Whores and Bitches Who Sleep With Women

Femme is the position that deliberate feminine sexual agency often occupies in queer girl subcultures. Slut is the position openly sexual single women tend to occupy in most hetero (and some homo) cultures. Ho is the position that professional sexual women occupy in this society and a number of others. But the distinctions between these particular categories often blur, many of us have occupied all three positions, and the social sanctions are damn near the same. Betcha we shop in the same stores, wrestle similar demons, carry comparable fears throughout the world. Chances are we frequently get mistaken for each other. And we will all be framed as "whores and bitches who sleep with women" the moment the nightstick comes down.
So, in my opinion, we can't talk about femme, about femininity, about anything related, without talking about ho.

- Kathryn Payne
'Whores and Bitches Who Sleep With Women'
in Brazen Femme: Queering Femininity, ed Brushwood Rose and Camilleri