Fridae

To say Shane, The L Word's butch stud, is popular with the ladies is an understatement. It seems every girl - lesbian and straight - wants to get in her pants these days.

Internet sites are crawling with "I'd go gay for Shane" t-shirts, shorts, vests and even hoodies for her bi-curious fans. Nice.

But when a bunch of dykes in a Decatur lesbian bar in Atlanta sat down to watch the first-ever episode of the Showtime TV series, they had nothing but curses - and pretty strong ones at that - for Katherine Moennig.

Some of the women even threw their shoes at the TV set.

"They were insulted," says my friend, Naomi. "Everyone was so excited that at last there's this lesbian show - a TV show about people like us. But it was such a disappointment.

"None of the women looked like us. They were all high-powered and glamorous.

"And then comes Shane - the show's so-called 'butch'. And she's this little slip of a girl and about as butch as a fairy. There was a roar from the bar and then a hail of shoes at the screen."

It's true that the sophisticated posse of pussies in The L Word bear little resemblance to real life lesbians. If it did I'd be rubbing shoulders - and other body parts - with wealthy heiresses, tennis stars and lothario-like hairdressers on a daily basis.

But does it matter that Shane is more elfin than diesel dyke?

What is the point of rigid labels like femme and butch?

And why can't we just be women who love women?

When I first came to Asia - about five years ago - the girls in Hong Kong dyke bars would ask me if I was TB or TBG.

"Eh?" I would reply.

"Well if you take your clothes off and let your girlfriend touch you when you have sex, then you're a TBG. If you keep your clothes on in bed, then you're a TB," they would explain.

"Hmmm," I pondered. "Well I generally take my clothes off and I expect the girl I'm with to take hers off too.

"Although I'd probably help her with that," I add.

I was pronounced a Pure Lesbian and relegated to a barren no-woman's wasteland.

TB's or tomboys were easy to spot. They wore baggy boy clothes, sported short spiky hair and spoke in gruff low voices. TBG's - tomboy girls - were girly, perhaps curly, and favored frilly skirts and glittery makeup. TB's dated TBG's and that was the way it was.

We poor Pures were generally rejected by both camps and spent long angst-ridden hours in bars smoking, drinking red wine and bemoaning how difficult it was to find a girlfriend. I was sometimes forced to pose as a TBG to get sex.

We dismissed TB's on the grounds that if we wanted something that butch why wouldn't we just date a man. And as for TBG's, well, I'm not carrying a hello kitty handbag for anyone.

All across Asia the branding is the same. As are the looks and the sexual expectations.

In China, which filched its labels from Taiwan, butches call themselves T or tomboy, the femmes go by the name of P, from lao po which means wife, while those of us inbetweeners are called Bufen (neither butch nor femme) - sometimes "N" online.

Like Bufen the vampire slayer, we stand alone to fight the forces of darkness. Or something along those lines.

In Thailand, lesbians are split into the butches, called Toms, the femmes, known as Dees and the Les who are femmes who love femmes.

In Singapore, the divisions have evolved into something a bit more sophisticated.

Eunice, who hails from the island nation and calls herself a femme of sorts, elaborates.

"Well a butch is someone who binds� very much masculine looking; an andro is someone who doesn't bind per se but prefers to stick to sports bras to 'flatten' the chest. Andros retain a certain feminine characteristic. And a femme is a girly-girl.

"Then there's active - a broad word for andro and butches� and passive for those that take on the more feminine role."

What Eunice is delicately describing here is division based on sexual position.

If you're butch then it's taken that you like being on top or active in bed. Passives or bottoms, are the femmes.

Now I've always wanted a nice bottom, but I've never desired a starfish in bed.

Lastly and ironically there are the No Labels, who can't help but label themselves anyway.

"They are usually pretty androgynous," adds Eunice.

I asked The Stud what labels are in vogue in the States today.

"The broader taxonomy refers to lesbians on the basis of age and outness and class, wealth, race even. Like baby dykes are the young dykes who look like teenage boys. Then there are softball dykes, who are the long-haired super-butch jocks. Lipstick lesbians are high femmes, bull dykes or bulldaggers would be high butch. Then there's the bizarre soft butch-hard butch distinction, which is, as far as I can tell, dictated by hair length and earring choice."

It all seems pretty harmless. Or is it?

Labeling helps young dykes feel like they belong. It gives them a kind of "uniform" or a "role" to adopt in this new community. Like a badge that distinguishes them from straight girls. It also helps them to identify themselves to other lesbians on the streets.

Says Eunice: "I know of many young lesbians who like to use a particular label on themselves. It gives them a sense of identity and identifies their role to other lesbians. It is especially helpful in a community where other lesbians limit their potential partners to certain 'types.'"

It's also pretty handy for online dating.

"It saves you wasting time when you are looking through personal ads," says Slim, my sex enthusiast dyke friend from Indonesia.

"I go for femmes, and it narrows down the search when people identify themselves," adds Slim, who calls herself andro.

The Stud, who goes by the Bufen brand, says she doesn't see anything wrong with labels.

"I think they're generally harmless and they're useful in indicating how you wish to be treated. I mean, I've gotten in fights with people who have called me soft butch because I don't think that's what I was going for at all. I get irritated, I guess, when people read me wrong.

"Like when really butch women come on to me like I'm a femme - being all chivalrous and swaggery. That really annoys me. If I wanted to be someone's 'little lady,' I'd wear a skirt."

I don't have the swagger down yet, but I toyed with the idea of asking The Stud to be my "little lady."

But then I imagined her in a skirt.

And it's that heterosexual paradigm - of little ladies and manly gentlemen, feminine and masculine; dominant and submissive - that labels perpetuate.

Labels are also maligned because they restrict what it means to be a lesbian.

Lizi, a British dyke in Beijing says they are like boxes.

"I don't like boxes because they oversimplify people� it restricts them discovering themselves."

I'm with her on the discovery restriction, but I happen to like boxes.

Many lesbians start off aiming for the super butch or super femme look, but as they grow older the outlines start to blur and many morph into androgyny.

Says Eunice: "I've noticed that as lesbians grow and mature, most of them become more androgynous. This is partly because they are more comfortable in their own skin, and partly because of work requirements to look more ambiguous because tolerance of homosexuality in Singapore is not so great."

And androgyny is sexy because it removes the heterosexual element from attraction. In the end, this may explain Shane's mass appeal.

Moennig herself considers Shane androgynous.

"I wouldn't call her butch at all," Moennig told the Los Angeles Times last year.

"I don't think she has butch qualities, and she doesn't look butch. I think that's an easy label to make because she's not as feminine as the other girls. I'd call her androgynous because she is. And I'm androgynous."

Someone should probably tell those angry Decatur dykes.