Posts tagged queer

We think you’re beautiful. And handsome. And gorgeous. We feel similarly about our book, Persistence: All Ways Butch and Femme.

Wouldn’t it be awesome to see the two of you together? Maybe you’re hanging out with Persistence on the beach, or it’s sitting on your vanity while you apply that last coat of lipstick, or propped lovingly beside your favourite pair of boots. Maybe you want to take a picture of yourself with the book while clad in your best femme or butch or futch gear. You get the idea.

So: take a picture of yourself with your copy of Persistence. E-mail it to persistence.anthology@gmail.com. If we like what we see, we’ll post it on our blog, where you will be loved and adored and maybe even cruised by our readers.

We can’t wait to see what you come up with.

Zena and Ivan xo

Photo credit: Wendy Adams

Nairne Holtz was described by the Globe and Mail as a “writer to watch.” She’s the author of This One’s Going to Last Forever, which was a finalist for a Lambda Literary Award, and The Skin Beneath, which won the Alice B. Award for Debut Lesbian Fiction and was shortlisted for Quebec’s McAuslan First Book Prize. Nairne lives in Toronto with her lover and miniature dogs and is indubitably femme.

Nairne’s contribution to Persistence: All Ways Butch and Femme is an essay called “Slide Rules.” She describes it as “an argument by an erstwhile librarian about why classification is important even if it is imprecise. My essay also pays homage to my longstanding lover.”

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

“Who offers a lap and who sits on that lap is one of those slide rules of butch and femme—a useful way to make fast calculations, if not hard-and-fast rules.”

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

Plus ça change, plus c’est la même chose.

Who are your butch and/or femme role models and why?

The first time I had sex with a woman, I was more mystified by my lover’s masculinity than anything else: why had she cut her hair to look like an angry skinhead when she could be pretty? I was 21 and clueless. A few years later Leslie Feinberg’s Stone Butch Blues helped change my perceptions; I remember crying at the book’s funeral scene in which the butches made a collective sacrifice and wore dresses. I didn’t really have any femme role models besides the other girly girls I encountered in the lesbian community, and we were all neophytes, unsure if butch/femme was something to laugh at or take seriously. The answer, of course, is both, as exemplified by a bit of dialogue at the end of my favourite butch-femme movie, Bound. Corky: “You know what the difference is between you and me, Violet?” Violet: “No.” Corky: “Me neither.”

Photo credit: Dan Bushnell

Brenda Barnes is an articulate butch of a distinguished age, married and settled in downtown Whitehorse, Yukon. A former journalist, broadcaster, arts administrator and naval officer, she now works in communications and violence prevention.

Here’s how Brenda describes her piece for Persistence: All Ways Butch and Femme: “My piece is a personal rumination on my discovery of butch and my attempts to claim it as my own, despite external and internal resistance. Through anecdotes and historical reflection, it examines the ways in which traditional gender enforcement affects even genderqueers in our struggles for personal acceptance and identification.”

What made you want to be part of this anthology?

In my day job, I have the opportunity to talk with younger persons about how gender is formed and enforced in our culture and how that enforcement is at the root of much of the social oppression they face in schools. We do exercises where they tell me the messages they get about being men and women, where they come from and what the messages are. They also tell me what they get called or what happens to you when you live outside the strictly confining gender boxes. I suggest to them that they have a choice as to whether they will be the stereotype, whether they’ll oppress others by insisting they be the stereotype and whether they will intervene when they see others being oppressed. We also talk about how this oppression does not end when they leave high school.

I wanted to talk about how gender enforcement is also at the root of misunderstanding and oppression amongst those queers resisting gender oppression. Even though we are consciously choosing to live outside cultural norms, those gender enforcement norms still inform how we have the potential to impose on ourselves and other resisters these archaic notions of men and women, which, in turn, informs the butch femme dynamic.

I also wanted to show that these notions and their considerations aren’t limited to those living amongst southern, urban, academic and activist communities. Out here in the northern hinterland, enforcement of the gender code is alive and well, especially amongst men where their masculinity is equated with violence, womanizing and substance abuse. When a male-identified woman such as me doesn’t buy into that formation of the masculine and we embrace a masculinity that includes vulnerability and consideration of others, when we don’t adopt the tough guise (thanks Jackson Katz) either in manner, anatomy or dress we’re seen to be less mannish or butch, even among other genderqueers or seemingly natural allies. And that’s fucked up.

