OH MAN OH MANNNNNNNNNNNN WERE WE NOT ANTICIPATING THIS ONE LITERALLY HOURS AGO OH MAN THIS IS GOOD
OKAY
no.
butch LESBIANS are women. femme LESBIANS are women. their choice in gender expression does not invalidate their sexuality nor their gender nor turn them into what you see as somehow copying or mimicking heterosexual lifestyle. who says that masculine/feminine dynamic was created by and created only for heterosexuals? by calling such relationships heteronormative, you’re essentially listing heterosexuality as a default that we’ve begun to drift away from and seemingly back towards in different ways, when in actual fact sexuality is far, far wider than that. you’re telling queer women that they can’t choose to align themselves and label themselves, if they so wish, and act upon the actual inclinations they have towards different women.
news flash, butch/femme was not created by heterosexuals. it was not created by, nor influenced by, oppressive institutions. you know who created butch/femme as a dynamic? lesbians and other queer women. if anything, such an idea is empowering, it’s a way to explore gender identity and subvert harmful stereotypes of what a woman is and should be (i mean, essentially here, you’re saying women shouldn’t wear pants and have short hair, what is this, the 50s?) and nobody in this community sits lesbians down at age sixteen and says “hey, look, now you gotta choose whether you’re butch or femme.” a lot of people identify as neither, both, something else entirely, some are really into the dynamic, some don’t connect with it at all and go through their lives without experiencing it, some femme women are only attracted to butch women, some butch women are only attracted to femme women, some femmes are attracted to femmes, some butches attracted to butches, some categorise themselves as either femme or butch but are attracted to people that are neither/both/whatever. i myself go from soft butch to femme over the course of the year. how do i fit into your heteronormative model? i don’t, because nobody does, because all the people i am talking about here are lesbian/queer women that choose to explore their identities in whichever way they see fit, as we all have every fucking right to.
even within power dynamics, many butch/femme couples subvert these so-called stereotypes yet again. there’s no rule that says a butch will be a dominant person and a femme will be a submissive person and this idea is frequently untrue. take harumichi for example. if we’re going to see haruka as the stereotypical “man” here, should we not be watching her save her helpless damsel in distress michiru from harm? should we not be seeing her as the more ruthless, powerful one within that dynamic? should she not be the sturdy, talented, coldhearted aggressive person?
but haruka tenoh is none of those things. michiru kaioh is. haruka is soft as shit – michiru is a terrifying force to be reckoned with. and you know what? haruka is sensitive, caring, morally upstanding, gentle – as much as she wants you to believe these things aren’t true (which is, i believe, largely as a protection for herself) it doesn’t change the fact that this is who she is. it was michiru that explained that, in actual fact, “haruka believes in sailor moon more than any of us.” she has a far more idealised, romantic view of things, she sees morality in terms of heroes and villains and she’s convinced herself she’s the latter and she does all this, has all this intricacy and character, whilst being butch. the reverse is true for michiru. she’s cold, calculating, tactical, if haruka wears her heart on her sleeve then michiru has buried hers beneath five layers of make-up, she can be cruel and she is ruthless and manipulative in getting what she wants. and she does all this. whilst being a femme lesbian. and dating a butch lesbian. amazing, right? it’s almost as if what you dress like doesn’t determine what you act like. it’s almost as if butch/femme characters can be well developed and well formed and interesting, whilst also being butch/femme.
and even if butch/femme does fall into dominant/submissive, as it may do, because everyone is different, it’s still not heteronormative. because that dynamic, this dynamic, does not in any way belong to heterosexuals. it is not a heterosexual dynamic because it is a dynamic that occurs between QUEER WOMEN.
finally, in terms of harumichi being stereotypical on a representation level, have you ever actually looked at the make up of lesbians on television? the vast, vast majority are femme and the vast vast majority of relationships portrayed are femme/femme. plucking a random article about bi/lesbian characters out of thin air, afterellen’s top 25 bisexual/lesbian characters of 2013 lists a grand total of 0 “butch” characters, with all of them being femme, femme-leaning or presenting themselves in a feminine manner (of course, im doing this purely on one image of each character and there were two candidates i found difficult to judge due to the styles of the show they’re in but, yeah, basically, even if you include them – it’s still 2 vs 23.)
so, if butch femme is stereotyped, where are all the butch lesbians on television? where are all the butch/femme relationships i’m supposed to be enjoying on my screen? off the top of my head, thinking of all the current f/f canon couples i enjoy, i can think of only three. one is a relationship featured in a single twenty minute episode of a tiny british tv series that probably won’t even get a second season. one is found in the backstory of an inmate in orange is the new black. and the other, the only solid, fully developed, intricate and honest depiction of a lesbian couple that are butch/femme, is harumichi. brittana? femme/femme. hollstein? femme/femme. cophine? femme/femme. pretty much every relationship on the l word? femme/femme. pretty little liars, lost girl, the fosters – all femme/femme. (i havent watched these so i can’t name but yeah). those bisexuals on the 100. both feminine. faking it – feminine. even within anime, the same rule still applies. yayoi/shion, the pmmm girls, ryumako, yumikuri, pretty much every character in every distinctly yuri anime there is out there. femme/femme.
you say you’re into progressive representation, but you’re reducing an entire dynamic created by and cultivated by queer women for queer women and reducing it to a mockery or false imitation of heterosexuality, as though hets own the terms masculine and feminine. in addition, this supposed “stereotype” – which is, by the way a popular dynamic that very much exists and is reflected in many real life couples – is nowhere to be found in television or media representation.
check yourself.
Goddamnit, I knew this was going to happen. Literally every time Megan talks about anything gay in Sailor Moon, I feel like some version of this comes up.
There is nothing reductive about butch/femme, and it has LITERALLY nothing to do with straight people. As a femme who is exclusively attracted to butch women, it has to do with a lot of things: The tension of difference, the transgressiveness of performing a masculine version of womanhood, the fact that women look really fucking good in suits, etc. But one thing I have NEVER thought is “Gee, we need to replicate a straight couple as closely as possible.”
Butch women deserve representation too, and they don’t get it. They deserve not to feel like the castaways of community culture. Admittedly, I have a higher stake in this, having a butch wife and a number of butch friends and hearing over and over again that they feel like the community doesn’t want them, the real world doesn’t want them, they exist in this liminal state where they are, to quote one of my friends, “too gay but not queer enough.” Read dating ads! Over and over again: “No butches/studs”
So like, I don’t know, maybe allowing this interpretation of a 20 year old anime to fly amidst the MANY MANY femme/femme pairings in the world, would be okay.
SittingOverHereDreaming 