We were so honored to present at AEL in January and here is an excerpt from the speech!
In the
1960’s there was the historical Stonewall uprising and lesbian visibility was
not becoming more of a three dimensional presences in the public eye. With the lesbian rights movement and the
first wave of feminism, butches and femmes were not becoming increasingly
viewed with a sense of misunderstanding and hostility by other lesbians. Androgyny was now seen as the only acceptable
form of lesbian gender expression.
Sexual practices were also policed
within the lesbian community.
This time with the prohibition of any phallic shaped sex toy within an
emphasis way from sex toys completely.
Butches and femmes who wanted to become a part of the important women’s
and gay rights movement found themselves treated as unwanted. Butch femme couples were called “aping heterosexual
couples’ and patriarchal attitudes. Because
the gender expressions were so polarized the first and second wave of feminist movement
didn’t know that to do with them. The concept
of aping was and still is used to degrade and devalue butch femme relationships. It was a very effective way for the feminist movement
to separate themselves from the butch femme members’ that had become so undesirable.
In the 1970’s through the 1980’s the lesbian
sex wars began in earnest and continued well into the 1990’s. The lesbian sex wars were specifically within
the lesbian community. They were hostile
and vocal and angry fights from within for the push for recognition of a wide
diversity of sexualities, gander expressions, and ethnicities. It was the fight for what defined lesbian and
queer women’s sexuality. IT was the
fight for all women’s sex lives to be validated and recognized. Women were fighting to be seen by other women
as three dimensional sexual beings.
Fights over the topics such as the sue of sex toys, penetration of any
kind, bdsm, the inclusion of transgendered women and a recognition of very type
of gender expression opened up an explosive e dialogue ion the complexities of lesbian
sexuality and gender variance. As a result
of these debates, and not so friendly discussions, butches and femmes finally
began to find a platform to express their grievances’ and concerns in a public
forum. The lesbian sex wars also allowed
the butch femme community to look at itself through a more three dimensional
lens and start to realize that we could make our own decisions and more
importantly, we could break our own rules whenever we felt like it.
We’re not going to fast forward to the
modern butch femme community where thankfully there have been a lot of
changes. One significant change is that
queer women are no longer obligated to
be butch femme or even andro. What this
means is that there is a greater freedom
to make gender expression something that is unique to the individual. It is also less likely that a person sexual expression
is dictated by their gender expression.
Butches are under less pressure to be exclusive sexual tops with only
femme partners’. Femmes are less likely to
be under pressure to be exclusive sexual bottoms with only butch tops for partners’
. Now we're not saying that this has
gone way completely. What we are saying is that the social consequences for
being an open butch sexual bottom or femme sexual top are less severe than they
used to be. The reason for this welcome
change in attitude is mainly due to the large influx of literature that has
been written by and for queer women of all gender expressions’. The internet has had a phenomenal impact on
the growing butch femme community. Because
we are finally able to find each other and talk about our won realities.
Another very positive change has been the
growth of the bdsm and leather communities’.
What this community has done has given us as butches and femmes the ability
to have understandable , viable, and supported three dimensional identities in
a way that the e lesbian community at large still struggles with. For example, in bdsm and leather, the terms butch boi, femme switch, femme sexual top, butch service top, and girl have
allowed the butch femme community to truly expand. So, although the lesbian sex wars are over
and we have other communities that support us, unfortunately, the power of some
of the biases from the past still remain.
Two labels that are often negatively used
when talking about lesbian sexual practices in relation to gender expression
and flippable butch and pillow queen femme.
What it means to be a flippable butch is
that the butch both gives and receives sexually. Unfortunately still in our
culture, it is thought that for a butch to e a real butch, they have to be
stone. In other words, they can only
give and onto receive sexual pleasure.
So for butches to admit that they enjoy receiving sexual pleasure, they are taking a change co being viewed
as less fierce, less capable, and a less desirable partner. Because a butch identity is so hard fought
for , and hard won, it is something that we hold onto very closely. So it can very difficult to have our identity
come into question simply because of the joy that we have receiving sexual gratification. Believe it or not, butches come in a variety
of categories. There is the bulldagger,
the bulldyke, the hard butch, and the soft butch. They all vary in intensity of their gender
3expression and sexual desires. Gull
daggers’, being the most masculine in appearance and behavior and soft butch
being someone with butch undertones mixed with a more feminine/androgynous
feel. So to call a bull dagger a soft
butch and vice versa is like smacking the cocaine out of Lindsey Lohans’
nose. That’s just asking for a fight.
On the femmes side, the pursuit of femmes
like butches are still going through having their complex sexualities
recognized and validated buy the queer women’s community at large. While butches face an uphill battle when it
comes to being viewed as always aggressive, femmes on the contrary have an
uphill battle when it comes to being viewed as always passive.
(EVE SPEAKING HERE)
The term pillow queen which is used interchangeably
with the label femme, means that they do nothing more in bed than lay back look
pretty, and let their partners’ do all the work. The flip side to this is that sexually
aggressive femmes are viewed with a sense of alarm if not outright
amazement. I have had many experiences
with this myself in that the women I approached were very surprised to learn
that for the most part I identify as a sexual top who is mostly stone. That is to say I am more comfortable in
giving sexual affection and attention than I am in receiving it. For me, when I came out, the book Stone Butch
Blues had a strong resonance for me because while I am femme identified my
choice of sexual expression with women as a stone sexual top. The book
helped me realize that one of the reasons that I was a sexual top was
because of the amount of vulnerability that it took to be a sexual bottom
wasn’t something that I was comfortable with.
That is until I met my wife…hee hee.
Another thing that helped me was finally
getting in touch with other femme sexual top.
This was monument for me because I was finally able to talk with other
femme identified women with similar sexual preferences and that was very
freeing an empowering.
(ME SPEAKING HERE)
The interesting thing here is that when I
finally met eve, I had had five y ears’ of really bad sex. Lemma say it, five years of really bad
sex. I knew that there was good sex out
there, and I knew people were having good sex, and I knew that I was going to get
me some. So when Eve and I started
seeing each other, I had absolutely no baggage about being on the receding side
of sexual gratification. It wasn’t until
much later when I was sent the memo that I shouldn’t be so public about receiving
sex from Eve that I actually first had to think about how I was being as a
butch who was open about receiving sexual pleasure from their femme. But even after I was informed of this, the
sex has been so mind blowing and has remained mind blowing, that there was no
way that I going to stop bragging.
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