#persistence: all the ways butch and femme

[androgynealienfemme]

"I was barely a dyke then, let alone butch, but it was the lure of female masculinity that drew me out and into the queer world. When I was coming out, butch was no longer new. There was both popular knowledge and an underground cultural understanding of what it meant to be butch -- and there were books written from both perspectives. I may not have known it intimately, as a late-blooming queer who grew up in an extremely straight southern-US town, but I knew enough to feel self-conscious about claiming butchness.

You see, I was never a tomboy. There, I said it. I was never a goddamn tomboy; I never resisted the dresses my mom wanted me to wear, never hid in my dad's closet trying on his clothes. I did gender conformity without any real fight, and when I came out to my mom, she used it against me-- "But you were always so feminine!"

Maybe I didn't have the fight in me, maybe I wanted to fit in more than I wanted to know myself, but until I was well past twenty, I wore my hair long, with earrings dangling, and makeup on my face. I wore spaghetti-strap tank tops and flowing skirts. I flaunted my cleavage.

The butch narrative I had absorbed, the one I began to furtively read about as I came out, wasn't mine. I wasn't a rough-and-tumblr butch kid, all scabby knees and hardness, fighting against mom over Sunday dresses. I wasn't good at sports, didn't have trouble being friends with girls, didn't feel more "boy" than "girl." So when I slowly started easing towards the masculine side of the spectrum, I was self-conscious as hell. I felt like an imposter. I felt like a phony. I had similar feelings when I came out as a lesbian, but my fantasies about women quickly assuaged my fears of being a queer fraud.

With my gender presentation, I couldn't get over the feeling that I was trying too hard. Even as I slowly shed the layers of femininity in my presentation, the self-consciousness still affected what labels I used. I knew what butch was, and I still felt it couldn't be me. I had dated me. I wore a pink dress to prom. I was short and chubby and more giggly than tough.

It was a fierce femme who bossy-bottomed me into the role of butch top. It was easy to be the butch to C's femme, and she delighted in my enjoyment of her high hells, pretty dresses, and makeup. In those moments, when my insecurity was stronger than my sense of self, the contrast between my budding masculinity and her strong, well-articulated femininity were just what I needed to feel whole, strong, even butch. C didn't change me, exactly, but our gender-play heavy sex gave me room to figure out what my gender could look like in those private spaces we shared."

“Persistence: All Ways Butch and Femme: Coming Back Around to Butch” by Miriam Zoila Perez, On Butch and Femme: Compiled Readings, (edited by I.M. Epstein) (2017)

#persistence: all the ways butch and femme #Miriam Zoila Perez #on butch and femme: compiled readings #on butch and femme #butch lit #femme lit #lesbian lit #lesbian #lesbianism #butch and femme #femme 4 butch #lgbt #lgbtq+ lit

[campgender]

Butch. Sweet, protective, hot, needs met, desire contained and loose all at once, conflicted and simple, heart beating, swishing, sweaty, solid, dirty, right there in the tightly knit pocket of my goddamn fluttering gut, my deepest connection, and only home. Where did i start to get over the hotness and start feeling shame for the connection? When did that shame become more important than the truth? Where did my truth go that a person of any bodily configuration can be butch? How have cissexism, transphobia, and ableism caused me to doubt and judge myself as a butch? Butch, which, despite what anyone else may have to say on the matter, if i just gave it half a chance, could certainly contain this fucked up broken-ass disabled trans body, right? This body that feels so […]

from “Home/Sickness: Self-Diagnosis” by romham padraig gallacher

published in Persistence: All Ways Butch & Femme, ed. Ivan E. Coyote & Zena Sharman (2011)

#romham padraig gallacher #butch #disabled butch #quotes #persistence: all ways butch & femme #image described #mac’s bookshelf #they are our stigmata #inclusionism

[femmespoiled]

Persistence: All Ways Butch and Femme by Ivan Coyote and Zena Sharman. This piece is by Stacey Milbern.

