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androgynealienfemme · 10 months

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"We go from store to store, trying to things on and inspecting them. I give my opinions on dresses and shoes, blouses and lipstick colors. Sometimes I say things that make the other women look at me, agape, as though my mouth has been possessed by that flighty queen from Queer Eye even while the rest of my body still looks like any other big dumb boy's. I say that I like a skirt but I wish it were bias-cut instead of A-line, or that I am not fond of the fashion for surplice tops, or that the post-WWII idiom in shoes this season is amusing but rarely looks good on actual feet, or that I like the look of a bolero jacket. I know the names of colors, heliotrope and coral and Nile blue, and I can say without hesitation whether a lipstick might look better matte with a bit of powder.

These other women look at me with wonder, their boyfriends and husbands having made a fetish out of refusing to learn such words under any circumstances, as though merely pronouncing the word "periwinkle" or "princess seam" could easily turn a strong man gay as a box of birds. They say to her, "That's your husband?" in voices that loiter between admiring and disgusted, as though they know that there's no force on earth that could make their men or boys take such interest in their clothing and they think they might really prefer that to the spectacle of me, filling an armchair, legs crossed ankle over knee, looking just right until I say "tea length."

The point is that she wants other girls to see what it looks like to have a boy so cracy in love with you, as I am, that he will spend an afternoon talking about capri pants to have a boy so delighted by you that he never calls you by your name, but addresses you always as "beautiful girl," or "my love" or occasionally and with great fondness, "boss." To have a boy who will happily fetch your next-size-down and carry your bags and charm the salesclerks at the register without flirting overmuch and just generally try to make himself as useful as possible, all for the dizzy and undying pleasure of making you happy. And even though I am not a boy, I look like one, and so I can be complicit with her in this kind of wonderful afternoon, part indulgence of her great beauty and style, part guerilla feminist activism.

Later, when we walk through the mall or down the sidewalk, me laden with packages that are clearly hers, I watch the eyes of the people we pass: the women who look at me with a certain longing, wishing they had their own boys to carry the bags. The men who look at her with an unmistakable hunger, wishing that they had the honor of schlepping for a girl like her, and then look at me with a certain edge of disbelief, not quite clear about why I get to squire this marvelous example of femininity around when they are clearly wealthier, more handsome, better hung. I have learned to meet all of these gazes with a calm kind of sweetness. There's no point in defensiveness or sheepishness or challenge. I'm the one holding her bags."

"Being a Shopping Switch” Butch is a Noun essays by S. Bear Bergman (2006)

#butch is a noun #s. bear bergman #lesbian lit #butch lit #lesbian #lesbianism #butch lesbian #butch 4 femme #butch4femme #butch for femme #femme #butch #femme lesbian #feminism

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martyr0l0gy · 6 months

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For anyone else who thirsts for reading trans / lesbian / genderqueer lit, but struggles because low circulation and academic interest make it difficult to find Real copies of: here' a PDF file of S. Bear Bergman's 'Butch Is A Noun' essay collection. And just a little reminder for the ✨️community✨️ butch/femme identities aren't just presentation. They're history and culture and politics and self definition. Please please please know about the intricacies of butch identities before just claiming your obsession with them. Butch attraction without context and humanisation is just dehumanising fetishism of gender non-conforming presentations (which can admittedly be fun in the right, consensual contexts.. but I digress).

#butch lit #butch is a noun #s bear bergman #lesbian lit #butch femme lit #butch essays #butch history #lesbian history

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read-alert · 5 days

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This does come with the caveat that I can't quite remember if the characters in How to Find a Princess, Funeral Songs for Dying Girls, and Chain-Gang All-Stars identity specifically as lesbians or not, but they are all sapphic. Full titles under the cut!

EDIT: Apparently Alice Walker is a big proponent of a famous antisemitic conspiracy theorist, David Icke, so be aware of that when considering The Color Purple

Happy Lesbian Visibility Week! 📚📖🏳️‍🌈

Hijab Butch Blues by Lamya H

In the Dream House by Carmen Maria Machado

How to Find a Princess by Alyssa Cole

Cantoras by Carolina De Robertis

The Color Purple by Alice Walker

Under the Udala Trees by Chinelo Okparanta

Stone Butch Blues by Leslie Feinberg

Funeral Songs for Dying Girls by Cherie Dimaline

Chain-Gang All-Stars by Nana Kwame Adjei-Brenyah

#lesbian #lesbian reads #lesbian books #lesbian lit #queer books #queer reads #queer lit #lesbian visibility week #bookblr #hijab butch blues #in the dream house #how to find a princess #cantoras #the color purple #stone butch blues #funeral songs for dying girls #chain gang all stars

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subbyp · 5 months

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a plot wherein Sanji experiences the Villain Shapeshifts Into the Object of the Hero’s Innermost Hidden Desires scenario and it’s just Zoro but as a woman who bathes regularly. like same build and personality and everything

#one piece #opla #black leg sanji #zoro/sanji #zosan #I imagine this as opla in particular because a) I just like it better and b) la!Zoro could already pass for a butch woman if you squint #like is it just me or is la!Zoro intentionally made up and lit to make his features appear more androgynous than his actor’s features??

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lunaathorne · 8 months

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every sapphic book i love → kari by amruta patil

what kind of creature was this, this genderless one, and why did she make me feel this way?

