"Are You More into Mascs or Femmes?"
"Are You More into Mascs or Femmes?"
Genderplay on Tik Tok and a Brief History of Butches and Femmes
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The lesbians of Tik Tok never stop. This summer, a new lesbian Tik Tok trend has emerged, and it’s all about gender. Dominated by gender-fluid and non-binary1 lesbians and queer people, the trend is all about illustrating how seamlessly the user can switch from a femme to a masc gender presentation, or vice versa.
The script of these videos usually goes something like this: The user asks an imaginary romantic prospect “are you more into mascs or femmes?”2 This off-screen person then responds either “mascs, sorry,” or “femmes, sorry.” The Tik Tok user, who initially presents as the gender identity that their romantic prospect doesn’t say they are into, says something like “oh, that’s okay,” followed by a knowing smirk to the camera. Then, with a quick hair and makeup change and some Tik Tok editing magic, the user transforms into the gender identity that this off-screen person says they are into. This exchange is narrated by rapper Jack Harlow’s song “I Wanna See Some Ass,” the title of which plays on repeat throughout the video.
The videos themselves are fun, playful, sexy, and, frankly, very impressive. Though a large percentage of the videos depict a femme person transforming into a masc, the trend goes both ways. Once the Tik Tok user transforms into this imaginary person’s gender identity of choice, the video becomes something of a “thirst trap,” ie. a video or photo that is meant to arouse or excite the viewer. (These videos have become so numerous that several YouTube compilations of the trend now exist).
Though it is clear a lot of the transformation occurs through a change in hairstyle, fashion, or makeup, these characteristics are not the only things that constitute a femme-to-masc (or vice versa) transformation. Bodily comportment and attitude are significant pieces of this as well. A femme-to-masc transformation might begin with a user crossing their legs or toying with their hair, and end with them slouching in a chair with their legs open or biting their lip (Or the opposite – see below). A flirty, more demure attitude might become a cocky, swaggering one. In this riff on the trend, this person only changes the way they sit, and nothing else.
Style is still important, of course. A dress might become a t-shirt or button-up, long hair might become short hair, full eyebrows might become an eyebrow slit. (An unbuttoned button-up with nothing underneath is a common style choice for the mascs of the group). But even so, these changes don’t need to be huge in order to make a clear difference. In a surprisingly effective move, one user simply lets down their hair – which is initially up in a messy bun – in order to generate their femme transformation.3
This dichotomy between masc and femme identity in the lesbian community is not new. In an earlier period of lesbian history, masculine women were most commonly referred to as “butch.” The term masc is not quite the same as butch – it’s potentially broader and does not have exactly the same cultural connotations – but it is part of this legacy of gender subversion and gender play that has always been a part of lesbian culture. (When I say play I do not mean to say that one’s gender presentation is trivial – though for some it is – but rather that there is an element of creativity and pleasure often present in gender designations like these).
The history of the butch/femme dynamic in lesbian culture is many decades old. While gender subversion has been present for almost as long as we have recorded lesbian history in the U.S. – particularly in the eyes of sexologists who thought gay people were “inverts,” ie. that they were trapped in the wrong body – these gender dynamics coalesced more firmly during and after World War II. Butch and femme gender presentations became more apparent when lesbians began to enter the bar space in the 1940s, particularly after the war when many migrated to larger cities.
This decade did not mark the first public appearance of masculine women, however. In 1920s and 1930s Harlem, black women blues singers like Ma Rainey and Gladys Bentley headlined shows dressed in tuxedoes and were known to the public as “bulldykin’ women.” Contemporarily, masculine black lesbians are often known as “studs,” which is a distinct black identity apart from the broader term “butch.”
The dynamics of the lesbian bar scene were complex, and dangerous. It was during this period that butches gained their reputation for being tough. It was almost always dangerous to be out and visibly queer – as butches who presented as masculine were – so physical confrontation was commonplace at bars where butches would often be forced to defend their turf. In fact, lesbians of all types would sometimes carry switchblades with them when they went out at night. Because their gender presentation made them visible as queer, butches often stood as the public face of lesbianism during this period, and this affected femmes as well. As Alix Genter puts it in her article about butch/femme fashion in the postwar period:
“The butch’s masculine appearance and the sharp gendered contrast between the two make their queerness highly legible, a standard feature in images of postwar butch-femme lesbians in both the public and scholarly imagination.”
