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Hmm... I like tom boys but I really dig the femininity of many of the yuri characters. I don't mind boyish girls really but I personally prefer that they don't have butchy hair cuts. I don't really like 'em. D:> But I would love amasculine character x]

I'd have to say it's mostly a first impression deal - or at least I'm going to make the claim on it due to personal experience.
And I don't think it's so much a first impression of the girl over it's the first impression that she's a lesbian or bisexual or anything in between.
I personally believe that those stereotypes are so beaten on society (which the over-the-top fem yuri to minigate that stereotype makes sense) that once that knowledge is made it becomes a comparing and weighing game - in which more masculine qualities defined for years by gender weigh in for the title of Butch.
But on the same spectrum - I think the title's Butch, Tom Boy, Boyish, Seme - all cover different levels in a pool. To clarify - I don't think they all translate exactly. Personally the term Butch seems to hit harder and harsher and I almost have a negative aura about it - for reasons I can only guess because it's been paired along name-calling and hatred for myself.
Boyish on the other hand comes out much more...fresh? I don't know how to capture it. But do you understand?
And I think that the fact that there is subtle difference in the words only goes back to society in defining what a Butch is through what majority masculine habits ensue.

Personally, I don't mind masculine women. However, the girls I go for are typically very feminine.

I guess the reason there isn't a lot of masculine girls in Shoujo ai/Yuri is because the girls who read it/the boys who read it don't find masculine women attractive. The boys prefer to see two girls kiss and the girls also prefer to see to girls kiss. A masculine boy is too close to a boy for most people's tastes.

I think Strawberry Panic has a nice variety. But when a story is about two girls, I think they try to make them feminine because whether bi/lesbian girls may like to think so or not, the target is fanboys with girl on girl fantasies. Boys tend to dislike "butch" type of girls, so yeah.

Pfft, that's the first time I've heard you owning up to being feminine in any way beyond physicalities and a lesbian identity. XD (and I meant that I was SWIMMING, >E)

I think most people (real people) are a fair blend of masculine and feminine traits--we can all point out things about ourselves that align with societal perception of male and female gender. But, what I notice is that fictional girls in yuri seem to be more of a mix of just one side--feminine. Rather than balancing out, a lot of them seem to be played up as hyper-feminine.

Also, our culture here may be significantly different from that in Japan. I'm not totally acquainted with Asian queer culture as it is today, but I know that there seems to be a strong butch/femme vibe in a lot of parts of Chinese-speaking lesbian culture right now. So, maybe right now, it's less fluid than it is here. Also, I've heard from a gay male exchange student that queer people in Japan are much more in-the-closet than they are here. This makes me wonder (and I can only speculate, due to lack of familiarity and involvement in the culture) that part of the hyperfemininity is due to the avoidance of being labeled as lesbian, since the stigma may be higher and may ruin even shoujo-ai materials. This might also partially explain the "I'm not gay, just in love with a girl" theme I see running amok in a lot of yuri and so on works.

my first taste of yuri (shojou ai i suppose) was harukaxmichiru
the face they are a cannon couple only makes it even nicer ^^




and, is it just me, or isn't tomari from kashimashi quite the tomboy?

I adore super fem yuri manga, it's simply personal preference. It comes with the love for "moe" things, I'm real big on that as well. However I do think we need more characters as mentioned in the topic. Why should we let others feel left out? It couldn't hurt to create a few more masculine girls here and there.