Queer Girl Q&A: Masc & Femme Dating

Q: I’m a soft butch who’s attracted to more feminine women, but I’m somewhat shy. It seems like the women I like always expect me to be the pursuer or the one to approach them. In the beginning stages of dating, I struggle to tell the difference between whether they’re interested and just passive or mostly uninterested and stringing me along for validation.

What’s your experience been with roles, expectations, and gendered dynamics in queer courting? I want to find a woman who can meet me in the middle, not looking to constantly have me take the reins and set the tone.

A: I so feel you here! I’ve dealt with a similar frustration in my years of dating women.

Back when I was around 20, I remember writing in my journal, of a girl I’d gone on three dates with (and had been messaging with lengthily in between): “We can talk for hours. We make each other laugh. I feel like we have so much in common. Still, things are moving soooo slowly. Almost two months have passed, and we still haven’t even kissed yet.”

It took almost five months after meeting for my college girlfriend and I to begin dating, too. I probably never would have made a move had it not been for our mutual gay guy friend—to whom I eventually disclosed my interest over late-night burgers and milkshakes at In-N-Out (prompting him to play matchmaker and verify that the attraction was mutual).

It’s possible that you are going for women with avoidant attachment styles. Or, gender socialization could also be contributing to this hesitance.

Within heterosexual relationships, historically, men have been taught (and provided a template) to take on the work of initiating. Often, if a cis, straight man is interested in a woman, he will make it known and pursue her (exceptions always exist, of course). This heteronormative template removes some of the ambiguity. And yes, ideas are modernizing and becoming less binary, but the messages we absorb when we’re younger have a way of lodging themselves inside us pretty stubbornly—even despite our conscious minds’ attempts to override them with newer knowledge and updated thinking.

The fact that women are conditioned to attract more than to pursue, I believe, can result in significant inaction between two women, especially when they are both femmes. 

As Soleil Ho facetiously referred to it in the SF Chronicle, “lesbian sheep syndrome” is a term that refers to “a common situation where two women are attracted to each other but, due to a combination of overthinking things and, at times, internalized homophobia, neither acts on that attraction.”

Jill Gutowitz described the phenomenon as “numerous circumstances where you and another woman want to kiss but both fall victim to fear of admitting desire.”

As a result of this, a natural attraction toward women more on the feminine-presenting side of the spectrum has spurred me to take on a pursuer role over the years—even though I wouldn’t say I am especially dominant. I’ve behaved as what queer people in the 50s referred to as “kiki’ (the term, often used derisively, for lesbians who switched between the butch and femme role).

Many I’ve dated hadn’t spent enough time in the LGBTQ dating world for “switch” behavior to become natural. Their status as “woman” and the message that they are to wait to be pursued had been reinforced throughout their lives, perhaps accounting for their seeming passiveness.

I wonder, reader, if the women you tend to pursue are fairly new to the queer dating world as well. Maybe they aren’t used to acting on their attractions. It’s possible they still carry heteronormative ideas of what a relationship looks and feels like, in part because theirs have primarily been with cis men.

You might want to consider pursuing people who have spent more time exploring their queerness. These individuals are more likely to question systems and their own role within them, gender roles included.

Either that, or if you really like the woman, accept that “forward” isn’t who she is or where she’s at right now, and that until she becomes more acclimated, she may need you to take the reins.

Women on your same wavelength are most definitely out there. It’s just a matter of keeping your eyes open so that the two of you will eventually find each other (somewhere close to the middle).

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