Indeed, among butch and femme couples, femmes are also made visible as a result of this gendered pairing. Nonetheless, whether or not someone was read as queer was based entirely on context, and there was more room for play and creativity within these designations than we might think. Because of a law in New York City at the time that designated that men and women had to wear at least three pieces of clothing that matched their “legal” gender – known as the “Three Piece Clothing Law” – many butches were forced to get creative. For example, pants with the zipper in the front were a clear sign of men’s attire, so butches in the club might turn their pants around if they heard the cops approaching. Wearing women’s socks, underwear, and bras was also a common strategy. At work, butches might have worn tailored women's suits as a way to incorporate a more masculine style into their daily lives, or they might have dressed entirely femininely during the day and only wore more masculine clothing at the bars.
While butchness is often associated with working-class women, this was not always the case. Butch lesbians existed in all classes, and each lived out their butchness differently. Some butch women did live and pass as men in their daily lives in order to find work in factories or as cab drivers, while many others passed as feminine at their jobs and displayed their butchness in other ways. In the lesbian bars, there were different butch styles that were themselves classed. A professional, middle-class butch look might have been inspired by Katherine Hepburn (wide-legged slacks, for example), while working-class style was more associated with men’s chinos or blue jeans.
Because it was risky to go to gay bars during this period, you either had to know someone or look the part to get past the bouncer. This heightened the imperative for butch/femme presentations in the bar scene. Lesbian scholar Joan Nestle recalls that “are you a butch or a femme” was the first thing you were asked upon entering a lesbian bar. Both butches and femmes operated with varying levels of visibility among these spaces, creating their own strategies for both survival and joy. As Genter puts it:
“Butches manipulated women’s fashion, managed inconspicuous legibility, and navigated the spatial and temporal risks of looking queer, while femmes joined them in confronting lesbian criteria around gendered appearance and behavior.”
In the late 1960s and 1970s, the butch/femme dynamic went out of style as many lesbian separatist feminists criticized such identity markers and argued that these gender roles were altogether harmful to the feminist lesbian project. During this period, the butch and femme roles and aesthetics became negatively stereotyped. However, in the 1980s and 1990s, there was a resurgence of butch/femme culture. Though the meaning of these identities had changed since their initial usage in the 40s and 50s, they took on their own renewed importance during this era. As historian Lillian Faderman puts it in her study of lesbian sexuality during this time:
“Although a few women who identified as butch or femme in the 1980s (or at present) did so with the same deadly seriousness that characterized the women of the 1950s, many others did it out of a sense of adventure, a historical curiosity, a longing to push at the limits.”
Contemporarily, gender identities like these are still used and exchanged among lesbians, queer women, and non-binary people, but with a marked playfulness and conscious referentiality that often characterizes queer culture today. The aforementioned Tik Tok trend illustrates some of the ways these gender identities are performed and exchanged in the present.
Part of the reason this trend has emerged is certainly that there has been an increasing recognition of gender-fluid as a relevant identity category within digital spaces like Tik Tok. Because gender-fluid or non-binary users are more easily able to find one another online as a result of tagging and the machinations of algorithms, these emergent (or perhaps, ancient) ideas about gender are able to circulate endlessly and enjoy a broader audience when the trend becomes large enough. Indeed, one of the central functions of Tik Tok is its propensity for reference – trends become trends when enough people replicate an idea with their own interpretation.
Certainly, these Tik Tok users are not merely making fun of the categories of femme and masc, but also illustrating that they are not diametrically opposed, and can in fact be embodied by a single individual. These videos highlight the centrality of play in gender identity and performance. Though Genter shows us that there was more room for creativity in the postwar period for butches and femmes than we might have imagined, the affordances of a platform like Tik Tok – and queer people’s newfound ability to express the nuances of gender identity on both an individual and cultural level – expand this creative space even further.
Unlike the fairly regimented gender roles of the 1950s or the anti-gender sentiments of separatists in the 1970s, these Tik Tok queers are creating new expressions out of old references, and having heaps of fun while doing it. To be sure, this trend has emerged primarily to entertain (or to titillate) the masses, but it never hurts to think about things a little more deeply – for time is circular, and history never dies.
Gender-fluid refers to a person whose gender identity or presentation might change from day to day, ie. someone without a fixed gender. Non-binary refers to a person who doesn’t fully (or at all) identify as a man or a woman.
“Masc” and “femme” are both shortened versions of masculine and feminine, but are used specifically within the lesbian community (as well as the gay community) and have their own unique connotations. Check out this article in Out Magazine about how femme has come to be defined in recent years.