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“Before there were lesbians, there were butches. The masculine woman prowls the film set as an emblem of social upheaval and as a marker of sexual disorder. She wears the wrong clothes, expresses aberrant desires, and if often associated with clear markers of a distinctly phallic power. She may carry a gun, smoke a cigar, wear leather, ride a motorbike; she may swagger, strut, boast, flirt with younger and more obviously feminine women; she often goes by a male moniker: Frankie, George, Willy, Micky, Eli, Nicky. She is tough and tragic, she was a tomboy, and she expresses a variety of masculinities.” — Jack Halberstam
Before there were lesbians, there were butches. The masculine woman prowls the film set as an emblem of social upheaval and as a marker of sexual disorder. She wears the wrong clothes, expresses aberrant desires, and if often associated with clear markers of a distinctly phallic power.
She may carry a gun, smoke a cigar, wear leather, ride a motorbike; she may swagger, strut, boast, flirt with younger and more obviously feminine women; she often goes by a male moniker: Frankie, George, Willy, Micky, Eli, Nicky. She is tough and tragic, she was a tomboy, and she expresses a variety of masculinities.