Butch/Femme Dynamic vs "Masculinity" and "Femininity"

[EnderD_503]

I know that similar topics have been created in discussed on BFP and on the dash site before, but I'm hoping to take it a bit further than it usually goes. My desire to create this topic stems from the fact that often when I hear, read or participate in discussions on masculinity/femininity in the LGBTQ community (and specifically within the B/F community), there is frequently a lack in logical coherency as far as defining the words and their place within our diverse community. Do we even need these words, or should be creating our own language?

The issue, for me, stems from the actual definitions of "masculine" and "feminine," not only in the English language, but in French (masculin vs. féminin), German (maskulin/männlich vs. feminin/weiblich) and other languages where both as far as grammar and traditional use, both refer to two sexes and two gender identities, with one sexuality in mind. For example, in French masculin tends to refer more directly to the cissexed male than to a set of characteristics, with "le sexe masculin" also referring to the penis (translating to something like the masculine/male sex organ).

If we go further into the actual etymology of the words masculus and masculinus (the origin of our masculine) the former quite literally means man or male, while the latter means that possessed by a man.

Hence we have the creation of "manly/masculine" qualities, which are the "natural" qualities possessed by a man (bravery, physical strength, virility, honour appropriate to men etc.), and today we translate this into masculine = sports, strength, aggressiveness, promiscuity, virility etc.

I guess the place where I come to an issue is where we speak of anyone who is not a cissexed male as "masculine." Here I am including butch women, third gender butches, male identified butches, trans butches, transmen and so on. People may jump on me now and say that I am denying the identity of these identities. That they identify however they like. Please, before you jump on me for this, understand that I agree with you 100%. Anyone can identify however they like, and I will not think lesser of them nor will I try to deny their identity in my interactions with them. In fact, part of the reason I raise this question is because of my own identity, and the questions I cannot help but ask myself about my own identity.

When I first began identifying as butch I always took my own masculinity for granted and as natural fact. I based on my interests and personal appearance: my love of sports, the way I dressed, the way I communicated and generally things that are attributed to the men. However, I ask myself why these things need to be masculine at all. Why do sports need to be a male domain? Hope Solo was being discussed in another section, and how in the dance show she's in, the judges criticized her walk as too "manly." There is so much wrong with that on so many levels, but there is also the issue of why Hope Solo needs to be masculine or feminine? If she is an athlete, does she need to be "masculine"? Does she need to be "feminine"? Can she not just be an athlete without having to justify gender identity/characteristics?

As far as my own identity, over time I tacked on other identities I felt resonated with me or served some purpose as far as how I identified; stone, male identified, transguy/just plain trans. Yet as I developed my identity in order to further come to understand myself, I also began to feel the need to drop the "masculine" assumption surrounding my butch/trans identity. Especially now as I've come to see my physical sex (both as far as the body's sex characteristics and the brain's physical sex characteristics) as distinctly a trans sex, rather than a "masculine" or "feminine" sex. I'll come back to this later.

So when people talk about butches as masculine and femmes as feminine, I would really like to know what the means in concrete terms. What does it mean? What characteristics need to present in order for a butch or femme to be "masculine" or "feminine"? I've frequently heard people talk about "masculine energy," and when pressed it seems that "masculine energy" can be exactly the same as "feminine energy" (especially given the presence of strong and aggressive women within the LGBTQ community and beyond), but on a woman. Yet what defines this energy? I guess I've come to see the definition of "masculine/feminine energy" as flimsy, for me.

And what about "feminine" gay men? If the etymology of masculine and feminine are that which pertain to two sexes, then is a gay man who identifies as a man really feminine? Is his own way of being a man his own form of masculinity, if masculinity is all characteristics which pertain to a cissexed man?

And if we take on this subjective approach to the definitions of "masculine" and "feminine," then how can either word be accurately used as a descriptive term? If "masculine" means one thing to one person, and "feminine" another thing to another person, then how can we use these words to describe another person's features or our own? It loses any kind of common meaning. This isn't to say that all words need to have precisely the same meaning for everyone, however, in order for language to function we do need it to at least have something in common.

Additionally, if we take the traditional definitions of "masculine" and "feminine" and recreate them so that they extend to all features which a man or woman possesses, then what happens to trans people? What happens to intersexed people? What happens to genderless, gender neutral or gender fluid people? What happens when these people participate in the butch/femme dynamic, if we see butch as strictly a masculine entity and femme as a strictly feminine entity.

The above is where I get back to talking about my own thoughts and changing perspective on the butch/femme dynamic. If the origin of "masculine" is that which pertains to men or cissexed males, then is it not a denial of many butch's identities to refer to them as "masculine"? That use of the word "masculine" and its reference to butches seems to ride off the heterosexist assumption that queer identities (and in this case, butch/femme identities) are mimicking heteronormative and cissexist presumptions of gender. That butches and gender-variant AFAB identities are just "trying to be men." Evidently, this is completely false. No queer identity, nor gender-variant identity is an imitation of heterosexual or cissexed normalized identities. Yet I feel that we often play into it, and are we not doing ourselves a disservice by using the word "masculine" to describe woman identities, or identities that vary from cissexed male identities?

On the other hand, I also feel that the reclaiming of "feminine" by many queer women, and particularly queer femmes is something that I feel good about. For too long, "feminine" and "what pertains to women" has been far too caught up with what heteronormative society has made it.

But conversely, does feminine always mean "all characteristics pertaining to women"? If so, where does this leave woman-identified butches who don't feel that the word "feminine" defines them or who they are? So feminine is also a bit problematic as it pertains to woman/female identities.

I guess the problem I see with all my general "musings" on the subject is wondering where that leaves my thoughts on the butch/femme dynamic. Evidently, I am attracted to femmes, but because I now run into the problem of "feminine" not describing all women (even in the wake of a movement that is retaking the word "feminine" so that no woman and what she does is negated, which is good step, imo), I question how I explain my attractions. Am I attracted to femmes because they are "feminine" or because they are queer femmes with their own characteristics outside of the traditionally defined "feminine"? There is also the issue of not all femmes using the term "feminine" to describe themselves. Which I think is cool and perfectly fine.

So where does that leave our dynamic? Do we need the words "masculine" and "feminine" to define our dynamic? Can the words "butch" and "femme" not only take the place of "masculine" and "feminine" in the way we navigate language and how we describe ourselves, but become "labels" that are limitless as far as who and what they define? Labels separate from conventional gender terms? I feel that that is the approach many queer folks have taken to "masculine" and "feminine," but it always seems to backfire. So do we really need these terms?

Is our dynamic entering a new age where it no longer needs strict definition in order to justify attraction? Is it really the "masculinity" or "femininity" that we are attracted to, or the "femmeness" or "butchness" (or something entirely different) of an individual?

I'm not sure I've expressed exactly what I want and in the way I want, but there it is.