Editing Lesbian (section)

==== Butch and femme dichotomy ====
{{Further|Butch and femme}}

As a reflection of categories of sexuality so sharply defined by the government and society at large, early lesbian subculture developed rigid gender roles between women, particularly among the [[working class]] in the United States and Canada. For working class lesbians who wanted to live as homosexuals, "A functioning couple ... meant dichotomous individuals, if not male and female, then butch and femme", and the only models they had to go by were "those of the traditional female-male [roles]".<ref name="Faderman1991"/>{{rp|pp=167–168}} Although many municipalities enacted laws against [[cross-dressing]], some women would socialize in bars as [[Butch and femme|butches]]: dressed in men's clothing and mirroring traditional masculine behavior. Others wore traditionally feminine clothing and assumed the role of femmes. Butch and femme modes of socialization were so integral within lesbian bars that women who refused to choose between the two would be ignored, or at least unable to date anyone, and butch women becoming romantically involved with other butch women or femmes with other femmes was unacceptable.<ref name="Faderman1991"/>{{rp|pp=167–168}}

Butch women were not a novelty in the 1950s; even in [[Harlem]] and [[Greenwich Village]] in the 1920s some women assumed these personae. In the 1950s and 1960s, the roles were pervasive and not limited to North America: from 1940 to 1970, butch/femme bar culture flourished in Britain, though there were fewer class distinctions.<ref name="Jennings2007"/>{{rp|pp=141–143}} They further identified members of a group that had been marginalized; women who had been rejected by most of society had an inside view of an exclusive group of people that took a high amount of knowledge to function in.<ref name="Faderman1991"/>{{rp|pp=170–174}} Butch and femme were considered coarse by American lesbians of higher social standing during this period.<ref name="Faderman1991"/>{{rp|pp=175–178}}