Hello, lovely people, and welcome to a new video!
and thank you to Surfshark for sponsoring today's video, more on their Black Friday deals later!
Are you a butch, a femme, or a stem?
Am I a butch, a femme, or a stem? Stick around to find out!
Although it is pretty obvious.
- Fabulous!
Let’s start with butch. Butch describes a lesbian who–
- Wait, no, let’s start with lesbian.
Yeah, for real. A lesbian is a woman who loves women. Mostly. There are people who
identify as lesbians who don’t identify as women,
such as some nonbinary people who were assigned female at birth.
There are also people who identify as lesbians that were assigned male at birth.
As always, this channel is a trans-inclusive space. If you disagree,
kindly understand that people’s existence is not a point of debate.
I'm afraid your comfort level with people’s identities is neither here nor there.
So, disclaimer:
Although this is a video in which I'm going to be discussing lesbians,
types of lesbians, we are going to have fun with it… you know,
we are a bit of a jockey community. It is how we are. We like our memes.
I will generally be using the pronouns she and her but that
doesn't mean that i am excluding those who use the pronouns they/them or trans-masc people.
Special love to those on the more masculine end of our spectrum. We love you. We see you.
Now, butch. Butch describes a lesbian who presents more traditionally masculine than
feminine. She might have short hair, dress in men’s clothes, and so on.
On the other end of the gender presentation spectrum, we have
femme lesbians: lesbians who embrace more traditionally feminine things like make-up,
fancy hairdos, dresses, high heels et cetera.
BUTCH AND FEMME SUB-IDENTITIES
But that’s not all.
Within this we also have soft butch, or a butch lesbian who also has some
traditionally feminine traits; stone butch, or a butch lesbian
who more conventionally masculine than the average butch lesbian; and glamour butch,
or a butch lesbian whose gender presentation includes masculine formalwear such as suiting.
On the femme end of the spectrum,
we have high femme, which is exactly what it sounds like, heightened or hyper femininity.
If you didn’t already know, yes, this is me. Hi, hello there.
You may have also heard of lipstick lesbians, who are similar to femme and high femme lesbians in
their deliberate and joyful femininity. Ultimately it is up to each individual lesbian to determine
which identity fits the best, whether that’s femme, high femme, lipstick, or all of the above!
Following the naming trend set by lipstick lesbians, we have chapstick
lesbians! Chapstick lesbians are lesbians whose gender presentation leans towards androgyny.
I mean, if you’re a woman who’s attracted to women at a time where society tells you that
only men are attracted to women, well, it really makes you question what man
and woman really mean. And what men’s and women’s clothing, hair, and style can be.
Gender expression comes in all different forms. We have the deliberately masculine
or feminine gender presentation of butch and femme lesbians, we have lesbians who
feel like womanhood doesn’t quite fit, and we have drag performers!
You’ve probably heard of drag queens, but have you heard of drag kings?
Through their performances, drag kings question, satirise, politicise, and redefine masculinity.
One such drag king is Stormé DeLarverie,
who is known for throwing the first punch in the 1969 Stonewall Uprising.
What a king!
Clearly who Kiley Jenner named her daughter after…
There is some debate about who threw the
very first punch because as you can imagine, things were quite hectic.
Stormé DeLaverie was a biracial drag king who
performed in the first racially integrated drag revue. And she was a butch lesbian!
Time for a quick break to say thank you to the sponsor of today’s video - Surfshark!
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COMMUNITY-SPECIFIC TERMS
Now we’ve covered butch, we’ve covered femme, but what about stem?
Have you heard of Stem before?
Stem, which can be spelled two different ways…
That is not related to science. I'll be honest i forget what that stands for.
refers to a lesbian who falls somewhere between femininity and masculinity. Specifically,
a Black or Latine lesbian who falls somewhere between femininity and
masculinity. The word stem is a combination of stud and femme.
A stud lesbian is a lesbian who is traditionally masculine,
and like stem, this is a term reserved for the Black and Latine communities.
But why do stud and stem only describe Black and Latine lesbians?
Well, it should come as no surprise that historically,
queer communities in the Western world have been predominantly white.
Not necessarily that people who are lgbtq+ have been making up those numbers but the ones who
have been willing to write it down on a census have been. Also the ones making up the names.
As a result, many of the identities we’ve discussed so far reflect white experiences.
There are people of colour who identify with femme, butch, and other terms we’ve discussed,
and there are also people who prefer terms like stud, stem, and other terms which were
created by communities of colour to affirm their unique cultural and queer experiences.
Same-Gender-Loving, also abbreviated as SGL,
is another community-specific term which was created as an alternative for the
words gay and lesbian.. Same-Gender-Loving was coined in the early 1990s as an Afrocentric,
culturally-affirming identity for African Americans and members of the African diaspora.
