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variousqueerthings · 2 years

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happy pride reccing some anti-assimilationist, anti-capitalist, and abolitionist books and texts

BOOKS

Why Are Faggots So Afraid of Faggots? edited by Matilda Bernstein Sycamore (2012)

"Whatever happened to sexual flamboyance and gender liberation, an end to marriage, the military, and the nuclear family? As backrooms are shut down to make way for wedding vows, and gay sexual culture morphs into "straight-acting dudes hangin' out," what are the possibilities for a defiant faggotry that challenges the assimilationist norms of a corporate-cozy lifestyle?"

Transgender Liberation: A Movement Whose Time Has Come by Leslie Feinberg (1992)

This pamphlet is an attempt to trace the historic rise of an oppression that, as yet, has no commonly agreed name. We are talking here about people who defy the ‘man’-made boundaries of gender.

Transgender Warriors: Making history from Joan of Arc to Dennis Rodman by Leslie Feinberg (1996)

[Leslie Feinberg's] book celebrated the resistance to transphobia and a vision of trans liberation articulated from the perspective of class struggle. It understood that no liberation from transphobia or any of the divisive and violent oppressions in class society is possible without the transformation of capitalism into socialism.

The Faggots & Their Friends Between Revolutions by Larry Mitchell (1977)

Stories told of these times make the faggots and their friends weep. The second revolutions made many of the people less poor and a small group of men without color very rich. With craftiness and wit the faggots and their friends are able to live in this time, some in comfort and some in defiance.

Also this interview

Gender Outlaws: The Next Generation edited by Kate Bornstein, and S. Bear Bergman (2010)

Today's transgenders and other sex/gender radicals are writing a drastically new world into being.

Made In India: Decolonizations, Queer Sexualities, Trans/National Projects by Suparna Bhaskaran (2004)

Made In India explores the making of "queer" and "heterosexual" consciousness and identities in light of economic privatization, global condom enterprises, sexuality-focused NGOs, the Bollywood-ization of beauty contests, and trans/national activism.

That's Revolting: Queer Strategies For Resisting Assimilation edited by Matilda Bernstein Sycamore (2008)

As the growing gay mainstream prioritises the attainment of straight privilege over all else, it drains queer identity of any meaning, relevance or cultural value.

How To Blow Up A Pipeline by Andreas Malm (2021)

Malm argues that sabotage is a logical form of climate activism, and criticizes both pacifism within the climate movement and "climate fatalism" outside it.

On Connection by Kae Tempest (2020)

On Connection is medicine for these wounded times.

Are Prisons Obsolete by Angela Y. Davies (2003)

If you know anything about Angela Davis—anti-racist activist, Marxist-feminist scholar—you know that her answer to the question posed in the title is "Yes." This is a short primer on the prison abolition movement

Becoming Abolitionists: Police, Protests, and the Pursuit of Freedom by Derecka Purnell

This profound, urgent, beautiful, and necessary book is an invitation to imagine and organize for a less violent and more liberatory world.

Black Marxism by Cedric Johnson (1983)

Influenced by many African American and Black economists and radical thinkers of the 19th century, Robinson creates a historical-critical analysis of Marxism and the Eurocentric tradition from which it evolved. The book does not build from nor reiterate Marxist thought, but rather introduces racial analysis to the Marxist tradition.

The Transgender Issue: An Argument For Justice by Shon Faye (2021)

[Shon Faye] provides a compelling, wide-ranging analysis of trans lives from youth to old age, exploring work, family, housing, healthcare, the prison system and trans participation in the LGBTQ+ and feminist communities, in contemporary Britain and beyond.

Burn The Binary: selected writings on the politics of being trans, genderqueer, and non-binary by Riki Wilchins (2017)

This single volume offers a selection of Riki’s most penetrating and insightful pieces, as well as the best of two decades of Riki’s online columns for The Advocate never before collected, from "Where Have All the Butches Gone," to "Attack of the 6-Foot Intersex People"

ARTICLES

Assuming The Perspective Of The Ancestor by Claire Schwartz (2022)

Philosopher Olúfẹ́mi O. Táíwò on building constructive, future-oriented politics, at scale.