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

“The problem with a plaid shirt is that whereas on my partner it would just look cute, on me it would drive things over the top and I have tempered my embracing of Butch with resistance to self-parody.”

This is one of my favourite lines because it’s meant to be a bit of humour - and a simultaneous embracing and rejection of gender norms. It also provides the coming full circle reference to the end of the piece.

However, looking back on it now two years after I wrote it, I think I must have either been in a fit of pique or had my tongue wedged into my cheek because it’s not always been true. I recently saw a photo of myself from almost 20 years ago when I when I was with a group of friends at the queer March on Washington (April 1993) that would call bullshit on that statement. I wasn’t wearing a plaid shirt, BUT I was wearing multi-coloured harem pants, scuffed army boots, a k.d. lang t-shirt and a flat-top haircut. Upon seeing the photo, a friend remarked, “Barnes? Joey Buttafuoco? I couldn’t tell.” Exactly.

If you could give your younger self one book to read, what would it be?

When I was younger, some prescient adult, surely not my parents, gave me a copy of John Wyndham’s The Chrysalids. It tells the story of a post-apocalyptic, pre-industrial agrarian society fundamentally and religiously obsessed with preserving physical norms in order to not bring further “tribulation” or God’s judgment. Those humans, plants or animals not conforming to accepted and prescribed norms are deemed the devil’s handiwork - mutants or blasphemies that either must be killed or destroyed. It was the first book that made me think about what exactly it meant to be human. It also foregrounded my understanding that because I was different there would be other people who would insist that I was less than human. Ultimately it helped to form the framework within which I was able to judge for myself that equivalent contemporary fundamentalist notions were dangerous and wrong and that they must be resisted inwardly in that we don’t accept others’ judgment of ourselves. I think an important lesson for any younger person to understand is that we all will face other people’s judgment at some point in our lives and that we must not allow that judgment to make us feel inferior. I still re-read bits of The Chrysalids from time to time for reassurance, because even though it was published before I was born, the themes addressed of bigotry, xenophobia, intolerance and the dangers of rigid religious orthodoxy are still, unfortunately, too relevant today.

Photo credit: William Scott

Debra Anderson is a Toronto-based author. Herizons Magazine described her first novel, Code White, as “a book that meets your eye, has a good handshake, and looks killer in a pair of fishnets.” Debra’s writing has been anthologized in Brazen Femme: Queering Femininity, Geeks, Misfits and Outlaws, and Bent on Writing: Contemporary Queer Tales. Debra is the winner of the Dayne Ogilvie Grant (2009), a grant awarded by the Writers’ Trust of Canada to an emerging gay Canadian writer for a body of work.

Here’s how Debra describes her contribution to Persistence: All Ways Butch and Femme: “My piece, ‘Spotlight’, explores my complex journey of coming into a femme identity and the powerful and cherished place that being femme has held for me.”

If you could give your younger self one book to read, what would it be?

This is a hard question, in particular because I fiercely clung to reading when I was younger as a way to enable me to first come out as a dyke, and then to come out as femme. Books were this vital lifeline to help me understand what I was and to learn about a community that was at first, unfamiliar.

I fell head over heels in love with so many books and authors, and, of course, pivotal anthologies such as Joan Nestle’s The Persistent Desire.

There was Stone Butch Blues by Leslie Feinberg, the life-altering writing of Joan Nestle, the powerful poems of Minnie Bruce Pratt, Linda Smukler, and Chrystos, the erotica of Patrick Califia, Diane DiMassa’s Hothead Paisan comics, the magical inspiration of Annie Sprinkle, and the writings of Audre Lorde, Amber Hollibaugh, and one of my favourite authors, Eileen Myles. There was also the incredible wealth of talented local queer authors that helped to sustain and inspire me.

But if I had to pick just one book, I think I’d actually have to narrow it down even further—to just one story. I would give myself my favourite short story of Dorothy Allison’s, “Her Thighs,” which can be found in her collection, Trash. I had the pleasure of reading Trash when I was fairly young, but I still wish that someone had given it to me much sooner. I wish I had read this particular story years and years before I did.