HISTORICAL TERMS
Ok, sure. Now the 1990s might sound recent,
but it’s important to remember that while the specific modern terms we use today may
be relatively new, queer experiences and queer people have been around forever.
I mean sapphic, the umbrella term for women and feminine people who love each other,
refers to Sappho, an Ancient Greek poet from over two and a half millennia ago.
She’s famous in the lesbian community for writing delightfully lesbian poetry.
You can learn all about her right here! Just click the card above or the link in the description.
The word lesbian originally referred to someone from the island Lesbos,
Sappho’s home. Like if you’re from England, you’re English;
if you’re from Malaysia, you’re Malaysian; and if you’re from Lesbos, you’re Lesbian.
[Rupert interrupts]
Oh, you are talking about Malaysia?
R: Yeah.
Women who love women, or W-L-W, or wuh-luh-wuh, have always been around,
even though we didn’t always describe ourselves as butch, femme, or stem.
Let’s go alllll the way back to the 1730s where we find one of the first uses of lesbian as we
currently understand it–not someone who lived on Lesbos, but rather, someone who is very gay.
Like me!
Forty years after lesbian was first used to describe gay women, lesbians become known as
tommies. This lasted from about the 1770s to the 1810s, and there were also other
“tom” words which described women who didn’t follow conventional femininity. Think tom-boy.
Starting right in the middle of the era of lesbian tommies, we have sapphists,
who also derive their name from Sappho! Beginning in the late 1700s, sapphist was used to describe
lesbians. It was used throughout the 1800s and 1900s, and it’s even sometimes used today.
Now let’s hop our way through history to find the 1930s when a masculine lesbian could be described
as having a mantee voice or a mantee walk while a feminine lesbian could be described as a Margery.
Was there one Margery that started the trend and then… she was just so gay
that they had to name all other feminine lesbians The Margery?
Feminine lesbians were also called fluff during the 1940s.
I could go fo that…
Speaking of the 1940s, from approximately the 1940s to the 1960s, the term kiki described
a lesbian who was neither definitively butch nor definitively femme. Kiki is still in use
today in the Kiki ballroom subculture, though it now describes social gatherings, not lesbians.
The mid 1900s is where we finally see the first uses of butch and femme as we know them today.
Some of the earliest recorded quotations are found in Vice Versa,
subtitled America’s Gayest Magazine, which was a magazine for lesbians, by lesbians.
"For lesbians, by lesbians!”
In the October 1947 edition, one author writes “Ah, at night I am just one thing:
myself. I am a butch. I am a white starched shirt. Cuff links. A bow
tie. I am close-cropped hair. I am a husky throat. I am manners.”
She also says, “I am I. You are you. We are–we. The boy-girls,
the gayborn…the daughters of Lesbos”
Before it definitively described lesbians, butch could refer to a tough person,
a butcher’s knife, or a certain cropped haircut. It wasn’t until the 1940s that
butch was described just in the lesbian community.
In addition to colloquial use, butch was also used in
the secret LGBTQ+ language Polari to refer to masculine lesbians.
As for femme, there’s no consensus about its origin. It does just mean woman in many languages,
including French, and it has been used to describe feminine lesbians since the mid-1900s.
In the November 1947 edition of Vice Versa, “the word “femme”, which is common in gay parlance” is
suggested as the primary descriptor for feminine lesbians over the term fluff.
Although, I’m a bit sad about that.
I wish we’d gone with fluff.
The Butches and The Fluff.
Warning for derogatory language about lesbians in three, two, one…
The term bull-diker emerged at the turn of the 20th century, and the shortened dike appeared in
the 1930s. They were used both by and against lesbians, especially more masculine lesbians.
Bulldagger and bull dyke actually originated in Black lesbian communities during the Harlem
Renaissance. Unfortunately, instead of being used to celebrate Black lesbians,
they became weaponized against Black lesbians and the general lesbian community.
Dyke has since been reclaimed by members of the lesbian community,
though many are still affected by its painful history and prefer not to use it.
Which is very similar to the word ‘Queer’ which i covered in my video on the word which you can
watch by licking the card here or the link in the description below.
Throughout history, there were also a plethora of historical terms describing lesbians which
referenced sexual acts, such as rubster, which was used in the mid-1600s, muff-diver,
which was used in the early 1900s, and tribade, which was used in the late 1500s and onwards.
I don’t really know what that means…
Unfortunately, many of these terms were used derogatory way and not by choice.
Also used to slander the probably bisexual Queen Christina… King Christina of Sweden,
KING, because she did things like dress in a mix of men and women’s
clothing and have amorous relationships with women.
You can learn more about her in my video here!
SLANG and INSIDE JOKES
Today, instead of being tut tutted for relationships with women like
King Christina was, you may be tut tutted for relationships with…men? This is not a good part.