The Gender Binary Is A Tool For White Supremacy by Kravitz Marshall (2020)

A brief history of gender expansiveness - and how colonialism slaughtered it

Meet Chris Smalls, the man who organized Amazon workers in New York By Anna Betts, Greg Jaffe, and Rachel Lerman (2022)

The fired worker and former rapper did what nobody else has done in the U.S.

The Nuclear Family Was A Mistake by David Brooks (2020)

The family structure we’ve held up as the cultural ideal for the past half century has been a catastrophe for many. It’s time to figure out better ways to live together.

Universal basic income seems to improve employment and well-being by Donna Lu (2020)

Extinction Isn’t the Worst That Can Happen by Kai Heron (2021)

"This brings us to the third problem with eschatological framings of the climate crisis: they overlook the fact that for many, the end of the world has already happened. In October last year, Nemonte Nenquimo, a Waorani woman, mother and leader, wrote a desperate letter to the western world reminding us that for Indigenous peoples, “the fires are raging still”."

MISC

Manifesto: An Aromantic Manifesto by yingchen and yingtong

free to read

their tumblr (with further resources)

Essay: I Dream Of Canteens by Rebecca May Johnson (2019)

There is a space for everyone. A space, a glass of water, and a plug socket.* Chairs and tables and cleaned toilets. So many chairs so that no one is without one.

Acceptance Speech (video and text): The National Book Foundation Medal for Distinguished Contribution to American Letters speech by Ursula Le Guin

Hard times are coming, when we’ll be wanting the voices of writers who can see alternatives to how we live now, can see through our fear-stricken society and its obsessive technologies to other ways of being, and even imagine real grounds for hope.

And here's a video to cleanse the soul: bell hooks: Transgression

bell hooks & Gloria Steinem at Eugene Lang College

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youturningintodust · 3 months

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READ BUTCH IS A NOUN

free (pdf)!

If you're butch, femme, or love someone who is, read this book. SO slept on.

#butch femme #butch lesbian #s bear bergman #butch is a noun #genderqueer butch #transmasculine butch #lesbian #pinned #this means you babygays. especially if you're figuring yourself out. shit is foundational and changed me #everyone read this book lol #pinning this

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martyr0l0gy · 6 months

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For anyone else who thirsts for reading trans / lesbian / genderqueer lit, but struggles because low circulation and academic interest make it difficult to find Real copies of: here' a PDF file of S. Bear Bergman's 'Butch Is A Noun' essay collection. And just a little reminder for the ✨️community✨️ butch/femme identities aren't just presentation. They're history and culture and politics and self definition. Please please please know about the intricacies of butch identities before just claiming your obsession with them. Butch attraction without context and humanisation is just dehumanising fetishism of gender non-conforming presentations (which can admittedly be fun in the right, consensual contexts.. but I digress).

#butch lit #butch is a noun #s bear bergman #lesbian lit #butch femme lit #butch essays #butch history #lesbian history

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somepeoplethinkimadyke · 2 years

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Hey does anyone know where I can buy a physical copy of Butch is a Noun by S. Bear Bergman? Everywhere I look it says it’s unavailable

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bubervitch · 20 days

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pretty disheartening to see that Bear Bergman hasn’t said anything at all to do with Gaza, really ever. His whole thing is being a progressive Queer Jewish person who fights for civil rights, so I feel like his not saying anything is incredibly hypocritical. Really just goes to show that a Liberal will continue to Liberal no matter how ‘progressive’ (blech) they pretend to be. I don’t want to assume he’s a Zionist just because he’s also Jewish but like… there’s no evidence to the contrary as of yet

#s bear bergman #he’s been a favourite author of mine for like a decade #really hope i’m wrong #rambling

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shadeslayer · 2 years

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But Sir is a man, and I am a butch. I am willing to be a man for a while, when it’s convenient or safe or pleasant, but inevitably I want to be able to coo inanely at little children and not have their mothers come and grab them away. I want to go and see my mechanic and confess without an ounce of shame that something is the matter and I haven’t the faintest idea what it might be. I want to be seen in the world as safe instead of strong, I want to hold hands and cry. I want to order girly blender drinks all summer long and use a restroom that has a passing chance of some remote acquaintance with cleaning products in its recent past, and perhaps most of all I want to be queer, visibly queer, several bubbles off gender and tilting fast. I want the outlaw I am to get a public hearing, a public viewing, and to have a chance to speak for hirself.

