Persistence : All Ways Butch and Femme

In the twenty-first century, the definitions of butch” and femme” have evolved and expanded along with other LGBT identities. Nearly twenty years after the publication of Joan Nestle’s groundbreaking 1992 book The Persistent Desire: A Femme-Butch Reader, Persistencefeatures leading queer authors and thinkers reflecting on what butch and femme mean to them today. The book is the result of an ongoing conversation between butch writer and storyteller Ivan Coyote, and gender researcher and femme dynamo Zena Sharman; both had found solace in and been shaped by Nestle’s book during their own coming out adventures. Contributors such as Jewelle Gomez (The Gilda Stories), Thea Hillman (Intersex), S. Bear Bergman (Butch is a Noun), Chandra Mayor (All the Pretty Girls), Amber Dawn (Sub Rosa), Anna Camilleri (Brazen Femme), Debra Anderson, Jeanne Cordova, Michael V. Smith, and Zoe Whittall explore the parameters of gender identity in the context of butch and femme: a raucous, insightful, sexy, and sometimes dangerous look at what the words butch and femme can mean in today’s ever-shifting gender landscape, with one eye on the past and the other on what is to come.