Photo credit: Vanessa Kwan

Elaine Miller is a writer, sex/kink educator, performer, and professional techdonkey. She’s also a femme-futch dyke-daddy leatherfreek dragking spokesqueer with a penchant for being a tea-drinking philosophizin’ geek.

Elaine’s piece for Persistence: All Ways Butch and Femme is called “Futch: Thoughts from the Borderlands.” She describes it as “a personal essay about the experience and politics of navigating the dichotomous camps of butch and femme while identifying with both.”

What made you want to be part of this anthology?

In my own life as well as in my community, I love considering and discussing the why even more than the what, who, or how. I’m honoured to be included in such a collection of lovely thinky folks, and am glad to be able to offer a viewpoint from my particular place(s) on the femme-butch spectrum.

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

“I respectfully submit that although we (who live in a gender-obsessed world) often ascribe such meanings to them, human behaviours are inherently ungendered. Even penetrative fucking. Even watching sensitive movies. Even, yes, opening doors for other people.”

If you could say one thing to future butches and femmes, what would it be?

I would like future butches and femmes to feel free (and safe!) to display and enjoy each facet of their truest selves, and not simply inhabit the archetype. In fact, I’d like folks to go so far as to possess a sweeping sense of entitlement around nuanced gender expression.