S. Bear Bergman, 'Why I'm Not A Nice Young Man (Yet)', Butch is a Noun

#anompolili #quotes #going from mindful masculinity thing to this is like. oh my gd i can breathe #s bear bergman #butch is a noun #gender #queer #kashoplili

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diversityinkidsbooks · 3 months

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Backwards Day By S. Bear Bergman

Set on the planet Tenalp, introduces us to an world where there are seventeen seasons, including one where bubblegum falls from the sky for three days and a single day when everything - everything everywhere - is backwards. Andrea looks forward to Backwards Day every year, so she can turn into a boy for the day. But one year she doesn't turn along with everyone else. She's miserable. The very next day, however, she turns into a boy - and stays that way! He's delighted, but his parents are distressed, and take him to the big city to consult with Backwardsologists. When they finally figure out what's happened, the miracles of Backwards Day are fully revealed to the reader.

#trans book #childrens books #kids books #queer books #queer kids books #S Bear Bergman

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androgynealienfemme · 11 months

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"I know what butch is. Butches are not beginner FTMs, except that sometimes they are, but it's not a continuum except when it is. Butch is not a trans identity unless the butch in question says it is, in which case it is, unless the tranny in question says it isn't, in which case it's not. There is no such thing as butch flight, no matter what the femmes or elders say, unless saying that invalidates the opinions of femmes in a sexist fashion or the opinions of elders in an ageist fashion. Or if they're right. But they are not, because butch and transgender are the same thing with different names, except that butch is not a trans identity, unless it is; see above."

-"I KNOW WHAT BUTCH IS", Butch is a Noun, Essays by S. Bear Bergman (2006)

#butch is a noun #s. bear bergman #lesbian #lesbianism #transgender #trans man #butch #butch lesbian #trans butch #transmasculine #gender stuff #trans lit #lesbian lit #this essay fucking rocks #lgbtq+ writing #lgbt writing

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ixlander · 1 year

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Your Monday reminder that progress is rarely linear, and sometimes the biggest mess comes right before a breakthrough. Keep trying, keep being as kind to yourself as you can manage (outsource if needed), and sometimes the right answer is have a cookie and try again tomorrow. (Sometimes the answer is “bite your back teeth together and do it again because you have to,” but when there’s an option, just note that it’s okay to take a break. The Deities of Deserving won’t get mad and sabotage your success because you didn’t grind yourself to dust.

[S Bear Bergman]

#s bear bergman

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araekniarchive · 2 years

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Maybe you made one already but i wanted to request a web on mary oliver's quote "mostly i want to be kind"

Thank you💫🌸

S. Bear Bergman, Your Faithful Servant, from Butch Is A Noun

Kaveh Akbar, Against Hell

Mary Oliver, Dogfish

@seravph, I THINK I AM GOING TO CUT MY HAIR

Everything Everywhere All At Once (2022) dirs. Daniels

Billie Letts, Where the Heart Is

@chaoticsandstorm, we’ll burn that bridge when we get to it

Maria Popova, ‘Naomi Shihab Nye’s Beloved Ode to Kindness, Animated’ for The Marginalian

Susan Sontag, Reborn: Journals and Notebooks, 1947-1963

Patti Smith, Woolgathering

Danusha Laméris, Small Kindnesses

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cock-holliday · 8 months

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I Know What Butch Is

I know what butch is. I know, and I’m going to tell you, so listen up and take notes. First of all, butch is a noun. And an adjective. And a verb.

Butches only ever wear jeans and boots, except if they’re wearing suits, and they keep their hair clipped down to a flattop you could putt off. Except if they have to for work. Or if they want to for sex. Or if they want to for some other reason. But otherwise it’s denim and leather and butch wax, kid, and don’t you forget it. Unless you’re vegan.

