What does the word 'butch' mean to you? Is it more about gender or sexuality?

[LRDtheFeministDragon]

Just trying to figure out answers to this question for some work I'm doing. It's absolutely nothing relevant to MN - I'm researching historical ideas from 500 years ago, but finding myself wondering what words we'd use to describe certain women today. As a break from work, I watched Hannah Gadsby's 'Nanette' where she says someone wrote to her saying she had a duty to identify as transgender rather than butch, and it made me think. What do you think being 'butch' is? Could you be butch without being a lesbian, do you think?

Please ignore if this is boring or intrusive!

Butch was always used for a hard man. Someone strong and tough. In the gay community, there were butch gays and effeminate gays. Butch women was a later thing, though I may have just been later noticing it.

Big, stout, tough looking. Built like a brick shithouse as my grandfather used to say.

Can be associated with men or women.

Butch’ is a masculine looking woman who is gay.

^This

I don’t associate it with overweight at all. It does make me picture someone muscular, so I think I agree with Batteries on this. Other traits I associate with ‘butch’ would include practicality and possibly bluntness. I don’t think I especially associate it with any gender or sexual orientation though.

I don't like the word but I don't think it is necessarily associated with being overweight as a pp suggested. I'm very slim and depending on my plans I can dress fairly 'feminine' or if I'm working its a hoody, jeans and trainers. I jokingly said to my friend who I am always with (uni) 'everyone must think we're a couple' she said 'yeah you're the butch one' I wear makeup, have long hair so her 'joke' was purely based on my clothing choices.
Clearly her butch statement implied that its based both on clothing and sexuality.

Butch to me means someone (man or woman) who is basically rectangular- tall & stocky. Not clothing or sexuality but build.

Makes me think of Butch Cassidy.

LRDtheFeministDragon

I mean the Polari cant.
en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Polari

It's interesting, isn't it?

I am not femme. But I am not butch, either. I am het. If I were gay, though, I still wouldn't be butch, or femme. I'm just ... neither of those.

I dress in jeans, trainers and tops. I vanishingly rarely wear skirts or dresses. But I do sometimes. I often wear make up but not a lot - just foundation/mascara. My hair is long but I do not style it, ever. I do not 'present' as male in any way. So that's why I'm not butch. But I do not present as 'typically' female either, if we were stereotyping. No one would mistake me for a man, though.

I think it is gender neutral - as you can have a butch man, and an effeminate man - but that it is most easily understood in terms of a lesbian sexuality.

But it's not a sexuality in itself. Nor a gender identity.

It might be a gender presentation?

I've only really ever encountered "butch" being used in a derogatory way about any woman who doesn't conform to our culture's ultra feminine stereotype for women. It was thrown at women as a pejorative, as an insult for women who didn't conform or care about acquiescing to the demands of male attention. As such, I dislike it and wouldn't use it.

And the pp who commented about us becoming more reductive - hell yes, of course we are. People using "gender" to actually mean personality (because what they are describing is the definition of personality) but then equating it with sex are just ever more rigidly enforcing the sex stereotypes we were trying to move away from...

We should all be free to just be whoever we are, whatever sex we are. Saying that if you don't conform to our society's stereotypes for women means you're not a woman and have to switch box, or that if you're a man who finds blues, greys and sports motifs dull and tedious means you can't be a man anymore but have to switch to the woman box to match up with the stereotypes your personality most closely aligns with - it's horrible, and nonsense.

How is that not far, far worse than how things were before?

I dislike pink but do like colours some consider feminine as well as supposedly masculine ones, I like wearing practical clothes and dislike dresses but sometimes like tailored clothes, I enjoy creative activities as well as DIY, I don't aspire to have a knight in shining armour deliver a romantic marriage proposal, I played with toy cars and dolls as a child... None of that means I'm not a woman or need to switch box. It just reflects my personality as an individual.

Nobody should need to correctly align themselves to a box of stereotypes to be allowed to live as themselves - not least because if your only options are to pick between different sets of stereotypes you'll still never find one that actually fits the person you are as an individual. We're just who we are. It would be much better if everybody felt able to experience the world in ways that appeal to them, rather than feeling they have to conform to a set of stereotyped expectations or risk hostility and isolation.

