I guess that all dykes at some time in their lives have to ask themselves this one burning question....am I butch or femme? Where do I fit in the grand scheme of things? When my wife told her ex-husband (by the way, he was an ex-husband before I came along) that she was in love with, and marrying a woman, he asked her a derivation of the age old question..."Who wears the strap-on at your house?" My response to that question was, "Who wears the strap-on at YOUR house?" He was not amused. I thought that thinking was in the past, but I see in the gay press that it is alive and well. Actually, my wife and I discuss this "butch-femme" thing every now and then, and the funny thing is that we both want to be the "butchest of all". After discussing this for five years, we decided that the only fair thing to do is to look at the facts and decide once and for all, which one of us is butch and which one of us is femme. OK, first let's take a look at us....I have shorter hair than she does, and her hair is cute and curly (even though she does absolutely nothing to it). Put one check in the butch column for me! But wait, I wear makeup-pretty much every day, and she wears none-never. One check in the butch column for her. And, I have to confess, for the amount of makeup I wear (eye shadow, eyeliner, lipstick...the whole nine yards), I deserve TWO checks in the femme column (damn!). Neither of us wear dresses anymore, so that's a butch check for both of us. However, her footwear (she sometimes wears sandals or low pumps) is occasionally femmier than mine (I wear nothing but athletic shoes-different colors, but still athletic shoes). But, since I have heel spurs and a medical reason not to wear other type shoes, we'll call that one a draw. We both occasionally get manicures (but always with clear polish), so we can call that one a draw as well. I wear much more jewelry than she does, so I'll have to take a hit in the femme column. I think that I am leaning a little more to the femme column at this point. But let's look at the jobs we each do around the house. She does 95% of the cooking-1 femme for her, but I do 95% of the laundry-1 femme for me. I mow the yard-1 butch for me, but she edges and weedeats-1 butch for her. I sew when needed (mend garments, hem pants, sew curtains)-1 femme for me, she irons-1 femme for her. I own power tools-1 butch for me, she's the one that fixes the toilet-1 butch for her. I get between her and crazy men in WalMart (a whole other story)-1 butch for me. She cleans the bathrooms-1 femme for her, I clean and mop the kitchen-1 femme for me. This butch/femme thing is getting way to complicated for me! I heard somewhere along the way that lesbians are fluid, that we are not bound by labels anymore. Personally, I think that we are just us. We do what we like, we make it work, we're happy, and that's all that counts.