Beth is a freelance writer and LGBTQIA+ advocate who is passionate about inclusive fashion and the role clothing can play in identity and self-expression.
Long story short, the words “butch” and “masc” aren’t interchangeable - both are cornerstones of queer history worth remembering.
“Wait, isn’t butch just another word for masc?” some people may ask.
Short answer: definitely not!
It’s important to understand the differences between the two terms, as not doing so inadvertently erases a specific piece of queer history that people fought hard to keep.
First thing’s first, let’s break down both terms independently of each other…
Where does the term “butch” come from?
Pick up an etymology dictionary and it might tell you that the word “butch” is simply an abbreviation of the word butcher…and then was used to define “aggressive” lesbian from the 1940s onwards.
The word “butch” itself started life as American slang from around the turn of the 20th century to mean a tough, rough-edged kid.
More specifically, it’s said to come from the famous cowboy and outlaw Butch Cassidy.
Etymologists even admit the trail goes cold before “butch” officially reaches queer history.
In Odd Girls and Twilight Lovers: A History of Lesbian Life in 20th Century America, queer historian Lillian Faderman mentions the terms “bulldagger” and “bulldyke” were used to refer to masculine-presenting women as early as the 1920s.
Usage of the word “butch” really crystallised in the 1940s - it was briefly slung around as an insult at “mannish” women. But lesbians, working class lesbians especially, reclaimed it almost as fast as it arrived as a heteronormative insult.
The class detail matters…hear me out…
Working-class lesbians of the era had room to experiment with presentation that middle and upper-class lesbians, more often boxed into white-collar or customer-facing jobs, simply didn't have.
The butch culture we'd recognize today was built in that largely working-class underground society during and after World War II.
Women, in their millions, stepped into the workforce to fill the roles of men who had left to fight in WWII.
They took on heavy industry and agriculture roles that were previously seen as jobs reserved for men. And with practical jobs comes more practical clothing choices such as trousers…and nothing marks queerness in women as instantly or publicly as a butch presence does.
Even today, a woman with a short back and sides haircut is immediately categorised as “lesbian” by hetero world. In the 1940s, however, trousers were seen as a queer indicator alone.
Credit: If these walls could talk 2
But, saying all that, by the 60s and 70s, that same visibility came at a cost.
A wave of white, lesbian feminists began gatekeeping queer relationships - specifically butch-femme relationships - as misogynistic.
The 70s section of the story in If These Walls Could Talk 2 is a prime example of some of the attitudes of the time towards butch women.
The plot is centered around a group of lesbian feminist housemates who visit a lesbian bar (wow - nice to see they existed at some point). The group are surprised and disgusted to see butch-femme couples
One of the housemates meets a butch woman at the bar and they embark on a romance. The group of housemates scoff at the couple, saying they don’t get why a woman would dress like a “man” when they have fought hard to fight against stereotypical roles.
And here lies the crux of the definition of butch - being butch isn’t about wanting to be a man…it’s about expanding what a woman is allowed to be.
Butch culture never disappeared, it kept thriving at the margins until it came roaring back into the mainstream in the 1990s…the butch comeback that more or less never left!
Butch is just for…lesbians?
I think it’s important to mention that butch has never been an exclusively lesbian word.
In ballroom culture, “Butch Queen” was a competition category for decades used by queer men.
And, the category quite literally means gay and bisexual cisgender men. In Butch Queens Up in Pumps: Gender, Performance, and Ballroom Culture in Detroit, Marlon M. Bailey writes:
“The gender system consists of six gender (and sexual) categories: Butch Queens (gay men), Butches (female-to-male [FTM] transgender), Femme Queens (male-to-female [MTF] transgender), Butch Queens Up in Drag, Men, and Women.”
Butch is a category in its own right - regardless of gender!
Enter masc…
Masc, by comparison, is young.
The word has really only been in circulation as an identity-adjacent term for about fifteen years. Masc is around the same age as the terms “YOLO” and “humblebrag.”
The activist B. Cole, who launched the Brown Boi Project in 2010, coined the term “masculine of center” to refer to the sheer range of masculine gender expression among queer people of colour (POC).
Credit: Instagram thebrownboiproject
Before masc, there wasn’t a singular word that did the same job. Instead, we have butch, stud, macha, boi and so on. Each of these words carry their own social and cultural history, with nothing gathering them under one roof.
Masc filled that gap. It’s a word that comes directly from the lived experience of queer POC. The Brown Boi Project has kept masc-presenting POC at the center of its work ever since.
Ever since, masc was picked up by the wider queer community. The word can be used for lesbians who lean masculine without necessarily claiming butchness, as well as trans men describing their aesthetic.
The moral of the masc story is masc isn’t really a specific identity at all - it’s merely a way of existing on the masculine end of a gender-presentation spectrum open to anyone.
Orange Is the New Black’s Lea DeLaria. Pinterest
Do butch women want to be men?
Mention the word butch to people (mostly heteronormative people) and more often than not the question “are you trying to be a man?” comes up.
It's a question that's been wrong for the better part of a century, because it assumes two things are the same when they aren't.
Wanting the confidence and ease that comes with masculinity, while being a woman, has nothing to do with wanting to “be a man.”
If you actually listen to what butch women have been saying for decades, it was never a workaround. It was always a rejection of the idea that "woman" only has one acceptable shape.
Butch isn’t an aesthetic, it’s just where a person feels comfortable.
After all a butch woman in a dress is still butch. Just as a woman in a flannel shirt and hiking boots for a weekend hike isn’t necessarily butch.
Only butch women wear the strap in a relationship…
Plenty of femmes strap, plenty of butches never do. Even the heterosexual couples are at it with “pegging.” Wearing a strap is a sexual preference…nothing more, nothing less.
Reducing an entire gender down to who wears a sex toy is useless and shallow. This is the problem butch-femme relationships can face - people only seem to ask about who wears what and who does what.
When butch-femme couples do get written about, it's often in this cold, clinical way - like they're being studied through glass - which manages to dehumanise people in a way most other relationships never have to survive.
Are less women calling themselves butch?
Fewer queer women call themselves butch today than did thirty years ago, and a good chunk of that is truly a good thing simply because there's language for nonbinary and transmasculine identities now that barely existed in the late 80s and 90s
More people are finding words that are a better fit for them, meaning the default setting for “woman” is expanding. Expanding the language around gender should leave plenty of room for a masculine woman to just be able to be a woman, full stop. When it doesn't, that's not progress. That's the binary sliding back in through a side door when nobody's watching.
There's a line from a desi butch writer, who posts as @localdesibutch on Instagram, that's stuck with me. She's written about growing up with no word for what she was - no version of herself at family gatherings, or in films, anywhere.
Finding "butch," she said, didn't feel like putting on a label. It felt like "taking off a costume" she'd been wearing for years. That image does more work than most of the history above.
Butch and masc are ultimately after the same thing from different directions: proving masculinity was never something only people assigned male at birth got to hold onto. Butch carries a hard, specific history. Masc opens a wider door. Neither one has anything to do with wanting to be a man. Both are just refusing to take up less space than they need to.
P.S. - I think it’s important to mention that none of this is purely my own thinking. Yesterqueers and Cowboy Jen have both been posting sharp stuff about this online for a while now, and they're worth seeking out if you fancy learning more.
For more on masc styling, check out Masc V Unisex
Cover image Rae Riot in GFW Clothing Dragonfly shirt, an example of masc style.