Butch/Femme Obsessions

Abstract

Now that butch/femme has finally achieved respectability and is sweeping sections of the visible British urban lesbian cultures, we find ourselves reacting against it. These days it all seems like hot air and style. Last gasp of the 1980s or new wave for the 90s, it hardly seems to matter there's something shallow going on. What appears to be happening is a definition of who's butch and who's femme through trial by clothing, or haircuts, or makeup. All us tarted up femmes running around in cocktail dresses, and all them butches dressed a la Radclyffe Hall. Or black leather or whatever. A great big mess of dress style, top-bottom terminology and what else? Butch/femme now runs the risk of becoming as de rigeur for parts of the lesbian subculture as androgyny, short hair for all, and a clean scrubbed face was a decade ago. Also holding sway at the moment is a theoretical strand which emphasizes the fluidity of sexual identity, the impossibility of pinning it down. When it comes to the resurgence of butch/femme (or, perhaps more properly, the resurgence of femme) the 'fluidity' school seems to champion a celebratory approach, a refusal to consider any deeper, or problematic, elements. 'Gender play' is all the rage, but, in all this, where is a feminist consciousness and challenge to gender divisions and inequalities? We don't want to dichotomize the two, or suggest that one precludes the other. We just wonder how all this playing with appearances in clothes and behaviour impinges on our relationships and sense of our lesbian selves in the world. While we don't believe for a moment that we're literally born butch or femme, we do think that what happens to us as babies, as little girls, can give us a lot to think about in relation to our later lives as lesbians, butch, femme or whatever. We suspect that butch/femme is a lot more than style or 'roles', which are what the current vogue seems to emphasize. Considering it all just a matter of choice, fun and flair might