The old adage applies: You know her when you see her. Butch is an aesthetic, but it also conveys an attitude and energy. Because part of being butch is owning it, the whole aura around it. What does owning it look like? Decades before genderless fashion became its own style , butches were wearing denim and white tees, leather jackets and work boots, wallet chains and gold necklaces.

Butch and femme are terms used in the lesbian subculture [1] to ascribe or acknowledge a masculine butch or feminine femme identity with its associated traits, behaviors, styles, self-perception, and so on. This concept has been called a "way to organize sexual relationships and gender and sexual identity". Both the expression of individual lesbians of butch and femme identities and the relationship of the lesbian community in general to the notion of butch and femme as an organizing principle for sexual relating varied over the course of the 20th century. The word femme is taken from the French word for woman. The word butch , meaning "masculine", may have been coined by abbreviating the word butcher , as first noted in George Cassidy's nickname, Butch Cassidy.

A soft butch , or stem stud-fem , is a lesbian who exhibits some stereotypical butch traits without fitting the masculine stereotype associated with butch lesbians. Soft butch is on the spectrum of butch, as are stone butch and masculine, whereas on the contrary, ultra fem, high femme, and lipstick lesbian are some labels on the spectrum of lesbians with a more prominent expression of femininity, also known as femmes. The "hardness", or label depicting one's level of masculine expression as a butch is dependent upon the fluidity of her gender expression. Soft butches generally appear androgynous , rather than adhering to strictly feminine or masculine norms and gender identities.

What I am is a strong, assertive woman — strong physically, mentally and emotionally. What I like to say is that I open my femininity up to different interpretations. Twenty-six years ago, at age 25, I came out as a lesbian — I was a late bloomer. Later I was fem for a couple years to try it, and being ultra-fem was kinda fun too. It was very difficult to be a butch in the 80s.