Written by Amy Goodloe
Copyright © 1993, 1999. All Rights Reserved.
Lesbian Identity
III. BUTCH-FEMME, LESBIAN IDENTITY, AND THE POLITICS OF TOMORROW
and the Politcs of Butch-Femme Roles, Part 3Given the rather hopeful note on which the previous section ends, it would seem that butch-femme role playing has finally recovered from the devastating blows long dealt such behavior by the dominant culture, and more recently by a certain brand of lesbian-feminist theory. But there is at least one voice that is not quite so hopeful. According to Judith Roof, in a chapter entitled "Polymorphous Diversity" (1991), cultural configurations of lesbian sexuality, and especially butch-femme roles, are much more "complex, contradictory, and diverse" than recent academic work admits. The configuration of butch-femme, she explains, seems on the surface to be "a resolution of the 'inconceivability' of lesbian sexuality in a phallocentric system, recuperating that inconceivability by superimposing a male/female model on lesbian relationships" (245). Thus, lesbian role playing can be understood as a construct of the dominant culture, imposed on lesbians in order to make sense of female sexuality in the absence of a phallus, and therefore not a self-empowering move on the part of lesbians themselves. This is, in effect, the argument made by those scholars discussed above who see butch-femme role playing as mere replication of heterosexuality.
Roof goes on to note, however, that the internal contradictions inherent in the configuration of butch-femme produce a "systematic challenge to the necessary connection between gender and sexuality while appearing to reaffirm heterosexuality and [yet] forcing a consciousness of the artificiality and constructedness of gender positions" (245). The work of those scholars who view butch-femme role playing as challenging and even subversive of gender categories employs this same strategy of analysis, but unlike Roof, these scholars seem comfortable assuming that the deconstruction of gender categories alone is sufficient in the work towards redefining lesbian identity politics. On the contrary, Roof argues, there is too much going on in the configuration of butch-femme roles to claim either that they are merely the tool of patriarchy or that they are wholly subversive of patriarchal gender roles. Thus, in contrast to theorists such as Butler, Case, and de Lauretis, Roof believes that while lesbian butch-femme does offer a critique of binary heterosexuality and the sex/gender system, "lesbian sexuality is already too completely intertwined with cultural constructions and configurations to comprise more than a partial perspective in any politics premised on identity" (251).