Coming at this from my side as a (femme) gay guy who likes both butch (though non-macho) and femme guys, the honest answer is: because I’m attracted to femme guys. Femme guys are different from women, whom I am not attracted to (although I’m terribly fond of many of them). They don’t look like or come off as women; they look like and come off as femme guys, and I’m attracted to that. Why am I interested in femme guys and other gay men aren’t? Because people are different.
I can only imagine it’s the same. Why are many lesbians attracted to butch women? Because they’re women, and the lesbians in question are attracted to that sort of woman.
I’m actually surprised that a lot of people are baffled here. Surely you have your own tastes but can grok the fact that other people’s tastes in sex partner differ from your own. I don’t run around saying to straight women, “But how can you not want to make sweaty pancakes with that little flamer twink with the green hair? He’s so pretty!”
That test is a load of horsespittle. I hated Blair, because she was a spoiled, whiny, obnoxious, clueless jerk. And if I’m not straight, then I simply don’t know how to explain the husband. Actually, all of my friends preferred Jo to Blair, for the exact reasons you listed, and if they’re not all straight, I don’t know how to explain their husbands/boyfriends either. (Though, really, most of us were Natalie and/or Tootie boosters. Does that mean we’re bi and just haven’t realized it yet? :p)
It probably does say something about our personalities, though. We run the gamut between waist-length hair and makeup every time we step outside the house (the one who sells wedding dresses) to chin-length hair and makeup for weddings and funerals (the one who wrestles Rottweilers), and most possible points in between. The more we are women of action, the more strongly we preferred Jo, and the more we eschew “femme” things like high-upkeep hairstyles, long nails, skirts and heels, and makeup because those things get in the way of the things we want/need to do.
I’ve known a fair few lesbians over the years for someone who has lived her whole life in red states (my husband used to refer to one of my jobs as Big Gay Al’s Big Gay Vet Clinic), and I’ve never noticed them being any more butch looking as a group than straight women. They run the same gamut as the rest of us, in roughly the same proportions, and their style seems to be dictated in about the same way.
Counterpoint: I’m a (some would literally say ridiculously) straight manly man, and butch chicks can be just as sexy as femme ones. There’s an aesthetic to it that’s not necessarily masculine, just austere and powerful. That doesn’t mean I want that aesthetic to have a dick attached to it. Why wouldn’t lesbians feel the same way?
Part of the bafflement is because, despite what others on the thread have said, they refuse to accept that their perceptions are wrong, and there aren’t huge numbers of butch women. Unless the lesbians where Sage Rat lives are completely different to the lesbians in London.
A few women are attracted to very butch women specifically because they like gender androgyny.
Some women are just attracted to women in general. Those women will sometimes be ‘butch’ but they’re still women - just because you don’t wear heels and lipstick doesn’t mean you cease being female.
Most of the time, what is labelled butch in lesbians is tomboyish or soccer Mom in straight women. Shortish hair, mostly wear jeans and a t-shirt, don’t wear much make-up? Tomboy in young straight women, soccer mom in older straight women, butch if you’re a lesbian. FFS, I’ve been called butch and I spend all summer in pink flowery dresses!
That was partially tongue in cheek. All straight boys I’ve ever known also liked Jo, not Blair, but there are a strange number of women who would seem to prefer to be Blair. I think these are the same people who like “Sex and the City” - a show that revolves around spoiled, obxioxous, clueless jerks. I don’t know any gay women who ever thought “Yep, I wish I had Blair’s hair.” It was Jo, the cool chick with the motorbike… Hawt!
Edit: I also like Sabrina from Charlie’s Angels because she was the smart one with the cool gun who drove the getaway car more often than resorting to exploiting a sexpot persona. Kate Jackson, be still my heart! Yes, I was a very queer child.
Yep, typo on my part: straight women wanted to be Blair, gay women wanted to be with Jo.
Regarding my experience with butches: Admittedly, I haven’t met many in real life, but I’m not judging people on the street. Actually, I go to craigslist and browse the personal ads. Wsw is just fascinating to me, and there are a scary number of butch women with ads there (plus a picture.) I would say femme vs butch is roughly 50/50 of those who post pictures with their ads. What this tells me:
Since it’s 50/50 and not 60/40, butch women are not in the minority.
If it was say 20/80, that would tell me that lesbians prefer femmes. But, a 50/50 split implies that an equal number of femmes and butches are single.
It is possible that femmes date femmes and butches date butches, but looking at homosexual men, tranvestites in homosexual relationships are nearly nonexistant. Homosexual men like men that look and act like men, but there seems to be a disproportionate amount of lesbians who want women who act like men.
I once knew a woman who was just gorgeous. Natural red head, creamy skin, green eyes, nice body, and a great smile. She was the sort of woman who could enchant everybody in the room, regardless of gender or sexual identity. She was also very talented, very creative, very outgoing, and a joy to be around. She’s married to a short, fat butch woman who was so butch that she could easily pass for a short, fat guy if she wanted to. She kept her hair cut in mohawk (or shaved completely) wore an atrocious cowboy hat and other offenses against fashion. They were the most mismatched couple I ever saw.
