[Quintease]

Originally Posted by Library_girl

Welllllll, not always.......sorry Quintease, I have to disagree with one part of what you said. (though I normally agree with so much of what you say and enjoy your posts! So forgive me )

"Lesbians have traditionally all tried to look like each other in order to be visible or did bf, which was a sexual dynamic"

Maybe I am being too picky. I don't know how long ago you mean by "traditionally", but if you go back to say the 1960's, 1950's, and before, (the pre-Stonewall years), all lesbians were butch or femme, that was that. Butch/femme wasn't a subset of LGBTQ, or a sexual dynamic. (LGBTQ didn't exist) Lesbian and b/f were one in the same. (Lee Lynch, my favorite author, has written wonderful books about this) So we weren't all trying to look the same back then. If you were a lesbian, you were either butch or femme, period.

OK, I'll shut up now. I'll stop being such a librarian about it.

Yes but did individual lesbians have a choice? Invariably no. Butches all looked butch and femmes all looked femme. It was a very heteronormative and rigid way of establishing identity, particularly if you wanted to get laid. I imagine many lesbians today would be stumped were they to be asked to pick a side (remembering that dress back then also corresponded to sexual activity far more than it does today).