(no subject)

[felis_ultharus]

The research continues. Today I'm reading up on the lesbian community in the 1950s, 60s, and 70s.

You know I'd always assumed that "butch" was just a political or fashion statement, the way it is now. In the 1950s, it seems to have been more of a job description. The butches of Montreal protected the femmes -- you actually had to get permission from one to speak to a femme.

They also played the role of bouncer. Plus the butches local army protecting the bar from bashers and the police. When the bars closed, the butches spread out to patrol the streets so the femmes could get home safely.

I had no idea the role was formalized.

Not sure how interesting anyone else finds this historical stuff, but I find it really neat. Today I went out looking for the original Joe Beef's tavern by the Old Port, another major Montreal landmark, and probably the only bar in the world to have ever used a real live bear as crowd control.

Comments

[retrogamerbear.livejournal.com]

Maybe I'm just a bit Jaded (TM) but this sounds more like some sort of fantasy version of the 50s gay life. You've got the Butches acting as some sort of semi-militaristic group that watches over a herd of femmes... I don't doubt it happened on some scale (i.e. more of a 1:1 or 1:2 ration Butch to Femme), just have trouble beleiving it would be an encompassing scale.

[felis-ultharus.livejournal.com]

That was my feeling, too. And of course it wasn't universal -- we're only talking bar culture here.

But everything I've read suggests that it was that extreme, in the bars here in Montreal. Women involved in that scene usually explain that they thought the roles were natural, that no one else was going to defend them so some women had to defend themselves.

In the mentality of the time, that meant taking on men's roles.

It also helped for identification. If you were a woman who wanted to meet another woman in 1955, you went down to Les Ponts de Paris, which was in what's now the Village. The usher looked at you, and decided whether to seat you on the left (with the lesbians) or on the right (with the gay men and heterosexuals). To be seated on the left, you had to look like a lesbian -- either butch (dressed like a man) or femme (dressed in a low-cut, revealing outfit).

Respectable women wound up on the right, and as Les Ponts de Paris (and similar places) tried to protect its lesbian clientele, no one was allowed to change places.

If you dressed butch, you were expected to help protect the place (if it came to that), or at least protect the femmes from harassment. In that era, that's what men were supposed to do for women, and there were no men for that role.

Not that the butches were angels. Even many lesbians from the period described them as frightening. The bars were often connected to organized crime, and some of the butches were linked to that as well. They were stereotyped as violent, and freqently developed a rude exterior to survive.

It started to die in the 1970s. When Denise Cassidy opened the Baby Face Disco, she tried to keep heterosexual women out by applying the old butch/femme rule. But feminism had come, and there plenty of women wanting in who didn't fit the old roles. Cassidy couldn't believe these androgynous women were actually lesbians.

(I've seen a picture of Cassidy -- in her 1970s leisure suit, it's almost impossible to tell she's a women.)

[yumemisama.livejournal.com]

I find it fascinating. But my BA is in Sociology, so I would. I also completed my Japanese minor partly by writing about the cultural significance of the yaoi genre, and why it's read mainly by women over there.

Interestingly, you see something similar when straight women go out in a large gaggle to bars and clubs, except in that case the gatekeeper is often the most "femmey" one, i.e., the one in the shortest skirt and lowest-cut shirt. SHE evaluates all comers and determines who gets to talk to the rest of her friends for the night. They're usually called rude things like "cockblocks" by the guys, but the other girls in the group seem to think this is the natural way of things. Straight girls often have one queer guy in their group of "best friends" that go clubbing together, but for some reason I've never seen the guy get pushed into the gatekeeper position, although I have very occasionally seen the female gatekeeper tell off some idiot who is harrassing him.

Anecdotally I gather the straight guys work in groups of two -- primary hunter and his "wingman", which terminology is taken from WWII Air Force/RAF slang -- but since I hang out with geeks I really don't see this happen.

[(Anonymous)]

That's interesting.

Just curious -- is your focus in sociology symbolic interactionism? Structural functionalism? Conflict theory?

[felis-ultharus.livejournal.com]

And that anonymous poster would be me -- I forgot to sign in...

[yumemisama.livejournal.com]

Officially? Internet communities and comm theory. My auxiliary focus was actually in video games. I'm kind of surprised I got anyone to back me, but we have an electronic media professor here who's a total old-radio geek, and he was willing to sign off on my odder projects.

I'm not entirely sure what my work would be filed under; probably symbolic interactionism. Most of my professors have no bloody idea what I am talking about. I do a lot of half-assed speculations in the Goffmanian total institutions arena, too, having the particular views on my experience in public school that I do.

Mostly I just tell people what I think, and they affirm that it's sociology, and then I go play Kingdom Hearts some more. ^^;;;

[felis-ultharus.livejournal.com]

It definitely sounds like symbolic interactionism to my (admittedly untrained) ear.

Which is good, because the structural functionalists and conflict theorists always seemed nuts, and I kind of thought of symbolic interactionism as the only sane branch of sociology.

Symbolic interactionists are actually studying the world around, and developing theories based on that. The other two branches have these grand, overreaching theories to which all of reality must bend, even to the breaking point if need be.

[yumemisama.livejournal.com]

I always thought of sociology as psychology + linguistics on a broad scale. The textbooks do not have a chapter on that, so I'm more or less on my own. I think at a larger university I'd have been filed under "social psychology", but NAU is a smallish school and doesn't support that as a major. We also don't offer AI as a major, but they do do things like hire a guy with a PhD in anthropology from Harvard to teach Computational Linguistics, so there's some minor support for it anyway.

When professors ask, I tell them I've read a lot of Douglas Hofstadter. Those who have also read Hofstadter know immediately where I'm coming from. Those who have not look very confused. I know he does a lot of *linguistic* symbolic interactionism, but that translates imperfectly into sociological terms.

I was briefly an anthropologist, but the entire department up here is devoted, fanatically, to value-free cultural relativism. I find developing opinions to be unavoidable when dealing with people, so that was right out. I was also briefly a modern languages major (I needed 30 hours of my primary language and 20 hours of my secondary to get that, and 100-level classes don't count. My first language was French and the second Japanese. Guess what they don't run 30 and 20 hours of here) and at the very beginning I was a dual major in mathematics and physics, until I decided their faculty was boring.

My research book collection is bizarre beyond belief. Samples of academic writing available upon request. ^_^

Kingdom Hearts?

[sorceror.livejournal.com]

You should talk to nagaina_ryuuoh. ^_^

Re: Kingdom Hearts?

[yumemisama.livejournal.com]

Kingdom Hearts forever!

The Sora x Riku vibe was so blatant that even my parents, who were watching/helping me play a couple of Christmases ago, were making wisecracks about it. Plus it's just, you know, gorgeous. ^_^

Re: Kingdom Hearts?

[sorceror.livejournal.com]

Actually, I don't know anything about it myself. Just that nagaina_ryuuoh is herself a massive fan. Check out some of her posts. ^_^