ID: text reading:

"I start rolling the word "femme" around on my tongue and then between my fingers to see what I can create. There is no model for what femme could look like for a disabled woman of color, but as the femme in my hands grows bigger, things start to make more sense. The ability to take public gawking and turn it into an opportunity to command everyone’s attention-femme. Shit-talking from my wheelchair during card games-femme. Being able to tell you the exact level of force or gentleness I want you to use when touching me-femme. Taking care of business-femme. Everything goes back to femme.

Femme is work, though, right? To be femme means to pick up a shovel and constantly hit it against the never-ending mountain of oppression that has snowed down on top of me. It means telling myself, "Yes, the way you love and exist in the world is fuckin’ fierce," even when I don’t have someone who can help me get dressed in a way that makes me feel fierce. It means letting myself understand that the way I organize and cultivate community is powerful, even if I can’t show up to help someone move into their house or make soup when they’re sick. (Most of the time this is because I can’t actually get inside of their house...structural ableism sucks.)"

END ID

#sharing the knowledge series #bellas butch/femme tag #persistence: all ways butch and femme #this one hits close to home

[femmeholograms]

Hats Off by Ivan E. Coyote from Persistence: All Ways Butch and Femme

*****

(ID: I want to thank you for coming out of the closet. Again and again, over and over, for the rest of your life. At school, at work, at your kid's daycare, at your brother's wedding, at the doctor's office. Thank you for sideswiping their stereotypes. I never get the chance to come out of the closet, because my closet was always made of glass. But you do it for me. You fight homophobia in a way that I never could. Some people think I am queer because I am undesirable. You prove to them that being queer is your desire.

Thank you for loving me because of who I am and what I look like, not in spite of who I am and what I look like.

Thank you for smelling so good.

Thank you for holding my hand on the sidewalk during the hockey playoffs. I know it is probably small-minded of me to smile wickedly at all the drunken dudes in jerseys smoking outside the sports bar in-between periods because you are so fucking hot, and you are with me and not them, but I can't help it.

That's right, fellas. You want her but she wants me. How do you like them apples?

Thank you for wearing matching bra and panties. I don't know why this makes my life seem so perfect, but it really does.)

#butch #femme #lesbian #butch femme #hats off #ivan e coyote #persistence: all ways butch and femme #ivan coyote #butch4femme #femme4butch #lesbian literature

[variousqueerthings]

I’m reading Persistance: All Ways Butch And Femme and lemme tell you it’s doing wonders for everything -- feelings about gender, politics, language, relationships 

every time I think I’ve come at some unknowable concept about myself that nobody could possibly understand and I’m totally alone (or at the very least I’m something new and fragile), reading about other queers makes me understand that actually it’s existed possibly forever and I can calm tf down and stop being so angsty, it’s not fragile at all, it’s years of others living these things into reality!

anyway, us lonelies under 30 (and over 30 too quite probably) who think we’ve reinvented the wheel and nobody could possibly get it, we need to read this sort of stuff to get out of our own heads and to respect where we came from and maybe all the fucking discourse can chill out and we won’t be so afraid of changes and concepts that already exist and have done for a lot of years!

#persistance: all ways butch and femme #queer stuff #queer theory #queer lit #lesbian lit #me like: im overcomplicating it ive gone too far im a fraud #a dyke who came of-age in the 60s: anyway these fag genderqueers i met in the 90s love em couldnt do without em great stuff #also rae spoon i owe you everything #and this discussion i just read in it i need to get their names #about femme through the eyes of masculinity STOP IVE BEEN FEELING THAT WAY (dont stop ofc) #and the new spectrum bit???? wtfwtfwtf i feel like im being inundated with The Lore and im some starry eyed apprentice #whenever i forget i can be like -- is my icon a claude cahun homage for NOTHING?! #it's about context building! it's about history! it's about thinking those threads were spindly but they're strong as anchors or smthin #fuckit im just amazed i cannot properly articulate how amazed i am #ALSO look im not a lesbian/i never came to transness through lesbianism like a lot of my peers (only briefly and it amounted to one bar) #my point being that if you think you can't relate to that title because you think you didn't get to experience that lens #1. read the lesbians generally because they're good for you #2. trust me this book opens some fucking doors (doors I'd been worried were me going too far/werent allowed) #recommend this to all the queers and non-queers alike boys and girls and people who think they're unfathomable #you will be uh... fathomed... as it were #(or not but it's still vital)

[malaisequotes]

“Faggy butch was good. It accurately described my pink button-down shirts, my giggles, the fact that I talk with my hands.”

