For Masculine Women
- 'Almah (Ancient Hebrew word variously translated as "virgin," "she who refuses to marry," or "tomboy")
- Aionolit (Ancient Hebrew word for "masculine woman or lesbian")
- Amazon (In ancient Greek, a legendary woman warrior; also refers to a mythical band of women warriors usually said to be from Africa, who supposedly cut off their right breasts to improve their archery techniques)
- Androdyke (Short for "androgynous dyke")
- Antiwoman (Opposite of a woman)
- Apache
- Battle axe (Often phrased as "the old battle axe")
- Beldame (A woman who due to menospause has aquired masculine secondary sexual characteristics such as a deep voice or facial hair; also, any older woman)
- Brother-girl
- Buffarilla (Contraction of "buffalo" and "gorilla")
- Bull (Short for "bulldyke")
- Bull bitch ("Variant of "bulldyke")
- Bulldagger (Variant of "bulldyke," especially popular in the 1920s)
- B.D. (Short for Bulldagger)
- Bulldyke (A very masculine dyke)
- Butch dyke (A masculine dyke)
- Butch grrl (A masculine woman, usually heterosexual)
- Califia (Legendary queen of the mythical Amazon warrior tribe; both the state of California and FTM transsexual author Patrick Califia-Rice take their names from her)
- Diesel dyke (A very masculine dyke)
- Dike-nwami (Nigerian word literally meaning "courageous woman": a woman who adopts a male role but is still considered a woman)
- Girljock
- Hatshepsut (An Egyptian queen from the 15th century B.C.E. who dressed as a man and wore a false beard to establish her right to rule)
- He-female
- Hommasse (French for "man-woman"; Joan of Arc's contemporaries used it to describe her)
- Hoyden
- Koskalaka (Sioux Native American word literally meaning "female young man": a masculine single woman or a lesbian. "These women are said to be the daughters (the followers/practitioners) of a Spirit/Divinity who links two women together making them one in Her power. They do a dance in which a rope is twined between them and coiled to form a 'rope baby.' . . . In a culture that values children and women because they bear them, two women who don't want to marry (a man) become united by the power of the Deity and their union is validated by the creation of a rope baby. That is, the rope baby signifies the potency of their union in terms that are comprehensible to their society, which therefore legitimizes it."—Paula Gunn Allen, "Lesbians in American Indian Culture," Hidden from History: Reclaiming the Gay and Lesbian Past, 1989.)
- Machera (Mexican)
- Mandyke (A very masculine dyke)
- Muscle moll
- Muskobanja (South Slavonic word literally meaning "masculine woman")
- Mutarajjulat (From 9th century Islam; means "a woman who wants to resemble a man")
- Ninauposkitzipspe (From the Piegan Native American language)
- Queen Kong ("A large, hairy-breasted woman"—Gary Bowen's Dictionary of Words for Masculine Women.)
- Salzikrum (A Babylonian word. "Based on evidence from the Code of Hammurabi, the Sumerian culture recognized a separate type of woman called a salzikrum . . . Salzikrum is a compound word literally meaning 'male woman.' A salzikrum was entitled to greater rights of inheritance than an ordinary woman."—Faris, quoted in Gary Bowen's Dictionary of Words for Masculine Women.)
- Stone butch (A very masculine lesbian who insists upon performing exclusiively the "service" role in sex and will not permit her partner to "service" her in return)
- Takarazuka (From the name of a type of Japanese theater in which all roles are played by women)
- Tom
- Tomboy
- Tommy
- Unwoman
- Virago (A woman said to possess "masculine" strength; used in the Bible by Adam to describe Eve)
- See also: For genderbending or genderbreaking people
- And on the Sexuality.org website, see: "A Dictionary of Words for Masculine Women" by Gary Bowen, from which many of the foreign-language words listed here are taken.
© 2000, 2001 by Gayle Madwin. All rights reserved.