Futch Scale

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About

The Futch Scale is a continuum model used by some in the LGBTQ community to identify where a lesbian sits on the spectrum between "Femme" an "Butch." It inspired many parody edits on Tumblr. In the edits, users tend to jokingly place various characters from video games and television on the scale or shitpost by placing random objects on the scale.

Origin

The terms "femme" and "butch" have a long history in lesbian subculture to describe the two ends of the spectrum of lesbianism.^[1] "Femme" describes lesbians with more traditionally feminine traits, and "Butch" more traditionally masculine. A scale illustrating this spectrum and the categories in between began circulating online in 2011. The first known post to include the chart that would become the basis of the Futch Scale meme (shown below) was posted on February 17th of that year by Blogspot user Shinobi Wankenobi.^[2]

Spread

The chart first appeared on Tumblr on September 8th, 2015. User gynandromorph^[3] posted it to their page, observing, "i found this chart. first of all: futch. second of all: arent homestucks blood colored based on this" (shown below).

In the coming years, many variations began appearing on Tumblr, inserting various characters and images onto the scale. Many popular variations use the scale to sort Pokémon. For example, one popular post by whackermanjunior^[4] used the chart to sort water Pokémon and gained over 20,000 notes (shown below).

On January 21st, 2016, memearchives^[5] began documenting the meme, though it wasn't until February 13th, 2017^[6] that they began adding image examples.