👩‍❤️‍💋‍👩 where do you land on the 'futch scale'? 👩‍❤️‍💋‍👩

QUEER WORD
THE FUTCH SCALE

What It Means:

A humourous scale used to describe where someone sits on the lesbian presentation spectrum between femme and butch.

Let’s Use It In A Sentence:

Maya had strong opinions about where everyone else fell on the Futch Scale, but the moment someone tried to categorise her, suddenly she was ‘above labels.’

A Very Scientific Lesbian Measuring System

You’re probably already familiar with the terms femme and butch, and how they’re used in sapphic circles.

But, if not, don’t worry.

Essentially, femme refers to a more feminine presentation, while at the other end of the spectrum butch refers to a more masculine one.

Simple, right?

Except, of course, humans are deeply complex creatures and rarely sit neatly into such categories (and, come on, we’re not exactly fans of the binary around here, are we?).

Which is why, over the years, there have been a whole raft of terms coined for the people that fall in between (or, indeed, at the glorious extremes). That’s how terms like soft butch, lipstick lesbian, stone butch, and Bambi lesbian exist. Each one doing its own very specific little job.

If you’re already feeling overwhelmed by all these subtly different sub-identities, then you may be relieved to learn that someone, somewhere, came up with a handy way for us all to keep track.

A scale.

A framework.

A frankly very handy piece of lesbian infrastructure.

And that, dear reader, is the Futch Scale.

A Little Bit of History

Like most important pieces of queer internet folklore, the Futch Scale appears to have emerged organically from a number of forums, queer in-jokes, and social media banter, and so it’s almost impossible to attribute it to one person.

Early versions of the chart were floating around blogging site Blogspot as far back as 2011, before resurfacing, and really taking off, on Tumblr in around 2015. One particularly widely shared version was posted by user ‘gynandromorph’ on September 8th, 2015.

The established continuum that we most commonly see generally moves through these identities:

• High femme – hyper-feminine presentation

• Femme – feminine-presenting lesbian

• Butchy femme – feminine, but with some masculine traits or energy

• Futch – sitting almost directly between femme and butch

• Soft butch – more masculine leaning, but not fully butch

• Butch – distinctly masculine presentation

• Stone butch – a more specific butch identity, where someone may not want their own genitals touched during intimacy, focusing instead on pleasuring their partner.

And, because this is the internet we’re talking about, once it caught on people immediately began arguing about the subtle differences between each category, and where exactly everyone they know (fictional or otherwise) sits on it.

As they well should.

The Birth of a Meme

In fact, the thing that made the Futch Scale stick in the internet’s consciousness is how easily it can be adapted, argued with, and taken to ridiculous extremes.

Soon after its introduction, people started taking the scale and applying it to just about anything. Suddenly Futch Scales with TV characters, fictional worlds, inanimate objects, breakfast foods, fonts, and chairs were showing up. You name it, someone somewhere has probably tried to work out whether it’s innately more femme or more butch.

And that, really, is how a throwaway community in-joke becomes a proper meme. The joy of categorising and ordering things (and then arguing over said categorisation with absolute strangers) seems to have brought out an immense pleasure in huge swathes of the internet.

So much so that, as soon as a new fandom or trend emerges, you can almost guarantee that someone somewhere is sitting in their bedroom late at night, fiddling around with Photoshop and trying to impose pictures of their favourite characters onto the Futch Scale template.

But… Is It Controversial?

Like most fun things on the internet, the Futch Scale isn’t without its detractors.

Some argue that it reduces identity down to pure aesthetics, as though wearing lipstick automatically makes someone femme. It pigeonholes people into neat little boxes that capture only a tiny sliver of who they actually are, all whilst overlooking the history and specifics of these terms.

Others point out that what started as a light-hearted internet joke can start to feel strangely rigid once it gets absorbed into online identity culture. Suddenly, a playful shorthand becomes something people feel they have to locate themselves within precisely, when really, like most of us, they probably hover between a few categories depending on the day, the outfit, or which side of the bed they woke up on.

And, to be fair, they’re probably right. It does flatten a rich piece of lesbian history into something frothy and silly.

But equally… can’t we just have a good laugh sometimes?

I don’t think most people engaging with the Futch Scale genuinely believe it’s a scientifically rigorous classification system.

It’s mostly just people trying to connect with others, and share their opinions on their favourite 80s anime or Pringles flavours.

Which, honestly, feels fairly harmless to me.