This comment intrigues me, what feminine qualities do butch-dyke lesbians (BDLs) have? In other words how are BDLs more feminine than more masculine which I gather they would have to be for lesbian women to be attracted to them in the first place? How are they more like women than more like men? I assume it is different than appearance?
They still have female genitals and boobs, for a start. 
And they just are women - female does not equal girly. The rest depends on the person. I know that sounds like a cop-out answer, but it’s the only one I can give.
Superhal, I’m not sure what you mean. I know tons and tons and TONS of ‘normal’ straight and gay men who like to dress up as women occasionally, either as professional drag queens, hobbyist drag queens, just for fun now and then or something with more personal meaning to them.
FWIW, butch doesn’t have any correlation with top in the relationships I know that are more obviously butch-femme. (Unless we’re using different definitions of top).
Sanvito, I wonder if we have any friends in common?
Oh blimey, probably 
I use to work for a company that had a fair number of lesbians on the labor side. It was interesting to watch the change over the years as many of them went form lipstick to lumberjack. I have no idea why but it was interesting to watch. there were some real hotties too. Maybe they were tired of getting hit on by men.
Kinda seeing it with Ellen D. She seems to be gravitating away from her feminine side. God love her I’m afraid one good sneeze and she risks a herniated penis popping out.
I don’t understand your obsession with transvestite men in a thread about lesbians, or how that comment is related to what I said. Or related to the discussion at all. Are you saying that butch lesbians are the equivalent of male transvestites?
You are, in fact, correct sir.
You surely don’t mean the Ellen D. who is a spokeswoman for Covergirl. I mean, how much girlier does it get than shilling for cosmetics?
Taking on gender roles our society associates with men =/= actually being a man. How hard is that to understand?
You seem to be stuck up on “femininity.” Femininity does not make you a woman. Being a woman makes you a woman. You can be as feminine or masculine as you like and still be equally female. Womanhood is not something you need to play-act or dress up for. It just is.
That would be the one. She’s going to have to girl up for the photo shoots. She’s a naturally good looking lady.
Well said. ‘Femininity’ does seem to be the sticking point in this thread. I love women. I don’t love women in frilly dresses who expect me to carry their bags.
Case in point, I live next door to a very nice straight couple who fulfil every straight stereotype known to man. She’s a very pretty girly girl who bakes cakes and polishes her nails. Her boyfriend loves being ‘the man’, carrying her bags, driving the car, building things. We went round for a BBQ the other day - the boyfriend was late home and the girlfriend wouldn’t light the BBQ until he got home to do it. Now, whatever floats their boats and all that, but both my girlfriend and I can’t stand girly women who don’t have the ability to put up a shelf, drive long distances or light the damn BBQ (we took over this tricky manly task, BTW). Extremely unattractive in a woman to us. Give me strong, capable girl any day.
Plus, I’ve always been described as “femme” what with the long hair, lipstick and nail polish, while being known to do an oil change on my old car while wearing a skirt, and owning more industrial power tools than my male roommates.
Quoted for truth. (I hate that saying, but it was entirely appropriate).
Sometimes it can be hard to tell, though. I mean, I’m a very manly man and my wife goes either way on the butch/femme spectrum–but when I’m home, she lets me grunt and do the grilling and kill the spiders, because she knows it makes me happy to do so. Doesn’t mean she’s incapable, just that she’s willing to play along with the “UH! Me man! Me control fire! Me turn dead cow into food!” thing I occasionally get going.
And God help me if I don’t let her carry 50% of the bags by weight when we are at the store unless I have a good reason why she should take it easy.
Lemme sum up–I don’t respect a woman who can’t light her own BBQ, but not being willing and not being able are potentially different.
It took everything I had not to just drop a “How YOU doin’?” on this, just so you know.
And that makes you a very hot chick, if you don’t mind me saying so.
You know how sometimes, you’ll see a flamboyant gay man prancing around, and he has his hand out, wrist drooped, and he is all fierce and twisting his hips around when he walks? That is not how women usually act. We do have a kind of feminine way of ‘holding’ our hand/wrist, but it is not that thing that flamboyant gays do.
That is their own thing. It is not really them being feminine, it is them being…flamboyantly gay. (which I love flamboyantly men, and they love me for some reason!)
Same with butch. The ones that ‘act and dress like guys’ are really uniquely acting and dressing ‘butch’. It is not the same as how a guy is. Some of them may even be going for ‘guy-like’ but in my opinion, they aren’t achieving that. They are achieving their own identity and it is what is attractive to those that like butches.
If you ever watch drag queens perform, you really get an idea of what I’m talking about. All that fierceness is something special, but it isn’t ‘female’.
Really. There’s very little you have to divide up into “men’s chores” and “women’s chores,” there’s just “stuff that needs to be done, preferably by someone who knows what they’re doing.”
I’ve been to England (London, Manchester, Liverpool) a couple of times, and did notice a distinct lack of stereotypically butch-looking women (and as a single lesbian at the time, I was looking for lesbians). I live in a medium-sized town in the interior of British Columbia, and there are lots of very butch-y looking women. I wonder if this is a cultural difference?
And as I like to point out, although I’m said to act feminine, if a woman acts like me, she’s not said to be acting like a “normal, feminine woman.” She’s said to be acting like a gay man.
I wonder if it is too. Here’s a picture from a local girl club in Australia which I’d say is a pretty typical mix you’d see out (minus the ubiquitous ‘Shane’ hairdos). Even the women there who aren’t conforming to ‘feminine’ ideals and might be considered butch are still pretty obviously female and I can’t imagine anyone mistaking them for a man even at a distance.
I find lesbians less inclined to make themselves uncomfortable to attract someone, the truth is flat shoes and short hair are far more practical and I think there would be far more straight chicks out there who would look more ‘masculine’ if there wasn’t the pressure from such an early age to looked so girly groomed to attract a man. It’s just about presenting yourself the way you wish and that is a sexy trait whether you’re sporting a crew cut or blonde tresses regardless of gender.
Full disclosure: I’m the one in the grey top.
You’re wearing a SKIRT, traitor!
I kid I kid, denim skirts are hot.
There may well be something in that. I’ve been told (by New York lesbians) that even New York is more ‘stereotypical’ than London, with fem/butch combo couples being the usual. That doesn’t happen quite so much in London.
Well I had just finished changing the oil in my four wheel drive.