I shop in the men's clothes section sometimes because I got sick of flimsy clothes covered in glitter and twee slogans. I prefer the practical options and better materials, but I can easily see why men would get sick of their only clothing options being dull colours and a selection of motifs on either sports teams, cars, sci-fi films, or alcohol brands.

Same reason I wanted to expand my horizons beyond glittery, frilly options - it's tedious and frustrating being restricted to some arbitrary set of styles determined by made up cultural rules rather than being able to choose from a wide variety of things that people can freely choose according to their own personality. There's no practicality in the women's section, but there's very little evidence of imagination in the men's section! It's sad and not difficult to see how people could end up deeply unhappy being limited like this for no good reason whatsoever.

I'm not interested in having to decide which set of stereotypes created in British culture in 2018 I want to conform to. I just want to live my life as myself, without being put in silly boxes or punished for opting out of that controlling bullshit.

I don't understand why we're not focused on getting rid of all the stereotypes in our culture instead of pushing people to pick a set of stereotypes to switch to. Life would be much better for everybody.

But surely men can be described as bitch too?

butch ....what an autocorrect.

I think of it as a derogatory term for a style, a lack of femininity. Not a gender or even necessarily a sexual orientation.

I’m a lesbian and I’d think of butch to mean ‘gay woman who dresses in a more masculine style’ or carries themselves in that way iyswim, whereas a straight lady who dresses and carries themselves in a masculine way would be thought of as a tomboy - but that’s just my take on it.

I’ve heard it from gay men as well. My understanding of butch in those terms are of a strong ‘manly’ looking man who actually wants to be...ahem...on the receiving end, if you get me. I was once in a gay club with a friend who was pointing out all the butch men he had had. However, not being a gay man myself, I have no idea if that was just the way my few gay friends used the word.

It's a lesbian identity to me.

Hard (Daddi types), soft (more androgynous) or stone (wants to give, rather than receive during sex, no touching of their genitals).

Gay dad Dan on Great British Bake Off was wearing a t shirt on the show last night that had the words Tres Butch - ironically I presume as he's quite camp

stone (wants to give, rather than receive during sex, no touching of their genitals).

Sorry, what? Is that a thing?

Isn’t it wonderful that after 49yrs there are still things I can learn. Every day is a school day.

It’s a lesbian style and/or id to me. Mannish rather than androgynous, uncompromisingly so, and generally female. Relational, with femme.

I have often been called butch. Back when I was a teenager I would have classed myself as butch as I had short hair and wore men's clothes but I have been called it since those days as I don't wear makeup and have no interest in fashion ect. I also love motorbikes which makes me more butch apparently.

Butch to me means a lesbian who dresses, moves, communicates etc with what society deems to be masculine traits. Have never used nor heard the word used to describe a straight woman ( who otherwise confirms to those things and who may look and behave exactly like a butch lesbian). From fairly old lesbian butch/femme stereotypes. Interesting, as if only gay women could inhabit differing places on the ‘perceived gender trait’ spectrum. Not even sure what word I would use for a straight equivalent - as op has said they are child related eg ‘boyish’ or ‘tomboyish’ as if we don’t allow adult straight woman to be ‘perceived mannish’ or ‘non conforming to what society considers to be female traits’ etc. I consider butch/femme to be outdated and irrelevant - haven’t heard or used for a few decades. Forgive any unfortunate words here I find this whole area fraught and depressing for non- straight people who feel their sex can’t accomodate difference.

It seems to be something more in the mouth of the observer rather than the observed.

I really like what AnoukSpirit said.

Could you be butch without being a lesbian, do you think?

I would mainly repeat what anouk and quater said.

I’m straight. I have cropped short hair and sometimes wear clothes from the men’s section if I prefer the colour or cut. Sometimes I am mistaken for a man by men, including on occasions when I’ve been wearing a dress - some men seem to rely on a very simple set of visual clues and short hair = man.

I wouldn’t describe myself or anyone else as butch because I wouldn’t find it a useful label. I have an older lesbian friend who would describe herself as butch. She sees gender as something to play with. Whereas I see it as an opressive construct - for me, clothes are something to play with, gender stereotypes are something to leave behind.

I think of it as a woman having masculine mannerisms or style. Examples like dressing in typically masculine clothes, having a more masculine hairstyles (short back and sides) or having a masculine stance (man spreading etc...).

I don't think of it as a weight thing either. Like I said, people describe my style as butch but I'm a v fit size 8.