In Fun Home: A Family Tragicomic, Alison Bechdel uses the phrase "butch to his nelly" to contrast her own masculine-presenting self to her father's feminine qualities. This presents a unique gender inversion between Alison and Bruce, where neither of their ways of presenting aligns with the things society views as aligning with their respective genders. One of these seemingly feminine traits that Bruce portrays is an aesthete---someone who deeply appreciates artful beauty. She describes herself as utilitarian, seeing daily life in a more practical light rather than trying to find or create something artsy/beautiful.
In the scene accompanying the line "butch to his nelly", there is a dialogue between the two characters where Alison says, "who cares if the necklines don't match" when referring to her outfit, and Bruce responds, "yellow turtleneck NOW." During our in-class discussions, we talked about how this shows Bruce pushing societal expectations on his daughter because of his own internalized homophobia. However, I view this moment as Bruce trying to express his repressed femininity through his daughter by forcing her into dresses (the idea of wearing feminine clothing is certainly not foreign to Bruce, as we see him in women's swimwear in photographs later on), while Alison resists because of her utilitarian view in which she'll just put the first thing on and go.
On the terminology in specific, butch quite literally refers to lesbians who embrace masculine identities, mannerisms, and/or styles, whereas nelly refers inversely to an effeminate gay man. The thing is, both Alison and her father feel they are incorrectly gendered in society, but the way they process this is much different. Through Bruce's lived experience, he came to the conclusion that he can never be openly homosexual, both to not tarnish his name and to not literally get hatecrimed. He decides to express his femininity through the more hidden stuff, like his furniture, bringing up the line "he treated his furniture like his children and his children like his furniture." He treats his furniture like extensions of himself that, because they are not directly noticably tied to him, he can show femininity through. On the other hand, he treats his children like furniture, or more broadly, objects, that he can also represent more femininely (as seen above). With Alison taking notice of her father's attempted repression at a young age, her rebellious nature leads her to go down a different path than him. Alison requests to be called "Albert" on a family camping trip to act as, how she describes, a "Proustian transposition", adopting a male persona to make her attraction to the woman on the wall calendar feel normal. In this way, she doesn't mask her butch self, instead reinforcing herself with it.
To conclude, the "butch to his nelly" dynamic in Fun Home represents that greater differing dynamic in approaching the expression of sexuality between different generations. Bruce seems to forever remain in a cycle of repression, acting in a sort of heteronormative play until he can't take it and ends his life. Alison was finally able to break the inversely related parallel cycle by valuing her own opinions on her utilitarian identity over anyone else's.
- Lucas
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