Toughness, even at the expense of gentleness, is a butch trait. Butches are outlaws. Also gentlemen. Gentlemen who open doors and pick up checks and say “after you” and hold your umbrella over you in the rain while the water drips down their sleeves. But butches not gentlemen if being a gentleman means imposing on the unsuspecting their sexist modes of acting out the cultural paradigm of the helplessness of women. Except if the unsuspecting are crying and need a handkerchief, or elderly and need a seat to sit down in, then it’s all right. Probably. But butches should never wait for a femme to tell them specifically that it is all right to behave in a gentlemanly fashion, they should just go ahead and do it because femmes like a butch with confidence, unless it turns out that she finds it offensive and feels as though you have imposed your gender fetish on her, you arrogant bastard.

And butches are monosyllabic, until you get to know them, which they will not allow but want, or will allow and want, or will allow but don’t want, or won’t allow and don’t want, so you may or may not get to know them, but you should try, or not. But butches are monosyllabic because all that talking is girl stuff, you know? Butches grunt in answer to questions; they speak sharply and emphatically. They do not share, process, or explain because these are activities that bring nothing but trouble, unless they are bringing relief to the troubled heart of a butch carrying around too much hurt or pain, though butches do not actually feel pain; they’re tough enough to either slough it off like dead skin or deal with all of that themselves. Unless someone wants for them to be emotionally available, in which case they can feel their feelings even though the presence of feelings is suspect in the first place, but they must stop immediately as soon as someone else is having a tough time so that all their resources can be directed to soothing that person.

I know what butch is. Butches are not beginner FTMs, except that sometimes they are, but it’s not a continuum except when it is. Butch is not a trans identity unless the butch in questions says it is, in which case it is, unless the tranny in question says it isn’t, in which case it’s not. There is no such thing as butch flight, no matter what the femmes or elders say, unless saying that invalidates the opinions of femmes in a sexist fashion or the opinions of elders in an ageist fashion. Or if they’re right. But they are not, because butch and transgender are the same thing with different names, except that butch is not a trans identity, unless it is; see above.

Butches are always tops. They always fuck the girls, and, for that matter, their partners are always girls; there is no such thing as a butch who is attracted to men. Well, transmen, but that’s just butch-on-butch repackaged as faggotry. But no non-trans-men. Unless the butch in question is a non-trans-man, then it’s okay. Except that non-trans-men cannot be butches, because butch is a queering of gender that assigned-male people cannot embody, unless they occasionally can, in which case they have to be gay men. Or the partners of femmes. Or not. But no one with an assigned-female body can be a butch and do it with assigned-male men. Unless they’re femmes. Or butches. I’m really putting my foot down on this one.

I know what butch is, and butches definitely, absolutely, do not get fucked, even if it feels so good to have someone slide in sweet and hard and rock them just right. They might eat pussy but they never suck cock, because licking pussy is chivalry without pants, and, of course, any butch would want to do anything to please the femme in hir life, if there is a femme. Which there has to be, in order to be a true butch, except if there does not have to be, but you cannot be a misogynist about it either, which a lack of interest in femmes and their attendant delights may be read as—if there is a lack, which there shouldn’t be. But anyway, cocksucking is about ownership and dominance, so butches must always be the ones having their cocks sucked, unless the owner of the cock being sucked by a butch is tied to something, but if a butch were tying down someone with a cock of some variety then the above rule would quite likely be violated, and I think I’ve been very clear about that, so never mind.

Butch has a lot of privilege because butches pass as men a lot, and butches also have a lot of privilege in the queer community because butch reads as queer and femme doesn’t always, and being able to pass to keep one’s self safe isn’t privilege if you’re a femme but it is if you’re a butch. Unless this is a butch who can pass as a heteronormative woman, in which case ze’s not really a butch anyway because no butch could do such a thing. Except that some of them can and also having kids really helps, even though no butch could have kids because of the rule about not getting fucked and also because that’s a femme’s job, but not everyone really understood their butchness all the way along and also sometimes there are fertility issues and also sometimes there’s not a femme so we’ll grandfather in some children but we’ll be suspicious of those butches. Unless they’re really great butch dads of whatever sex, in which case we’ll think it’s the damn cutest thing in the world and punch them on the arm, or if they’re awesome butch moms we’ll make approving comments about their ability to raise feminist men, but otherwise no children and no heteronormativity for sure, except for assigned male butches who do not exist.