Persistence: All Ways Butch and Femme by Miriam Zoila Perez

#Persistence: All Ways Butch and Femme #Miriam Zoila Perez #Quote #Book #cw f slur

[all-chickens-are-trans]

where's that quote about how sometimes a fag and a dyke end up in bed together?? because that's literally harry and donna from mamma mia

#tbf donna is more of a bi queen than a dyke #but i think it still applies #i think the quote is from the 'persistence: all ways butch and femme' but i can't find it #my posts

[raspberryfemme]

goddamn I’m never gonna finish this book because I’ll keep taking pictures and tearing up and looking for cheap copies of the persistent desire aren’t I?

#liz talks incessantly #reading persistence: all ways butch and femme and it’s lovely

[myceliumbutch]

"...there is no such thing as butch flight. There are transsexual dudes who cheat themselves out of a full life for fear of being ostracized. There are butches who fear to live beyond male and female because dykes might assume they are guys. There are FtM-spectrum folks who have never been butch in their lives. And there are genderqueers who want nothing to do with our decades-old identity war. But there is no butch flight."

-Amy Fox, "Changed Sex. Grew Boobs. Started Wearing a Tie." for "Persistence: All Ways Butch and Femme"

#babble babble #butch #femme #butch flight #butch4butch #trans butch #butch lesbian #nonbinary lesbian

[genderkoolaid]

"Butches are formed in the crucible, is what I say when people ask. Butches—the ones I have known and loved and been protected by—are the ones who find our way through the fire and emerge both singed and hardened but also smelling of a particular experience that cannot be counterfeited. I find that I recognize the whiff of it across lines of race or class, that butch heart, that big and battered tool of so many unexpected reconciliations, unlikely forgivenesses, and full-bore love affairs. I recognize it and love it. I seek it out, sniff it out, because I’ve learned that it makes my heart melt and also my dick hard."

— Brother Dog by S. Bear Bergman, in Persistence: All Ways Butch and Femme

#m. #quotes

[androgynealienfemme]

"Faggy butch was good. It accurately described my pink button-down shirts, my giggles, the fact that I talked with my hands. I once saw a tape of myself in which I made a gesture that looked more like it belonged in A Chorus Line than in the middle of an interview. Faggy butch was like genderqueer -- not quite this or that, a little of both, maybe. A friend once said to me, "I access my femininity through my masculinity."

I feel lucky to have grown up in a world with butch pioneers, and I feel lucky that I had an idea about what being butch might have meant. But instead of making me feel part of the community, these constructions of what butch was -- stereotypes really-- pushed me away from the word and identity. Instead I chose a newer term, genderqueer, which had yet to be defined; it was in flux, it was a new frontier. I may not have been butch "enough", but genderqueer was all mine to rewrite and redefine.

I still like the word "genderqueer," still claim it and own it and love the way it makes room for me, in all my complexities. But I'm coming back around to butch. Maybe its because the years of pink prom dresses are further and further behind me, maybe its because i'm learning from butch elders who talk in terms that make room for me, giggles and all. Maybe its because the people i know have no idea (unless I tell them) that i was never a tomboy. They only know me -- my short hair tightly bound chest, and button down shirts.

I think that every new generation feels the need to reject their elders, reject what came before them, and feel that they are knew gender rebels. We invent terms, we create new spaces, and sometimes, we come back to where our big brothers started -- home."

