lesbians. The book begins by focusing on the growth and development of community, culture, and consciousness in the bars and open house parties of the 1930s, 40s, and 50s. It goes on to explore the code of personal behavior and social imperative in butch-fem culture, centering on dress, mannerisms, and gendered sexuality. Finally the book examines serial monogamy, the social forces which shaped love and break-ups, and the changing nature and content of lesbian identity.

Capturing the full complexity of lesbianculture, this outstanding book includes extensive quotes from narrators that make every topic a living document, a composite picture of the lives of real people fighting for respect and for a place that would be safe for their love.

Tracing the roots of gay liberation to the creativity and resilience of lesbian communities such as the one in Buffalo, New York, the authors explore how these women paved the way for a better life for lesbians and gays, and provide a unique insider's perspective on everything from sex, relationships, and motherhood to aging, racism, and pride.

This first ethnography on the development of working-class lesbian communities from the 1930s to the 1960s focuses on a Buffalo, New York, lesbian community. Unlike gay men, gay women, by dressing the way they wanted, going to bars regularly, being financially independent from their families of origin and from men, and by boldly seeking out the company of other women like themselves, unwittingly created a community of their own. The authors argue that because the women in the community gave one another the support necessary to respond aggressively and ``with pride'' when facing an often disapproving and hostile society, they effectively built the real foundation of the gay and lesbian liberation movement. The oral histories of 45 women tell of victimization by their families, straight men, and one another but also recount the joys these women experienced by allowing themselves to be who they really were. Conducted over a 13-year period, these interviews contribute a massive amount of original research to the anthropology of American culture as well as to lesbian history. For academic libraries and women's studies collections.-- Patricia Sarles, Brooklyn Public Library, New York "

Reviews:
". . . the first comprehensive account of a working-class lesbian community. . .." -- Ms. Magazine

"This should be seen as a groundbreaking book, a fascinating look at the pre-political support systems, of friendship groups extended to include ex-lovers' families and children that became one of the foundation blocks for building the gay/lesbian communities of our day." -- San Francisco Review of Books

At a time when many lesbian and gay leaders are urging assimilation and moderation, Boots of Leather, Slippers of Gold recovers a neglected chapter of lesbian and gay history and reminds us of the enduring importance of outlaw roots. -- San Francisco Chronicle-Examiner

. . . the first comprehensive account of a working-class lesbian community. . . -- Ms. Magazine

The book soars on the plain, yet eloquent voices of the women. . . -- Boston Globe

Boots of Leather, Slippers of Gold honors all of us; Liz Kennedy and Madeline Davis have produced a work that opens up the heart and mind. Their book breaks new ground in womens history, Lesbian history, and the history of desire as a lived force in a community under seige. Most of all, they have put back at the center a group of women, who without money or traditional power, fought for and won a public place where women queers could celebrate their love. -- Joan Nestle, Co-founder of the Lesbian Herstory Archives and Editor of The Persistent Desire: A Femme-Butch Reader

While some of this book is a juicy account of who did what to whom, the heart of Boots of Leather lies in its careful, insightful evaluation of the development of the Buffalo lesbian community through its bars. -- Lambda Book Report

This pioneering history of a working-class lesbian community is doubly marked by its scholarly care and its human compassion. Kennedy and Davis have adhered to the most scrupulous standards of serious historical work, yet at the same time have treated the subjects of their scrutiny with profound delicacy and respect. Boots of Leather, Slippers of Gold is one of the finest works yet to emerge in the burgeoning field of gay and lesbian studies. -- Martin Duberman, Distinguished Professor of History, CUNY Graduate `chool, and Director of the Center for Lesbian and Gay Studies

Rarely does a book break entirely new ground, but this is surely one that does. With love, passion, and empathy, Kennedy and Davis bring to life the history of a working-class lesbian community. A complex, fascinating, and evocative world, it has much to tell us about gender, sexuality, class, and urban life. Above all, this is a story about the triumph of the human spirit over horrible adversity. The voices of these women sing on every page. -- John DEmilio, University of North Carolina at Greensboro

Boots of Leather, Slippers of Gold incorporates both academic values of sound scholarship and the lesbian communitys need for roots and for affirmation of our identity as woman-loving women. -- The Empty Chest

This very first community study of lesbians will radically advance the state of knowledge in gay and lesbian studies. Nuanced, lovingly researched and provocative, both the description and the argument are food for thinking people. -- Esther Newton, State University of New York at Purchase and author of Cherry Grove, Fire Island: Sixty Years in Americas First Gay and Lesbian Town

...Elizabeth Lapovsky Kennedy's and Madeline D. Davis' history of the lesbian working-class cummunity in Buffalo. Drawing on oral history as well as records, the authors have represented a microcosmic study of a fascinating and vital community. The importance of class and race and the techniques of survival in the face of oppression marked the historical experience of these women. Kennedy and Davis have written about the specific local development of a consciousness of a kind that is required for a liberation movement and that they show existed before Stonewall in Buffalo. -- The Los Angeles Times

http://books.google.com/books?id=0T8...age&q=&f=false

Can't know where you are going 'til you know where you came from...

[LieslKate]

"It's sort of like that. Lesbians are 486/SX's, post-lesbians are Macbook Pros.

</tongue>

Cheers
Aj "

*hauls yer tongue outta yer cheek* POST-Lesbians??????? :P