Entry · catalog no. 7025
butch queen
/ /bʊtʃ kwiːn/ /BUUTCH-kween
n. · Harlem ballroom scene, New York · 1980s
✓ Verified
1.
In the ballroom scene, a gay man (a man assigned male at birth who is gay), presenting anywhere from masculine to feminine depending on the category walked.
“He walked butch queen realness and took the trophy.”
Origin & Attribution
A category and identity term from the Black and Latino ballroom scene of Harlem, born in the houses that gave queer people of color family when their own turned them out. Documented for the world in Jennie Livingston's Paris Is Burning (1990) and mapped in full by scholar Marlon M. Bailey. It names one point on ballroom's own precise map of gender.
1970s-80s
In use in the Harlem ballroom houses
1990
Paris Is Burning brings ballroom categories to a wide audience
2013
Marlon Bailey's Butch Queens Up in Pumps documents the term
Region of origin
West
Midwest
N.East
South
The Northeast
Harlem ballroom scene, New York · 1980s
Spoken by
Black and Latino LGBTQ ballroom community
$BUTCHQThe Record · cultural traction
▲ Rising10 yrs
ahead of the mainstream
55/100
peak cultural energy
Introduced to English by the culture — logged here before the mainstream caught on.
Cultural usage — the recordMainstream search interest
First used
1980
in the culture
Mainstream crossover
1990
search interest spikes
Cultural energy indexed from documented usage, search interest, and citation frequency. The recorded date is the archive’s permanent point of record.
Hear it spoken
By region — how it actually sounds
@bxgriot
The Bronx, NY
@phillyanne
Philadelphia, PA
Contribute your pronunciation
Citations & Sources
■
Jennie Livingston, Paris Is Burning (documentary)
1990
■
+ Cite a sourceMarlon M. Bailey, Butch Queens Up in Pumps: Gender, Performance, and Ballroom Culture in Detroit
2013
See also