Page "Lesbian" Paragraph 28

As a reflection of categories of sexuality so sharply defined by the government and society at large, lesbian subculture developed extremely rigid gender roles between women, particularly among the working class in the U. S. and Canada.

Although many municipalities had enacted laws against cross-dressing, some women would socialize in bars as butches: dressed in men's clothing and mirroring traditional masculine behavior.

Others wore traditionally feminine clothing and assumed a more diminutive role as 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.

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, however, 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.

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.

Butch and femme were considered coarse by American lesbians of higher social standing during this period.

Many wealthier women married to satisfy their familial obligations, and others escaped to Europe to live as expatriates.