There are so-called ‘gold-star’ lesbians, which, first of all, no, no gold stars for anyone.
This term describes a lesbian who has never had sex with a man, which,
hmm.. I’ll state the obvious: sexual history and sexual behaviour do not equate to sexuality.
We need to consider things like compulsory heterosexuality and social pressures.
And also not judge others or ourselves.
Someone is not less of a lesbian because they
didn’t know they were a lesbian until later in life, they are also not less
of a lesbian because that’s how they were feeling at that point in time.
All lesbians should be welcomed into the lesbian community with open arms!
I changed my mind. Gold stars for everybody!
Speaking of lesbians who figured out their sexuality later in life,
guess what they’re called? Baby lesbians! And also baby dykes. And also baby gays.
You can also use the term for a very young gay.
Baby ‘insert something here’ is a loving moniker in queer
communities which describes anyone who is new to their queer identity.
This means anybody of any age who is newly figuring out that they’re queer.
Our friends Jamie and Shaaba, in addition to being lovely,
wonderful people, have fostered a beautiful online community which
welcomes baby trans people who are learning about their own transness.
We’ve gone through some lesbian identities; now how about some lesbian inside jokes?
We have, of course, U-Hauling.
Okay, so we don’t actually have U-Haul in the U.K., but it’s a good joke and…
It certainly applied!
Claudi and I are certainly u-Haul lesbians. We moved in basically
on our third date and have not been appart since in 9 years so… the joke
about lesbians movint too quickly? Yeah, she proposed after 4 months.
We are very happily married.
We have a small child.
It goes really well. Go for it!
Falling in love with your best friend.
Yes. Classic Lesbian.
But how do you find a lesbian best friend to become your wife? Maybe you’ve lucked out
and you already have one. Maybe you want to find out if someone is a lesbian–or is just generally
attracted to women–so you casually sidle up to them and ask, “Do you listen to Girl in Red?”
Nope.
Maybe you’ve never heard of Girl in Red…
I hadn’t.
…but you should absolutely say yes if anyone ever asks you this! Why?
Because Girl in Red is a famous Norwegian singer-songwriter whose work is extremely
gay! See “I Wanna be Your Girlfriend” or “We Fell in Love in October” for examples.
I’m not good at music recommendations but apparently this one is really gay.
Oh, Hayley Kiyoko! That one’s gay.
I dont know. Leave other music recommendations below ok?
We need to know the celesbians.
A dykon if you will.
These terms are less used than other slang we’ve mentioned, but they’re still
very fun. Like the name suggests, a celesbian is just a celebrity lesbian.
And a dykon is someone who the lesbian community finds
iconic who isn’t necessarily a lesbian themself.
Can this also be me? I am, to be clear, definitely a lesbian.
Amazing.
Style can be hugely personal to one’s queer identity. We’ve talked about
the ways in which lesbians explore gender presentation, and while there
is no one-to-one correlation between sexuality and gender presentation,
there’s no denying how personal style can be used to express one’s queerness.
I mean, are you a Doc Martens lesbian, a Converse lesbian, or a Vans lesbian?
None of the above, actually. I’m a heels lesbian. Not that that’s a thing.
My hands are doubly floppy though. Cause I have
th lesbian fabulousness and they don't work. It’s a style choice.
No, they were paralysed for a bit. Not a style choice.
So lesbians realised that so many of us loved the same kinds of shoes,
and thus, shoe lesbians were born.
Fun fact: lesbians’ relationship to Doc Martens actually dates back to the women’s liberation
movement of the 1970s when Docs were favoured by butch women who worked in labour-intensive jobs.
None of these shoes are a definitive declaration of
one’s queerness. They’re just a fun inside joke.
Have you also noticed how many vintage lesbians are?
There are many many vintage lesbians. I see you.
Just remember: The only way to know if someone is queer is if they tell you. So… wink at them?
Someone could just like Doc Martens. Or Converse. Or Vans. Or maybe they’re
closeted and finding subtle ways to express their queerness in a way that feels safe.
Now this video has been focused on English-language lesbian slang,
because I speak english and sometimes i struggle with that. but I also have a
video about queer sign language, so do go and check that out!
Its really old and i should re-do it…
But It is and I should warn you in, British Sign Language,
so if you know American Sign Language, this is a different language.
People have gotten confused before.
I absolutely love learning about queer language used around the world,
so please please please share what queer and lesbian terms you use in
your own communities down below! I can’t wait to read your comments!
And thank you again to Surfhshark for sponsoring today’s video! Remember to
click the link in the description or head to Surfshark.deals/Jessica for their exclusive
Black Friday deal! Enter promo code JESSICA to get up to 6 additional months for free!.
Thank you so much for watching! I’ll see you all in my next video! Bye!