What makes a butch

She was a 19th century landowner, industrialist and adventurer, whose diaries recorded her relationships with multiple women. She presented in male clothing and occupied male spaces afforded to her by her wealth and social standing.

They were, to varying degrees, afforded the same rights and standing as men within certain male-dominated cultures, occupying leadership positions, owning land, amassing wealth and taking wives of their own. For some this meant adopting male clothing, mannerisms and titles. As a black African woman, my butchness used to be something restrictive, and it further compounded the complex elements of my identity that were created by moving from an African to a Western society.

As a masculine presenting person, this was a misinformed method of holding on to my history and traditions. I believed I had to be dominant, resilient, reserved, stoic, and muted, perpetuating ideas around African machismo appropriated from the male figures around me who themselves had a fraught relationship with their own masculinity.

I had a damaging understanding of what masculinity was, which led me to reject anything feminine because I associated it with weakness, fragility and being docile - all things I perceived as negative.

It was not designed for me and actually, my butchness posed a direct threat. This really resonated with me. I am now claiming autonomy over that. Butches and femmes faced criticism from middle and upper class lesbians who felt that they replicated heterosexual relationships.

The first lesbian organization, the Daughters of Bilitis , formed in and pressured butches to appear more feminine. In , a handful of butch lesbians participated in the Stonewall Riots. Yet, a new generation of young, political, and college-educated lesbians developed in the years that followed. They were pushed to the margins. While butches among gay men are often seen as desirable, they were also viewed with suspicion as hiding their gay identities. Butch has been connected to trans identities, and some who identified as butch women went on to identify as trans men or transmasculine.

That same year, butch visibility got even louder when butch singer k. The s made way for more mainstream butch visibility. Ellen DeGeneres debuted her talk show after coming out on her sitcom less than a decade before. With sneakers and blazers, she was the quintessential soft butch. The hit Netflix show Orange Is The New Black introduced a hard butch in that was and is perhaps the first of her kind on screen.

As a hilarious and sexual character, she defies stereotypes. Get the best of what's queer. Sign up for our weekly newsletter here.