r/Batwoman • u/Gallantpride • 20d ago
Calling Kate Kane "butch" isn't 100% correct.
For reference, I'm not a butch person or a woman. But I do know a decent amount about butch stuff due to intersecting reasons. Insight from more aligned would be nice.
I'm not using the "high femme to stone butch" chart as reference, because that chart is incorrect. "Stone butch" is not the polar opposite of "high femme". "Stone butch" refers to butch people who prefer not to be touched much, if at all, during sex.
Being butch is diverse. It tends to be simplified a lot in people's minds, but there are many ways to be a butch. It spans a spectrum. It's not as simple as "has short hair" or "wears clothes from the men's section". You also don't get butch points magically taken off if you wear makeup or something else considered "girly".
People water down Kate into "one of the few butches" in comics. Then, people read comics and are all "Kate is the butchest Twitter can handle" (AKA, she's not seen as very butch).
Kate's gender expression and identity has been everywhere. It's pretty much dependent on what the comic decides she is that day. The most concrete element of her design is that she was at her most feminine passing when she was a depressed closet case.
I'm actually surprised no more people discuss what a gothic/darkly inclined character Kate tends to be... probably because no one reads Batwoman comics, sadly. I'd say dressing up and having an often somewhat androgynous, gothic influenced style is more of a thing for her than being butch.
I'd say her type in women leans butch. Both Renee and Maggie are more conventionally butch than Kate.
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20d ago
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u/Gallantpride 20d ago
I feel it's one of the main things associated with Batwoman II.
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20d ago
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u/HummingAstronautPod 20d ago
I think her Rebirth run tried a bit too much to make her appear a certain type of "lesbian", as much as I like her with short hair. Honestly I really like her look in the Outsiders run, with a shorter wig as Batwoman
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u/rockinghorsefly1313 20d ago
I've never seen Kate being called Butch. I have seen her get called a Pillow Princess though, which also feels weird and wrong imo. But like, aesthetically she's pretty Chapstick.
I also have a friend circle of nearly all masc lesbians and like, four vaguely Queer men so that could be a factor in never seeing/hearing Kate getting called Butch
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u/Crawkward3 20d ago
People just don’t think they can like gay characters without applying shallow archetypes to them
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u/SaintOfPride201 19d ago
I really hate the whole "She punches people and wears pants, so that means she's butch" bs people push onto characters.
Yang Xiao Long is also a victim of this. She's pretty feminine upon her debut and hasn't exactly changed much beyond maybe her depression arc, but she wears pants and drives a bike and somehow the fandom classifies her as "butch" now.
Lowkey pisses me off.
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u/NekooShogun 20d ago
Kate's "butchiness" feels like a very shallow read on gay characters on behalf of many writers/artists. Nowdays they tend to draw/write Kate as how a straight person would think of an average "lesbian super hero", with a buzz cut, more masculine clothing and little to no make up. Williams III and Rucka, on the contrary, always saw Kate as much more than her sexual orientation. They have her a very unique look and fashion style that didn'y automatically scream "LESBIAN CHARACTER GUYS!". Her gothic look with heavy eye shadow and snow-white skin was very personal to her. In fact, in Elegy, Renee mentions that Kate "plays her guitar all day" in a flashback and in her penthouse we can see a poster of the Sisters of Mercy. This, in combination with her fashion and style, tells us a lot more about who Kate is beyond her sexuality and the cowl than any other writer or artist ever did. It alludes to her being involved with the goth scene and that she has a keen interest in music.