“PERSISTENCE: All Ways Butch and Femme, Coming Back Around to Butch” Miriam Zoila Pérez, On Butch and Femme: Compiled Readings, (edited by I.M. Epstein) (2017)

#on butch and femme: compiled readings #on butch and femme #lesbian #gender-fluid #genderqueer #butch #butch lesbian #transgender #lgbt #lgbtq+ #lesbian lit #queer lit #trans lit

[campgender]

I find myself telling these anecdotes—and there are more of them—over and over, as a way of asserting something: The time I got called “sir” when I was wearing a skirt; the two bank tellers, one in the small farming community of Woodstock, Ontario, the other at a big-city dyke-central intersection, who said to me, “Anne. That’s a funny name for a boy.”

What am I trying to assert?

That there’s something about me that is read as masculine—a gait, a manner, a mien—even when I am not trying, even when there are contrary indicators like long hair, skirts, or earrings. That this “read” matches my own sense of self. Until I was in my mid-thirties, my mother and I had this recurring argument: “Why are you trying to look like a boy?” she would ask. “I’m not,” I would say. “I am trying to look like myself.” That there are girls and women who get this—who love this—whose eyes sparkle at this, and who know, long before I do, just what it’s about.

That I have what feels like a natural, in-born masculinity that even my mother’s long, relentless siege could not vanquish or disguise. That I like and honour this masculinity. That it exists universally in women throughout time and space.

from “A Dad Called Mum” by Anne Fleming, published in Persistence: All Ways Butch & Femme, ed. Ivan E. Coyote & Zena Sharman (2011)

#anne fleming #quotes #butch #gnc #butch/femme #mac’s bookshelf #they are our stigmata #persistence: all ways butch & femme

[femmespoiled]

Persistence: All Ways Butch and Femme by Ivan Coyote and Zena Sharman

ID - text reading:

"I will never say to anyone, especially a friend or a lover, that what they are doing is "not butch" or "not femme." I don't believe it is possible for a butch to do something not butch or a femme to do something not femme. For most of us who claim these words, we become them, and they become us, and thus everything we do is inside of them. It is perhaps akin to telling an American that she is "not American" because she eats Mexican food. I may not like that a person, who happens to be butch or femme, is doing a particular thing, but the actions of an individual do not necessarily reflect upon their gender identity or expression, nor would they necessarily be considered examples of their race, nationality, religion, ethnicity, relational status, sexual orientation, shoe size, or hair colour. There is no singular standard of conduct for all butches everywhere. We all pick and choose different parts of masculinity, different parts of humanity, to make up our individual characters. Some of us may align with more traditional, stereotypical masculinity than others. Some of us embody a great many supposed contradictions - and like it that way."

END ID

#sharing the knowledge series #bellas butch/femme tag #persistence: all ways butch and femme

[blushedfemme]

What books/etc. would you recommend for learning more about stone identity? I've wondered about wether I might be a stone top for at least a year now, but the thing is I'm a transfem butch. It's been a bit tricky to figure out because I so rarely see stone identity discussed from that perspective, it feels like I have to translate things.

hi!! ☺️ sorry it took me a minute to answer, i had to set aside some time to look into this. unfortunately, i’ve searched high and low for writings on stone identity from trans women and transfems and have not had much luck. i’ve found several promising links, only to follow them and find the original post was deleted.

i found this reddit thread that doesn’t have much but i’ll still link it

here is a cool blogpost (not written by a trans woman or transfem) but which talks a bit about trans women, and has an excerpt from a stone trans woman’s tumblr post that has since been deleted:

in terms of books, there’s an excellent essay in Persistence: All Ways Butch and Femme called “Changed Sex. Grew Boobs. Started Wearing a Tie.” by butch trans woman Amy Fox, but it’s not about stone identity.

truth be told, there’s not much stone literature to start with, at least that i’ve been able to find, apart from the touchstone that is Stone Butch Blues. honestly this whole frustrating research experience is making me want to do something about it. like make a zine about stone identity and ask for contributions from stone butch transfems… (not that i know the first thing about making zines)

BUT the good news: i know several very cool transfem stone butches, i’ve gotten permission to tag two of them here, as folks you can reach out to: @2pretty-2butch and @butch-with-a-deep-voice. if any other transfem stone butches would like to be tagged here please reply to this post or dm me!! 💖

