Talk:Soft butch/Archive 1

needed?
This article is awfully small. And how is it going to grow? Lots of vague allusions to Ellen Degeneres? What if we simply have a single article on lesbian gender identities, which looks at historical evolution of butch/femme, variants across ethnic communities, influence of 70s feminism, 80s recovery of butch-femme, and ongoing fragmentation into queer & trans identities. or something! but to have two paragraphs on "soft butch" and the silly retronym "chapstick lesbian" seems silly. --lquilter 05:01, 9 October 2007 (UTC)

Someone could put in info on the "kiki" label which preceeded soft butch and described basically the same subgroup of lesbians. Maybe some more accurate info about the "soft butch" being more acceptable? While more acceptable than stone butches in mainstream culture and amongst some lesbians, I can verify as a soft butch that we take quite a bit of guff from those who hold to the butch-femme model as being both too butch and too femme or as being uncommitted to full butchness. 4.249.171.71 (talk) 22:24, 18 November 2007 (UTC)
 * History of kiki is a good idea and some of the content that is needed if this is to stay a separate article. It's just that we need to have reliable sources for the article and need to generate more content. As it is, I'm not sure why this couldn't be a subpart of the article on butch. --Lquilter 14:34, 2 December 2007 (UTC)

Fix bad redirect
Chapstick lesbians are soft femme, not soft butch, you idiots. Deepmath (talk) 02:04, 21 July 2009 (UTC)

I've improved the article to make it more relevant to chapstick lesbians.Deepmath (talk) 18:05, 21 July 2009 (UTC)

Fixed. Deepmath (talk) 23:10, 21 July 2009 (UTC)


 * Uh, since when? A Google search for it seems to say otherwise, and it would seem as they are mostly described as "exhibiting some masculine qualities" but not butch, they could identify it as either soft femme or soft butch. Also as a chapstick lesbian, I am soft butch, fuck you very much. Kila Onasi(talk) 19:10, 13 February 2013 (UTC)
 * Glass half-empty, glass half-full. 99.242.247.152 (talk) 05:27, 11 January 2014 (UTC)

Redefine ?
"Soft butch" goes back at least as far as the 1970s! At that time, it did not mean there was any femininity mixed in, nor were they femme in bed. If all the descriptions are based on that one book, there is a problem. If the usage has changed, I am not aware of it. Prove it with more citations!

It is NOT the same as "stem" and should not be conflated with "stem".

I came out and was active in the lesbian community in L.A. in the mid to late '70's. Most (visible &/or out) lesbians I met or saw were "soft butch". It was basically butch, without being totally mannish (ie not "hard butch")...hair, clothes, sitting, hand gestures, voice, etc. They had men's haircuts, no makeup, no or little jewelry (nothing feminine). (Think Ellen sans TV makeup, not "Shane".) These women--I dated several and knew many more--were NOT "femme" in bed, although they were definitely not super-masculine. They initiated dates, sex, etc. and today might be called "tops" or "switches". Some of us weren't anything or were a bit of both, but there wasn't the language for it, nor were we looking for a label. If we had to use a label, it might be androgynous or non-conforming (although non-conforming could apply to soft butches as well since they didn't conform to female gender stereotypes). My point is that I challenge the description of "soft butch" and I cite "lived experience" in the lesbian community. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 97.113.10.36 (talk • contribs) 12:51, 13 August 2021 (UTC)