Who are your butch and/or femme role models and why?

My role models are all of the butches and femmes who have come before me, who I have looked up to and learned from, who have paved the way for us today, as well as the younger butches and femmes creating community who are constantly inspiring.

As I mentioned above, many of my role models have been writers, but also musicians, film and video makers, performance artists, and visual artists…it has meant so much to me to be able to read their stories or connect with their art. I always feel energized and moved by their courage and candour, and connected to something larger.

But when it comes down to it, I really get inspired by all of us out there, trying to live our daily lives as who we are, challenging and fighting homophobia while holding hands as we are walking down the street, pausing to kiss at a stoplight or when we’re attempting to accomplish the everyday details of renting an apartment or trying to get hired for a job.

There are those of us who are visible in our identities and those of us who are invisible, who must come out again and again to  challenge oppression, and I am always so in awe of all the work that goes into that for us all—navigating the every day. How we all manage all of those details and get up to do it again the very next morning is very inspiring.

And our outfits—I’m always so in awe of our outfits!

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

“Find out who you are, then do it on purpose.” — Dolly Parton

Learn to take up space. Don’t let anyone tell you to put something on, take something off, take something back, tone it down, or go home. It is okay not to fit in. Do it your own way. Be kind. Be strong. Treat others with respect. Hold your head up.

Be willing to make the first move. Take a chance. Don’t make assumptions. Unravel each other’s hurts. Bear witness. Heal. Repeat. Celebrate every possible joyous thing. Remember who you are.

Allow yourself to make mistakes. We all have disasters. An outfit. A date. The morning after. Take a tumble. Get up again. See the marks you make. Learn how to apologize.

You will be told No. Learn to be okay with this and move on. Yes, will be the answer that will matter the most.

Be open. Don’t gossip. Have courage. Show up. Desire is a good thing. Don’t be afraid to dazzle. Nothing is ever too much. Never stop wanting.

Photo credit: Su Evers

Thea Hillman is an activist and author of Depending on the Light and Intersex (for Lack of a Better Word).

Thea’s contribution to Persistence: All Ways Butch and Femme is called “Butch-Femme as Spiritual Practice.” Thea says the piece is an “attempt to answer the question: Why am I always wearing the pants in my romantic relationships?”

What made you want to be part of this anthology?

Ordinarily I wouldn’t want to be in a butch-femme anthology, but Ivan approached me acknowledging upfront saying that he knew I don’t identify as femme (for those who don’t know me: I look like one and often get mistaken for one) and that he felt my perspective could have a place in the book. He made room for me, and in turn, I wrote a piece that actually places me more solidly in femme-land than I’ve ever been before.

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

“And since I was hard, even thought I looked soft, it was a lot of rocky stone surfaces striking against one another, which makes for a lot of sparks, but there’s not much there to kindle.”

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

In the San Francisco Bay Area, butch-femme communities used to be pretty prescriptive and fixed. Today, butch and femme communities have kind of exploded and are expressing themselves in more diverse, flexible, and inclusive ways. At least it seems that way to me, looking from outside, as my life as a single momma has me kinda far from the cutting edge.

Sasha T. Goldberg came of age as a young butch in Chicago, and spent her high school years riding the El and reading The Persistent Desire. In between the pages and the El stops, she would often look up hoping to find the right girl, the existence of another butch, or the possibility of a future. Today Sasha is a Jewish scholar, educator, and community organizer living in Oakland, California, where life is very good.

Sasha’s piece for Persistence: All Ways Butch and Femme is called “What We Know To Be True” — “a story about love, and a story about recognition. It’s also the story of a butch and a femme meeting in a particular time and place. And it’s a story about that moment between butches and femmes that holds true beyond particularities—the recognition that exists beyond time and place; it’s about the moment that first taught us who we are, and it’s about the moment that keeps us coming back for more.”

What made you want to be part of this anthology?

I came out as a young Jewish butch, and held the words of Leslie Feinberg and Joan Nestle very close to me, very dear. I turned to The Persistent Desire as a holy text, kept company with the stories, the words, the history, and I found words for myself, and for what I wanted, in between those pages.