#clarke answers #stone identity

[albertserra]

my trans/faggot reading list

The Queer Art of Failure by Jack Halbertsam

Stone Butch Blues by Leslie Feinberg

Going Stealth: Transgender Politics and U.S. Surveillance Practices by Toby Beauchamp

Whipping Girl: A Transsexual Woman on Sexism and the Scapegoating of Femininity by Julia Serano

gay masculinities by peter nardi

Homosexuality in Cold War America : Resistance and the Crisis of Masculinity by Robert J Corber

Out of the Shadows: Reimagining Gay Men's Lives by Walt Odets

nevada by imogen binnie

gender nihilism by alyson escalante + addendum

Trans-in-Asia, Asia-in-Trans: An Introduction 

Trans Exploits: Trans of Color Cultures and Technologies in Movement by  Jian Neo Chen

The Terrible We: Thinking with Trans Maladjustment by Cameron Awkward-Rich

Nonbinary: Memoirs of Gender and Identity (various)

Acceptable femininity? Gay male misogyny and the policing of queer femininities Sadie E Hale and Tomás Ojeda

Please Miss: A Heartbreaking Work of Staggering Penis by grace e lavery

delusions of gender by cordelia fine

a failed man by michael v smith (part of persistence: all ways butch and femme)

time is the thing a body moves through by T. Fleischmann

kai cheng thom’s writing

we want it all: an anthology of trans radical poetics

second skins: the body narratives of transsexuality by jay prossner

transgender warriors by leslie feinberg

the faggots and their friends between revolutions by larry mitchell

translating the queer: body politics and transnational conversations by hector dominguez ruvalcaba

captive genders: trans embodiment and the prison industrial complex

we both laughed in pleasure: the selected diaries of lou sullivan

how we get free: black feminism and the combahee river collective

trans girl suicide museum by hannah baer

dagger: on butch women by lily burana

black queer studies: a critical anthology by e patrick johnson and mae g Henderson

queer sex by juno roche

black on both sides: a racial history of trans identities by C. Riley Snorton

transgender liberation by leslie feinberg

female masculinity by jack halberstam

transecology by douglas a vakoch

street transvestite action revolutionaries : survival, revolt, and queer antagonistic struggle (Sylvia Rivera , Marsha P. Johnson)

a body that is ultra body: in conversation with fred moten and elysia crampton

building an abolitionist trans and queer movement with everything we’ve got (morgan bassichis, alexander lee and dean spade, 2011)

feminism and the (trans)gender entrapment of gender nonconforming prisoners (julia oparah, 2012)

normal life: administrative violence, critical trans politics, and the limits of law (dean spade, 2015)

Tseng Kwong Chi: Performing for the Camera by Việt Lê

detransition, baby by torrey peters

paul takes the form of a mortal girl by andrea lawlor

a failed man by michael v. smith (part of persistence: all ways butch and femme)

my new vagina wont make me happy by andrea long chu

sexing the body by Anne Fausto-Sterling

something that may shock and discredit you by danny lavery

the argonauts by maggie nelson

gender outlaws by kate bornstein

special mentions for articles ive read that were already very formative for me

Masquerading As the American Male in the Fifties: Picnic, William Holden and the Spectacle of Masculinity in Hollywood Film by Steven Cohan

The Production and Display of the Closet: Making Minnelli's "Tea and Sympathy” by David Gerstner

huge thanks to @mypocketsnug who sent #20-40

this is not at all intended to be some kind of definitive resource as ive literally read none of these yet save for the two i mention at the bottom and im compiling this for my personal use, im only publishing this bc an anon asked me to! feel free to reblog and also recommend me more but keep this disclaimer in mind

#reading list

[malaisequotes]

“Faggy butch was like genderqueer—not quite this or that, a little of both, maybe. A friend once said to me, ‘I access my femininity through my masculinity.’”

Persistence: All Ways Butch and Femme by Miriam Zoila Perez

#Persistence: All Ways Butch and Femme #Miriam Zoila Perez #Quote #Book #cw f slur