Gender Roles

Sometimes I joke that M and I are the stereotypical butch and femme. I do the cooking and she does all the DIY and anything that requires tools (other than kitchen tools, that is, and I won’t say a word about tools that can be used in bed). I wear skirts and dresses and high-heeled shoes to work fairly often, while she’s more likely to be in cargo trousers and sensible shoes. I have long hair and she has short hair. Etc.

But really that doesn’t say much about who we are, individually or as a couple. And I get annoyed when people wonder which of us “is the man” or when someone says that if we ever got married, clearly I’d wear a dress and she’d wear a suit. It just seems silly to me. Who decided what it means to be masculine/butch or feminine/femme anyway? Why does using a hammer make someone manly while boiling some pasta makes someone womanly?

I don’t like the idea that gay couples have one butch and one femme. Yes, I know some lesbians say they like their boys to be girls, or their girls to be boys, but that’s not how I am. I don’t want to imitate heterosexual relationships and I don’t want to feel like my behaviour has to challenge the hetero norm either (but if it does happen to challenge hets, that’s good). I am just attracted to a particular woman and I’m happy to play a variety of roles in our relationship. (Although I must admit that my beloved is in some ways a soft butch and ever since I met her, I’ve had found myself admiring other soft butch women. But that doesn’t mean I feel like I need to be with one or that I have to mould myself accordingly!)

But then we get to the issue of cooking. I’m told that cooking is very femme and thus I must “be the woman” if I do most of the cooking. I can point out, incidentally, that many well-known chefs are male, so I guess in our society, we feel like men can be professionals, but it’s women who have to do the cooking at home.

So am I the woman, because I cook most of our meals? Am I the femme who needs a big butch woman to protect her? Do I feel pressured to cook because of the gender roles in our society?

No, I don’t think so. I’m just someone who likes to cook and to feed her sweetheart. Luckily, my sweetheart doesn’t enjoy cooking, so we’re able to divide our labour at home fairly evenly. She has other skills and other hobbies. So I’ll happily stand at the stove and stir. That I do that doesn’t say anything much about my gender identity or about my role in our relationship.