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.)
no subject
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.)