Persistence

by Coyote, Ivan E.; Sharman, Zena

• ISBN13: 9781551523972
• ISBN10: 1551523973
• Format: Paperback
• Copyright: 2011-05-03
• Publisher: Arsenal Pulp Pr Ltd

Summary

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.

Table of Contents

Forward!	p. 09
Acknowledgments	p. 22
Introduction	p. 23
Ride	p. 27
My First Lover Was Not a Lesbian	p. 31
Coming Back Around to Butch	p. 37
A Dad Called Mum	p. 43
A Beautiful Creature	p. 53
Never Be Hungry Again	p. 63
Femme Butch Feminist	p. 67
Home/Sickness: Self-Diagnosis	p. 79
Looking Straight at You	p. 85
A Butch Roadmap	p. 92
To All the Butches I Loved Between 1995 and 2005: An Open Letter about Selling Sex, Selling Out, and Soldiering On	p. 95
Brother Dog	p. 103
Butch Is How I Feel	p. 107
Slide Rules	p. 113
Embodying Hunger and Desire with a Fistful of Bliss	p. 118
Between My Fingers	p. 125
Masculine of Centre, Seeks Her Refined Femme	p. 127
No Butches, No Femmes: The Mainstreaming of Queer Sexuality	p. 137
What We Know to Be True	p. 149
Me, Simone, and Dot	p. 154
For Annie B. (1915-81)	p. 166
Split Myself Apart	p. 176
With Both Fists: Conscious Gender Building through the Butch and Femme Identities	p. 180
A Guide to Getting Laid by a Girl in Lipstick and High Heels	p. 189
A Patch of Bright Flowers	p. 192
Rogue Femininity	p. 205
Changed Sex. Grew Boobs. Started Wearing a Tie.	p. 209
The New Politics of Butch	p. 218
Femme Cowboy	p. 232
Futch: Thoughts from the Borderlands	p. 239
Butch-Femme as Spiritual Practice	p. 245
Rethinking High Maintenance: The Queer Fat Femme Guide to Not Blaming It on the Fact That You Don't Like High Femmes	p. 248
38 B	p. 253
baby butch: a love letter from the future	p. 259
Female Masculinity, Male Femininity, Feminine Masculinity, Masculine Femininity …?	p. 265
Backstage with Lady Gaga	p. 276
Femme Shark Manifesto!	p. 286
A Failed Man	p. 292
Spotlight	p. 300
Hats Off	p. 310
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