It’s a great honour to be asked to contribute to this anthology; it also means, amongst many other things, that I survived. And there is no greater honour, perhaps, than being asked to join the canon (in this case the literary tradition of heart, guts, mind, soul) of writing about butches and femmes.

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

I have a few favourite lines, but I cannot possibly convince myself to share them out of context. Read the story and tell me your favourite lines—or, best yet, tell me your story.

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

Hold fast. It’s 2011 now, and we still live in a world that attempts to deny, erase, and prevent our existence. But we do exist, we’re right here, we were here before you, and we know how impossibly hard it can be, and also how impossibly sweet. Also, don’t forget that you’re in the very best company—and so, as they say, keep loving, and keep fighting.

Photo credit: Ginger Robinson

Ben McCoy is a writer, versatile performance artist, and at times, a short film vixen. McCoy has toured the country twice, most recently with Sister Spit. Ben has slung words, stilettos, and served slices of LOL-pie to audiences while raising a well-manicured finger to homo-and-transphobia and misogyny everywhere. Surprisingly not a Leo, McCoy is a quadruple Scorpio. Currently Ben is enjoying a mutually bewitching affair with San Francisco.

Ben’s contribution to Persistence: All Ways Butch and Femme is called “Backstage with Lady Gaga.” Ben says, “My piece in Persistence shows Jake as she is backstage at a drag bar doing a drag show, and in between fishnet stockings and wrinkled-up dollar bills from bridal parties, she is stressing out about a deadline approaching for submissions to an anthology about gender. Special moments ensue.”

What made you want to be part of this anthology?

The fact that I’m completely and totally bored with the whole dialogue on gender is irrelevant to the fact that I rarely, if ever, identify with much of what has been written or performed, or photographed, or video-ed, or regurgitated up on stage regarding gender. I’m loath to talk about it because I feel it oppresses my life, but because of that oppression and misrepresentation I feel it’s my responsibility to put my voice out there, if only because it would finally be a voice in print that I could connect to. I’d like to think there are other individuals out there who feel just as disconnected, bored, unsatisfied with the discourse on gender or just fucking living their lives in a way that is independent from the whole thing, but until I cash a cheque for being some sort of spokesperson, I’m not going to vouch for that.

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

I like this line a lot:

“Sorry, were you saying something or did your asshole just burp?”

I mean, let’s get really real.

If you could give your younger self one book to read, what would it be?

Oh god, I’ve always said I wish I would have read Cintra Wilson’s Colors Insulting to Nature when I was in my early twenties but now that I think about that wish I’d like to re-wish and say I wish I’d read it when I was a teenager! I think the book could really have done something for me. Helped me avoid a lot of humiliating experiences I may have self-orchestrated. In it, the main character Liza gets bitten by the fame bug, or maybe we should say she catches the fame disease, and so it begins—throwing herself into experience after experience, situation after situation, in the hope of exposing her God Given Talent! Her Award Winning Gift! Everyone has one, right? All she needs to do is find it, and SHOW IT! And voila! FAME!

Let’s face it, the American Dream has become the American Nightmare. Cintra Wilson’s novel is everything you want out of a book—it’s fucking hilarious, extremely entertaining, wonderfully woven, a complete page-turner, with softer moments and exposed vulnerabilities, but nothing so overtly sentimental and staged as to yank a phony heart-string, and at the same time it’s not so cynical that some mind-blowing epiphanies about yourself and our culture can’t be had. I fucking love this book and wish it would get made into a movie so that I can play the lead role. But of course, that role would probably go to somebody more famous.

Photo credit: Ginger Robinson

Kate Bornstein, author of Gender Outlaw, My Gender Workbook, Hello Cruel World, and co-editor of Gender Outlaws: The Next Generation, has this to say about Persistence: All Ways Butch and Femme:

“The butch/femme dynamic is a conscious, loving binary of desire and trust … it’s a dance of love and outlawed romance. Butches and femmes share a sense of tribe, extended family and kinship—no matter what our genders might be. There is no doubt in my mind that this book will soon be recognized as a major contribution to the shelves of our queer literature. And it’s totally gonna be a must-have bedside reader for many. This is a smart, loving book by some terrific writers. They all know what it means to live and love as butch/femme beyond the stereotypes, and they’ve made their diesel femme Auntie Kate very proud of them.”

Thanks, Auntie Kate!