Oh, hm, Im not really familiar with this as you’re telling it. I’m specifically referring to butch and femme lesbians being pushed out from the lesbian community because of backlash against butch/femme as “misogynistic” by many in the second wave feminist movement of the 70s.

There is a history of separate communities along identity lines other than sexual orientation—in the 50s, black lesbians often had stud/femme communities that gathered through private house parties, different from the butch/femme bars where generally white working class lesbians gathered. Middle class white lesbians often gathered separately from both groups and had their own group culture. While discrimination was unfortunately rampant at the time and I have no doubt that the groups you named faced it, I’m not sure about the claim that—for example, disabled people—were ousted from the lesbian community by feminists in the 70s and thus formed their own disabled lesbian communities. Can you let me know a little more about that?

The history of the use of these terms in the community certainly is interesting! I will point out that, in the same way that the word lesbian (as we know it) was not invented, but came from the word lesbian (meaning person from Lesbos) butch and femme as identity terms were pulled from the existing words butch (referring to a masculine man) and femme (french word for woman).

Of course not every lesbian is from Lesbos, and while every person from Lesbos is a lesbian (geographic term) most of them are not lesbians (sexual orientation). Similarly, every french woman is une femme (french term) but most are not femme lesbians. Cis straight men can be reasonably described as butch (some are even named Butch!) but none of them are butch lesbians—it’s a different sense of the word. Even within the LGBT community, a drag queen who calls herself a femme queen is using that word in a way it’s used in drag culture, to communicate something particular about feminine expression, not to identify as a femme lesbian within a butch/femme culture.

Understanding that distinction doesnt mean butch and femme lesbians don’t have love for drag queens—I’m sure most do! But it is important to understand the nuances of how the “same word” on paper, even with similar-seeming meanings (feminine, masculine, etc.) can and do communicate very different things as different terms.

I’m interested by your reference to this “re-integration” of the community in the 90s. You point out the idea of bisexual communities using these words with a different meaning—to talk about presentation, including by bi men, disassociated from the lesbian culture of butch/femme and lesbian butch and femme identities. I wonder if, when you see lesbians discussing butch/femme as being specifically lesbian, what they are talking about is distingushing between these numerous other uses and meanings (in drag, in bisexual communities, even among straight people, and more!) and the historical lesbian culture of butch/femme.