Photo credit: Emily Goodstein

Miriam Zoila Pérez is a Cuban-American writer, blogger and reproductive justice activist. You might be familiar with her awesome website RadicalDoula.com, a blog where she writes about the intersections between birth activism and social justice. Miriam is also an editor at Feministing.com. Her writing has been published in Bitch Magazine, The Nation, The American Prospect and Colorlines and the anthologies Yes Means Yes: Visions of Female Sexual Power and a World without Rape and Click: When We Knew We Were Feminists.

We’re excited to include Miriam’s piece “Coming Back Around to Butch” in Persistence: All Ways Butch and Femme. In it, she talks about “struggling with and avoiding the label of butch for a long time because of fears I wasn’t butch ‘enough’.”

What made you want to be part of this anthology?

I think there is so much need for a diversity of narratives around gender identity and experience. There are a few amazing books, but not nearly enough to fully reflect the landscape of our communities and lives. I love the opportunity to reflect on my own gender journey, and I can only hope that my experience might resonate with other folks out there.

What’s one of your favourite lines from your piece?

“It was a fierce femme who bossy-bottomed me into the role of butch top.” The few times I’ve read this piece at events, this line gets the biggest audience response, hands down.

What’s your perception of the state of femme and butch communities today?

The newer generation coming up has so much to teach us about finding room for everyone amongst these labels, communities and identities. I think there has been a massive opening in our ideas about gender and identity that really makes room for a huge diversity of experience. It’s been beautiful to watch people reinvent these terms, re-appropriate them and find authentic representations of themselves within them. It really gives me hope for what the future will be like for other gender rebels.