A review by ltnightjar
Persistence: All Ways Butch and Femme by Ivan Coyote, Zena Sharman

fast-paced

4.5

read the foreword for a class, then ended up reading the whole thing. 

favourite essays:

• Forward! - Joan Nestle
• My First Lover Was Not a Lesbian - Kimberly Dark
• Never Be Hungry Again - Leah Lakshmi Piepzna-Samarasinha 
• Femme Butch Feminist - Jewelle Gomez
• Home/Sickness: Self Diagnosis - romham padraig gallacher 
• To All the Butches I Loved Between 1995 and 2005: An Open Letter about Selling Sex, Selling Out, and Soldiering On - Amber Dawn 
• With Both Fists: Conscious Gender Building through the Butch and Femme Identities - Sinclair Sexsmith 
• baby butch: a love letter from the future - Melissa Sky 
• FEMME SHARK MANIFESTO! - Leah Lakshmi Piepzna-Samarasinha 

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Content Warnings

Moderate: Transphobia

The essay by Victoria A. Brownworth "No Butches, No Femmes: The Mainstreaming of Queer Sexuality" relies partially on the transphobic "butch flight" trope that butch lesbians and femme gay men are being pressured into identifying as transgender, contributing to the marginalization of butch/femme dynamics. To illustrate this point, Brownworth also fearmongers about butch lesbians coming to regret hormone replacement therapy and gender confirmation surgeries.