Femme, Heavy on the “f-e-m-M-E”
“Fem(me)” as in lover, nurturer and fierce protector of the queer community, especially in relation to gender nonconforming butch/stud/masc peers. <3 Check out my other list of my favourite butchfemme fiction in general!
created by kumishona
last updated August, 2026
Comments
YES !!!! exactly what i wanted. 😌 
Yay!! Glad you appreciate! In my experience it’s a rare pleasure to come across a relatable storyline where you see the a presence of a character who is very obviously meant to be an old-school femme. Not a lot of fictional books describe the magnetic, inevitable way that sort of gender/sexuality-awakening and cultural coming-of-age can just happen to you, haha
agree ! i feel like i haven’t come across many of those types of revelations and it does irk me just a tiny bit when fem and femme are used so interchangeably. starting a petition for more femme awakenings. 🙂↕️
Ah, I have so many thoughts on that, I hope you’ll excuse me nerding out!
I actually don’t mind when fem/femme are used interchangeably as afaik “fem” was actually briefly the original working class term to pair with butch (as in, “butchfem”), and then it evolved into the slightly fancier sounding “femme” with some influence from budding queer academia/theory lingo. My understanding is that Stone Butch Blues also applies “femme” even in its ~1950s bar culture setting only because it was published in the 90s after which “femme” was popularised. I personally identify with “femme” knowing its eventual established connotations in most queer publications, but I’ve seen lots of (especially elder) lesbians/sapphics identify as “fem” despite having an identical positionality in queer gender/culture. So I often use “fem(me)” as a unifiying term, an idea I learned from Obviously Queer’s YouTube video on the topic, which I thoroughly enjoyed!
I think recent discourse claiming contemporary masc/fem (or unlabeled folks) are “only” aesthetics vs (especially OFOS) butch/studfemme are sociopolitical can (besides the terminology confusion!) often overlook how much aesthetic statements play a part in the sociopolitical, especially in conservative and BIPOC societies even today. These negotiations feel remeniscent of how futches/stem(me)s and androgynous/multigender lesbians/sapphics often refered to as “kiki” (besides, of course, other percieved outliers such as butch4butch and femme4femme) were historically treated by butchfem(me) communities! Overall I really adore following how lesbian/sapphic/queer gender diversity evolves as society shifts and each existance is powerful in its own way. ♥️♥️♥️
nerd away ! i am absolutely reading all of it. i do mean when it comes to explaining the differences between the two that they accidentally become one in trying to explain since they’re used so interchangeably in some conversations which you bring up with terminology confusion. i know a lot of people are protective (not negatively) about their femme identity and get upset when people try to say fem and femme are one and the same. i’ll definitely check out that youtube video when i get the chance ! i’m always up for learning more.
i have seen a bit of that discourse actually. it does make me a little sad to see so much division be created within those conversations that i think are great opportunities to educate, though i do love the creativity in these spaces and seeing how everyone comes together with it. <3