Of course, once I got to know my friend’s wife, I realized that she was sexy and funny and charming and just…surprising. She was the sort of person you could talk to for hours and hours and never be bored. And she adored my friend. Doted on her. They were like two peas in a pod, and you could tell just by being around them that they were destined for great things and a great life together.
You know what that’s an example of? Not another lesbian who was inexplicably attracted to a butch lesbian (rather than a man!) but an example of an individual person who was attracted to another individual for a whole series of complex reasons. Maybe people are attracted to butch lesbians because they’re great people who are fun to be around and represent something besides the clothes they wear and how they cut their hair. Not everybody is so shallow that a person’s physical appearance is the very first and only thing to take into consideration.
Count me in as another gay woman who doesn’t see all these butches about. What do you consider ‘butch’ anyway, could you provide a picture? I’m trying to work out if you are talking like raging bull dykes (of which there are very few, at least where I am from) or just looking a bit gay.
The way it was explained to me was that butches are lesbians who take the masculine role in a relationship, e.g. hooking up the tv cables, carrying heavy things, etc. If femme homosexuals are bottoms, I think butch lesbians would be “tops.”
Here’s an example from craigslist of what I would consider a “butch.” If she is femme, I would be very surprised.
I wouldn’t call her butch. “Butch” makes me think short hair, tattoos, etc. I forget the exact name, but I was reading an article in the Village Voice about a sub-group of Black/Hispanic lesbians who dress in that “urban male” style. I think they were called “studs?”
Ah, I remember, “aggressives.”
Yeah totally.
I almost posted a few days in that “have you ever dated someone more attractive than you” because my partner is overwhelming seen as really handsome whereas me I’m short, chubby, with a strong chin and an aquiline nose, balding in a horseshoe way, near-sighted and usually seen as very average. But the catch is, he is in general highly turned on by chubby balding near-sighted guys!
As for the topic, I’ve very often read women who love butches say: “I’m not with a fake man, I’m with a real butch”.
I challenge the concept of a certain set of behaviors being “the masculine role” or “the feminine role” and I think as long as people use such filters when looking at the world that they are going to have a hard time understanding those of us who don’t happen to use them.
A lot of things used to be really segregated in that way, and then there was a big reaction where it was really looked down upon among lesbians to be either butch or femme. Now they’re more popular again, but they’ve lost a certain amount of baggage such as expecting butches to always go with femmes and vice versa, or expecting butches to always be tops and femmes to always be bottoms. (Accordingly the largely gay male words “top” and “bottom” have become more popular among lesbians.)
Lea DeLaria has a comedy routine from the early 1990s where she says, “I know I look big and butch – femme, femme, femme! I’ve seen more ceilings than a roofer, ok?” AFAICT that sounds really dated today, and she would be a lot more likely to be described simply as a butch bottom.
I think it comes down to this… some women are butch, and some butch women are lesbians but not all lesbians are butch and not all butch women are lesbians. But ultimately it usually has nothing at all to do with repelling men or wanting to be men.
I wonder what the ratio of losers to successful men is on craigslist? By your own logic, if there are more losers then that proves women prefer losers… right? :dubious: I think it would be fair to say that craigslist is probably not the best way to get an accurate sampling of any group of people. You would be far better off judging people on the street.
And what do you label a woman who’s straight and does those things? Handy? I thought the “butch” thing was about looks, not about knowing which end of a screwdriver is the handle.
This old chestnut is really complicated, and the question posed by the OP is even posed by some lesbians on occasion. There isn’t one simple answer, clearly. A few from my own experience hanging out in the lesbian ‘scene’ (hate that word).
There’s a few women on the edges that give the rest of us this ‘butch dyke’ reputation, as they’re the ones you notice. Having said that…
Subtle androgyny/tomboyishness is popular. I think a lot of lesbians have tomboyish instincts - I know I do.
Being gay puts you outside of normal societal expectations, as others have said. Don’t want to conform? You don’t have to. Nobody in the lesbian community will care.
Some women LOVE butch dykes - there can be something very sexy about a woman that can bring a combination of feminine traits and a toolbelt to a relationship. Androgyny can be hot hot hot.
I do know some butch women who feel uncomfortable in their feminine skin (and some straight women for that matter). Ever felt dumpy and stupid in a dress?
But at the end of the day, the majority of lesbians (at least in London, where I live) are NOT butch, and most fall somewhere in the range of normal. For a sample of modern London lesbians, check out the girls in the gallery of this popular lesbian club night. This is my experience of a cross section of London lesbian women.
For the record, I’m a lesbian woman who would describe myself as…tomboyish? Slightly androgynous? Basically, I’m definitely not butch - I’m slim, wear light make-up sometimes, dress in fashionable, well-fitting clothes, but I hate girly stuff, pink, heels, I keep my nails short, wear brogues, keep my hair short (but fashionably styled). See me with my girlfriend and you’ll probably guess I’m gay, as she dresses similarly to me. See me on my own, probably not. I’d say I was pretty typical.
I’ve known one or two of those (normal manly gay men who enjoyed dressing like women–like, goatee and doris day makeup/manicure) and they never seemed to have a problem getting dates in the gay community.
