butch-fem in male gay couples

[Bryan James Gordon]

Speaking for the United States (I've lived in the Southeast, the Midwest,
the Southwest and the West Coast since coming out), I can say it does exist,
but it is definitely outside of the mainstream of the gay male community. In
the mainstream gay male community, the majority of relationships are
ideologically gender-egalitarian, but also exhibit a "top/bottom" relation
which is in large part fractally recursive (Irvine/Gal) of "butch/fem" in
that the "bottom" is associated with passivity, receptiveness, nurturing but
being cared for. (These are all generalizations which are broken quite
often, of course.) It is not at all clear how many relationships adopt fixed
roles like this; "versatility" is also a frequent phenomenon. But
linguistically, it is a frequent trope that people will ask of men both in
relationships and outside of them whether they are tops or bottoms, so the
presupposition is that people are usually one or the other, not both. In
this way it is also reminiscent of gender.

It is very important to note that "top/bottom" means something entirely
different in mainstream gay male circles than in other groups such as the
leather/BDSM community. In the mainstream, it refers entirely to anal sex
roles, sometimes to oral sex as well. In other communities, "top" is more
likely to be referentially similar to "dominant" (and "bottom" to
"submissive") on a broader level, and does not have much to do with anal sex
roles. In the SM community in particular, "top/bottom" has to do with pain.
These other definitions are more similar to what you find in heterosexual or
lesbian communities, while the mainstream gay male definition is quite
different and often confusing for people who have other definitions. Many
trans guys and guys who "came out" into kink before they "came out" as gay
continue to use these other definitions, often to comic effect.

The idea of "butch/fem" in my experience has more acceptance in parts of the
gay male world which have to do with dominance and submission, and is
generally rejected by mainstreamers, who voice gender-egalitarianism (within
the community itself: they are often notoriously sexist towards various
types of outsiders and women) and power-egalitarianism as well. The
drag-queen subculture tends to play more with power and gender issues, but
that does not mean it is not gender-egalitarian. There is a lot of variance.
Some drag queens see themselves as gender warriors, but others see
themselves as gay guys just like every other gay guy and have no desire to
be associated with a fem identity out of drag.

"Butch/fem" is also more accepted in certain non-mainstreamed gay
subcultures in the Southeast (elsewhere?) and in non-white subcultures. I
have had a bit of experience with interesting butch/fem dynamics in
African-American subcultures in particular. It is very important to
recognise that the mainstream gay male culture espouses race-egalitarianism
but is certainly not a non-racist space, and the interests it serves are
typically those of upper-middle-class white men.

I am speaking as an informant, not as a researcher. I have no idea who has
done research on this stuff.

-- 
***********************************************************
Bryan James Gordon, MA
Joint PhD Program in Linguistics and Anthropology
University of Arizona
***********************************************************

2009/7/18 Luca Greco <luca.greco at wanadoo.fr>

> Dear I-Gala members,
> I was wondering if in gay male couples it exists something like butch-fem
> scenarios, relationships. Do you know if in UK-US community this type of
> relationship have been (linguistically) codified  in terms near to butch-fem
> dyad ?
> Cheers,
> Luca Greco
>
>
> Luca Greco
> MCF Sociolinguistique
> ILPGA-Paris III Sorbonne Nouvelle
> 19, rue des bernardins
> 75005 Paris
>
> http://www.cavi.univ-paris3.fr/ilpga/pages_personnelles/luca-greco/index.html
>
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