Besides all of that, the butch pays. If there’s only one butch on the date. Unless the femme wants to. If there’s a femme present. If there’s a femme present, the butch pays unless hir paying would upset the femme or unless it creates class issues for the butch or patriarchy issues for the femme. Or if it’s two butches on a date, which they shouldn’t be. Or they should. In any case, they arm-wrestle for it. Except in such situations in which a public display of aggression on the part of butches, or an interaction which may be read as such, could potentially be detrimental to the community, to the mental health of those witnessing the act, to the butches themselves for feeling compelled to act out normative masculine-gendered conflict-resolution tactics, or to the glassware of the dining establishment, which so often gets broken. But otherwise, the butch always pays, and there’s just no getting around that.

I know what butch is. Butches are a brotherhood, or possibly a sisterhood, which would be a marvelous way to reclaim butch’s roots in the lesbian community except some butches were never part of the lesbian community and some were but aren’t any more, but placing masculine identities on butches is disrespectful, except when it’s desirable, but anyway, butches are a tribe, a tribe of people who have been maligned endlessly for, and in fact forged an identity in part out of, not fitting the gendered expectations of the culture in which they exist (until or unless they work to pass as men, which always or never or sometimes happens and is absolutely a great or problematic thing), so butches are very open to gendered variations in others and would never, ever try to make another butch feel like shit for having displayed a behavior which does not fit the microculture’s standard of what it means to be a butch, which is a useful or idealized or ridiculous or just plain complicated standard, so it should be adhered to, or critiqued, or aspired to, or not. Butches would also certainly never try to school younger butches in ways that are angry and dangerous because they feel like the process of toughening has disappeared from modern culture and butches need to be tough, dammit. Butches who do those sorts of things either are Real Butches or are Not Real Butches, depending who you ask.

There, that should be perfectly clear.

—S. Bear Bergman, Butch Is A Noun

#s. bear bergman #butch is a noun #butch #butch books #queer books #reposting as its own post #I tell people all the time to read it and link it everywhere #but HERE it is! in print! not images! no pdf screenshots no book scans! you’ve got no excuse now!

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haveyoureadthistransbook · 5 months

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Butch is a Noun by S. Bear Bergman

goodreads

Written by award-winning playwright and inveterate storyteller S. Bear Bergman, Butch Is a Noun picks up where gender theory leaves off. It makes butchness accessible to those who are new to the concept, and makes gender outlaws of all stripes feel as though they have come home--if home is a place where everyone understands you and approves of your haircut. From girls' clothes to men's underwear and what lies beyond, Butch Is a Noun chronicles the pleasures and dangers of living life outside the gender binary.

Mod opinion: Yes and I liked it. Of course it's dated in many aspects, but it does showcase a certain traditional butch identity and its overlap with transness well.

#butch is a noun #s. bear bergman #trans lit #lgbt lit #lgbt literature #trans literature #lgbt books #trans books #nonbinary #own voices #trans man #butch #nonfiction #memoir #polls

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a-ramblinrose · 1 year

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JOMP Book Photo Challenge || February 10 || #OWNVOICES: Gender Outlaws: The Next Generation by Kate Bornstein and S. Bear Bergman

#Gender Outlaws #kate bornstein #s. bear bergman #justonemorepage #jompbpc #book photo challenge #book photography #books #Not Out of Void But Out of Chaos #bpc catch up

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honeysound · 2 years

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Roughhousing as a love language.

Butch Is a Noun - S. Bear Bergman // I Sing the Body Electric - Walt Whitman // The Grip (pale) - Claire Tabouret // Stephen Spender

#web weaving #honeysound #compilation #my collection #roughhouse #wrestling #physical touch #love language #s. bear bergman #walt whitman #stephen spender

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aldieb · 9 months

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i am really more butch4butch in terms of attraction but also outside of and around that context i love being loved ones’ debatably-masc arm candy. one time a was like “i feel very feminine living with you bc you don’t cook and don’t decorate or do special things for holidays” and i was like 😌 (<- me when i’ve been read in a wildly specific way but also feel as if i’ve fulfilled a purpose)

#text tag #re that s bear bergman quote lol

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shadeslayer · 2 years

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I just want to be a big dog in the yard.

S. Bear Bergman, 'Walking With Girls', Butch is a Noun

#anompolili #quotes #sentences that make me understand why i feel a connection to butch despite it all #s bear bergman #butch is a noun #gender #kashoplili

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