Where are the Butch Lesbians?

 Although lesbian representation is becoming more mainstream, there is still very minimal butch lesbian representation. Even when gender non-conforming or butch coded lesbians are shown, they rarely are called butch within the media itself. When lesbian relationships are represented on screen it is often between two femme or fem lesbians, ignoring butch, stud and stem lesbian relationships. Even rarer is relationships between two butch lesbians. The lack of representation for butch lesbians is isolating and ignores its importance within lesbian culture. 

While I was brainstorming for this post, I tried to think of any butch lesbian characters to use as examples for positive or negative representation, especially if they explicitly identified themselves as butch within the media itself. I couldn’t think of a single explicitly butch character in any of the shows or movies I had watched, and when I asked my friends, they had a very similar sentiment. There were plenty of lesbian characters that had a more masculine fashion sense, but there was no use of the word butch itself. This points to how little butchness and gender nonconformity are present in the media.

The lack of butch characters exemplifies how representation is still very cisnormative and heteronormative. Although there are increasing numbers of queer characters in TV and film, to at least some level, they are meant to conform to the cishet gaze. Lesbian characters need to be feminine for heterosexual men to be attracted to them, causing a majority of lesbian representation to be feminine women. This is a result of the thought that the queer community needs to be palatable to cishets in order for them to be accepted instead of celebrating identities that fall outside of the binary. Assimilation of this type is not possible because it inherently ignores intersectional issues that face non-white queer people and forces queerness into a box. If you try to assimilate into a system that is broken without fixing anything, nothing will change. Activist Barbara Smith writes: “Of course, the people left out of this new gay political equation of mainstream acceptance, power and wealth are lesbians and gay men of color.” (Smith 1993) 

Being queer is inherently revolutionary, but TV and film often does not show that side of queerness. Cherry Smith writes: “Every time the word queer is used it defines a strategy, an attitude, a reference to other identities and another understanding…Both in culture and in politics, queer articulates a radical questioning of social and cultural norms, notions of gender, reproductive sexuality, and the family.” (Smith 280). Identities like butch and gender non-conforming are revolutionary because they fall outside of the patriarchal, cisgender, heterosexual gaze. Being butch isn’t just about being a masculine lesbian woman, it’s much larger than that. Butchness is a lifestyle, it affects the way you are perceived by society because of how it challenges traditional gender roles. It is revolutionary to be proud of your queerness and love in a way that does not fall into the norm. 

Seeing identities outside of the norm increases acceptance by people who do not identify the same way while also exposing people who have not yet figured out their identity to something they might closely relate to. Feeling seen is important because at the end of the day, humans crave to be accepted by the others around them. An example of the positive effect butch representation does have is in Author Alison Bechdel’s memoir Fun Home. In the comic, she describes the joy she felt when she saw a butch woman for the first time as a young child. Even though she didn’t have the exact words to describe how she felt, she was still able to feel seen by seeing someone like her existing. This is why more inclusive representation is so important and influential. Without it, people can go their entire lives without knowing about other people like them, unintentionally excluding them from a community they would be most comfortable in. 

Citations: 

Smith, Cherry. “What Is This Thing Called Queer?” The Material Queer, Edited by Donald Morton, Westview Press, 1996, 277-285.

Smith, Barbara. “Where’s the Revolution?” The Nation, 5 July 1993.