As a member of traditional sexuality and gender expression, the constant need for men and women to represent certain human emotions and expressions and to experience sexual feelings only towards the opposite sex is a common event. What we are not used to seeing or thinking about is how genders are defined and expressed within other cultures. I chose to take a closer look at the lesbian subculture and the subculture within that community; Femme-butch culture. I will address the history of the group and how this has influenced Femme-Butch culture, I will discuss what it means and what it feels like to be a Femme for self-identified Femmes, followed by a discussion of the experiences of Butch women, I will show how ideas of masculinity are expressed and femininity within each, and then what all this means for lesbians. For those of us in the dominant heterosexual culture, someone's gender and sex are usually used as if they mean the same thing. However this is not the case; gender is a category that someone belongs to based on how they choose to portray themselves while sex is biological. To put it another way, a person's gender can be changed from day to day, while their physical sex cannot be changed in the same way. American culture recognizes only two genders, one for each sex. Within the lesbian community there is also a range of genres, which includes traditional genres. The two we will focus on are the genres referred to as femme and butch. Femme is defined as a lesbian who has a recognizable femininity that reflects heterosexual femininity or exaggerates it. Lesbians who assume heterosexual notions of masculinity are called Butch. The beginnings of the Butch-Femme genres date back to the 1950s, when women were allowed to... middle of paper ......androgynous than they were Butch or Femme, further demonstrating that mainstream mass media can still just go so far. The heterosexual mainstream still has a long way to go to allow men and women to express themselves outside of old expectations and to wake up to the reality that society cannot and could never create the perfect male and female replicas it has pushed for. . While there are still many things to change and challenge within and beyond the lesbian and Femme-Butch communities, I believe their subculture is producing more positive progress than the heterosexual mainstream by allowing more options for individual expression. There are not just two or even four different genders, there can be many more that people can choose from and Femme-Butch culture is a great example of how other forms of masculinity or femininity exist..