The Queer History of Butches

The times I’ve felt the most hopeful about my future as a 20-something transmasculine person is when I’ve had the privilege of interacting with older butches. My first distinct encounter with a butch person happened when I was 15 years old at the Ventura County Fair; they were helping their high femme girlfriend get onto the Ferris wheel, looking dapper in their Oakland Raiders jersey and long, tightly-woven braid.

Though the interaction was fleeting and basically parasocial, moments like this always felt like Easter eggs from older, wiser queers — a sign to tell me you can live a masc life. I’m not alone in my admiration; butches have been a backbone of modern queer spaces since before the term was even coined in the early 20th century. From Stormé DeLarverie throwing the first punch at the Stonewall Uprisings to Leslie Feinberg penning groundbreaking novels about queer and trans experience like Stone Butch Blues and Drag King Dreams to Jeanne Córdova helping found the West Coast queer liberation movement, butches have helped shape the modern fight for queer and trans liberation.

Butchness is wide-ranging; some butches are cis women, some are trans women, some are nonbinary, and some are trans men. Put simply “butch,” like any descriptor that means different things to different people and evolves over time, is subjective. “Butch” is more of a vibe than a singular gender identity or sexuality. But regardless of what the label personally means to you, the impact of butches on queer spaces is tangible and crucial to understanding queer history.

Because butchness is broad, we spoke to butches about what the term means to them. Read on for answers to the most common questions people have about butches: What is the history of the word butch? What exactly is a butch? Are there types of butches?

Butch likely comes from the term “butcher,” and was initially used to refer to tough kids in the early 20th century. Working-class lesbians adopted the term in the 1940s, though scholars have struggled to pin down exactly when it became part of the queer lexicon. Often, “butch” was used to refer to masculine lesbians in butch-femme relationships (butch4butch relationships have always existed but were not always as visible).

Prior to the term “butch,” historian Lillian Faderman writes that there were other terms used to describe masculine lesbians. Within Harlem’s Black lesbian scene of the 1920s, terms like “bull dagger” and “bull dyke” were used to describe masculine lesbians, and “mama” and “papa” relationships were modeled similarly to butch-femme dynamics. While bull dagger and bull dyke are considered pejorative when used by people outside the community and aren’t used to describe people in modern day, stud — which some Black masc of center lesbians might use to describe themselves — emerged from the same sapphic spaces. It’s important to note that while there is overlap between some studs and butches, “butch” is a term that refers to someone of any race while stud is specific to Black American communities. (We’ll get more into the full history of studs in an upcoming guide, so be sure to check back in.)

Overall, “butch” described a specific kind of queer masculinity that challenged the gender conventions at the time and spoke to a working-class lesbian experience. Though as our language around transness has expanded, so has our understanding of butchness and how the two collide. As Leslie Feinberg portrayed in their seminal 1993 novel, Stone Butch Blues, trans communities and butch communities have been intertwined and overlapping for decades. Some butches transition medically or socially or both, some do not, and yet all may still hold their butch identity close to their hearts.

However, in the 1990s and 2000s, a narrative emerged in cis lesbian spaces about “butch flight,” or the notion that butches were “abandoning” womanhood in favor of transition (if you need an example, check out any episode of The L Word featuring Max Sweeney, at your own risk of course.) This line of thinking not only erases trans experiences, but also is an ahistorical approach to understanding the intersection of trans and butch identity.

Not all butches are trans and not all transmasculine people are butch; these things can both be true and our current understanding of butchness must include trans folks. These days, “butch” has expanded beyond lesbian spaces and encompasses an array of gender presentations, identities, and sexualities.

What makes someone a butch these days isn’t a particular gender or sexuality; it’s self-identification and a certain je ne sais quoi that only butches can pull off. As with any identity descriptor, it’s best to just listen to butches themselves about what makes them butch and why the term is a fit for them.

Jen Rowray, known as @cowboyjen to her TikTok fanbase, gained a following by posting videos about being a Midwestern butch, but the word didn’t always resonate with her. Rowray tells Them that while she had known she was a lesbian since she was a teen, “butch” felt loaded with stereotypes that didn’t feel like a fit for her, like smoking cigarettes and hanging out in alleyways. But once Rowray met other butches, she realized it was a broad experience, not a collection of myths and stereotypes.

“It's all these shared experiences we have as a masculine woman, lesbians. We're seen as not doing woman ‘right.’ That we're trying to be a man or we're acting like a man, and we're getting this from a very young age,” Rowray says. “We all have these shared experiences where we're getting this information that's incorrect. That's where the butch term helps us to take all these things that we experience and put 'em in a word that's just butch.”

That’s why Rowray, 55, has made it her mission to spread butch positivity across social media platforms like Tumblr and TikTok, and answer any questions young butches have for her along the way.

“The older I got and the more younger people were approaching me and asking me questions, the more I realized how important it was for me to make that an outspoken part of my life,” Rowray says.

For many young butches, that kind of visibility acts like a beacon to show them they aren’t alone in their experience. Mithran R.T. Samuel, 24, tells Them that seeing butches on Tumblr helped him understand his transness growing up, as it provided an alternative aesthetic that matched his gender presentation. Even though Mithran is out as a trans man now, the term butch is still close to his heart.

“I used to read about and look up to who wrote about butchness and talked a lot about moral ways of behaving in terms of being a gentleman,” Samuel says. “What's the best of masculinity? I want to dress well. I want to look good. I want to treat people. I want to look after people. It's not only presentation and aesthetic. That's why ‘butch’ still resonates with me, even though I'm a trans guy.”

While there are truly infinite interpretations of butch presentation, there are some popular subcategories that describe different kinds or aspects of butch identity. Some of these terms describe specific aesthetics while others capture sexuality. Here are just a few types of butches:

• Stone Butch: First coined in working-class lesbian communities in the 1940s and ‘50s, stone butch describes butches who prefer to not be touched sexually. This can mean varying degrees of touch or no touch depending on personal preference. The phrase was popularized by the release of the book Stone Butch Blues.
• Soft Butch: As the phrase implies, soft butches tend to have a gentler take on butch aesthetic, opting for a general masc vibe with some lighter touches like dainty jewelry or painted nails. Soft butches still sit firmly on the masc side of the butch/femme spectrum but with a certain feathertouch.
• Futch: Short for “femme butch,” futch refers to people who strike a balance between butch aesthetics and femme aesthetics (think a mix of big earrings and Carhartt overalls) but ultimately lean more femme.
• Dapper Butch: If you’ve ever seen a butch in a crisp suit, with suspenders, and a bow tie, you’ve likely encountered a dapper butch. Dapper butches play on an old-school kind of classic masculinity that tends to involve loafers, pocket squares, and sleek ties.

It’s important to note that while people can fit these descriptions, identity is up to every individual. Some people may “look butch” but don’t find that the term resonates. Other folks might be butch but not fit the archetypical stereotype of butches. What matters most is to ask what term feels best for every person.

Ultimately, butch identity remains an important staple of queer communities across the globe, and it continues to be an important and affirming term for so many.

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