"Butch: (adj) notably or deliberately masculine in appearance or manner

Femme: (n) an alluring or seductive woman, especially one who causes men to love her to their own distress…A lesbian or a male homosexual who takes a traditionally feminine sexual role."

When I first started reading Stone Butch Blues, I was curious about the formal definitions for butch and femme. Does butch imply that an individual is a woman? Is femme in reference to homosexual women, or can it also refer to feminine women in general? I came to realize that these words refer to people’s behavior: these words describe if a person acts in masculine or feminine ways (I’m being careful not to use the word “role”). An individual can have one sex biologically, and yet can defy social expectations based on that biological identity. As Judith Butler would put it, each person inherently has a sex, but his or her gender is performed. Jess, although anatomically female, could be considered a man in Butler’s terms because she acts like a man. Although she is born with some masculine physical features, she “becomes” a butch when she starts to wear male clothing and find female lovers.

This blog topic is especially interesting because I thought of this question constantly as I was reading the novel. Jess defies social expectations regarding her sex: Jess’ sex, female, anticipates feminine actions, which she obviously does not maintain. However, even though Jess defies societal expectations, she still maintains social norms in that she lives in a binary world of masculine and feminine. Her role as a butch resembles that of a man in a relationship, while her female lovers are feminine and often times submissive. She upholds the heteronormative categories of gender (masculine and feminine) in her actions, and she is even horrified at the thought of two butch women in bed together.