Dyke and Girl

Abstract

The sociocultural context of the Sapphic Stomper women’s interaction has been presented so far in this book. The Stompers were typically middle-aged, middle-class, white British lesbians who shared certain assumptions about lesbian culture (see Section 3.3 for a discussion of this) and about one another’s engagement in it. In particular, it has been alluded to that the core Stomper women utilised the broader stereotypes of ‘butch’ and ‘femme’ in their social positioning and identity work (Section 3.3.1). This chapter provides in-depth analysis of their interaction to reveal how their stance-taking towards these ideological categories allowed them to construct a CoP-specific version of authentic lesbianism.¹ Specifically, the women are shown in this chapter to construct their own context-specific personae Dyke and Girl. The chapter begins with a discussion of the relevance of butch and femme to the group, by presenting an ethnographic account of the Stomper CoP’s response to these ideological notions.