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opossum-dyke · 6 months

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Here's how my huge stack of queer books is going

(trust me this is impressive as a dyslexic person)

Ignore the Edgar Allan Poe book it's just there to be huge n press flowers

Technically Stone Butch Blues is in both the categories (have read this year) and (want to read a 2nd time)

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archergrid · 20 days

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I’m seeking beta readers for my sapphic heist romance novel! If you like:

👩‍❤️‍💋‍👩 Butch/femme

💰 Steal from the rich

👾 Latina hacker main character

🌹 Asian butch-fatale love interest

🕯️slow burn

🎯forced proximity

🌶️ spicy love scenes

Then DM me or reply to this post for details~

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toneemoll · 9 months

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#leslie feinberg #queer lit #transmasc #trans literature #quotes #stone butch #stone butch blues #nonbinary #no binario #queer

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haveyoureadthistransbook · 4 months

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Hijab Butch Blues by Lamya H.

goodreads

When fourteen-year-old Lamya H realizes she has a crush on her teacher--her female teacher--she covers up her attraction, an attraction she can't yet name, by playing up her roles as overachiever and class clown. Born in South Asia, she moved to the Middle East at a young age and has spent years feeling out of place, like her own desires and dreams don't matter, and it's easier to hide in plain sight. To disappear. But one day in Quran class, she reads a passage about Maryam that changes everything: when Maryam learned that she was pregnant, she insisted no man had touched her. Could Maryam, uninterested in men, be . . . like Lamya?

From that moment on, Lamya makes sense of her struggles and triumphs by comparing her experiences with some of the most famous stories in the Quran. She juxtaposes her coming out with Musa liberating his people from the pharoah; asks if Allah, who is neither male nor female, might instead be nonbinary; and, drawing on the faith and hope Nuh needed to construct his ark, begins to build a life of her own--ultimately finding that the answer to her lifelong quest for community and belonging lies in owning her identity as a queer, devout Muslim immigrant.

This searingly intimate memoir in essays, spanning Lamya's childhood to her arrival in the United States for college through early-adult life in New York City, tells a universal story of courage, trust, and love, celebrating what it means to be a seeker and an architect of one's own life.

Mod opinion: I haven't read this memoir yet, but I love the title!

#hijab butch blues #lamya h.#polls #trans lit #trans literature #trans books #lgbt lit #lgbt literature #lgbt books #memoirs #nonfiction #nonbinary #own voices #to read

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cinematicnomad · 5 months

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it's like a decade+ later but i really am convinced that my queer lit professor had a crush on me in undergrad and really, fuck me for not realizing i was bi earlier bc i would have pounced on that.

#she was this little butch southern lesbian #and i was OBSESSED with her #i just was dating someone and wasn't out yet and did not realize what was going on lol #sorry this is brought to you by me reading old emails with her after seeing a tweet that made me think of the situation #she literally wrote me: 'If I don't see you later have a good day. . . actually have a good day regardless of whether or not I see you'#ok dawn!! i see you!! i didn't when i was 20 but i do now!!#reading these emails as a 32 year old now i am like #'ok i can see why she had me stop by her office at 1:30AM to ask if i'd skipped a meeting bc i was uncomfortable with her for some reason'#(i did not understand it in the moment but later realized she was asking if i was uncomfortable bc i thought she had a crush on me)#(and she was awkwardly trying to assure me she didn't but also reading these emails now. YES SHE DID.)#sorry if none of this makes sense lol i'm just having a 'what if' moment rn #i have so many emails with this woman from the semester i took her queer lit class and they are all!! so!! flirty!!#i was also clearly flirting and Did Not Realize It #oh no!! baby kat what are you DOING

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androgynealienfemme · 10 months

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"There is a kind of connection that I sometimes have, with certain people, a way of trust that only comes with people who have what I always think of as a butch heart. That's not quite right. Some of them don't identify as butches; some, in fact, hardly identify as anything even in the same zip code. But's it's a very boy way of being bigger than, a sturdy and quiet way, taking care of everyone around you as best you can, always trying to fix it, always stepping up to do the crap job that gets no recognition, and also of being so gentle, so generous, so nonjudgemental of other people, believing that they are doing their best.

Is that sexist? I don't mean it to be. I mean to describe this way of some masculine things, so different in its energy from other ways of caretaking. In Yiddish, this is referred to as being a mensch, which also means a man. There's a part of me thatr wishes I could separate it entirely from gender, and another part which sees it as exactly right that this is gendered, that there are ways of butchness that are composed of the best of masculinity and leave all of its borrish excesses behind.

But I met this butch, a handsome writing with a toughness about him that I recognized as the result of his life for the forty-six years before he and I crossed paths, a toughness that even still showed an underlying playfulness. That he had been able to keep that place alive and tender in the hardness of life made him light up my eyes as someone who would know some of the things I knew, someone who would honor the same places in me, and we started talking. Talking turned into flirting, and flirting turned into intention. We made a date to spend an evening together seeing what our combined toughness and playfulness might mean when we took our clothes off, a kind of old-style faggot good time without a lot of expectation about who might or would do what, to or for whom.''

"Laying Down with A Butch” Butch is a Noun essays by S. Bear Bergman (2006)

#butch is a noun #s. bear bergman #lesbian #lesbianism #Butch lit #lesbian lit #butch for butch #butch4butch #butch #butch lesbian

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icarus-archives · 2 months

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Caesar (Frances Barber) and Brutus (Harriet Walter) slow dancing in Julius Caesar at the Donmar Warehouse, dir. Phyllida Lloyd, 2012.

#aesthetic #dark academia #academia #lgbt #literature #academia aesthetic #queer #english lit #queer history #julius caesar #shakespeare #caesar #butch #butch lesbian #lesbian #the sheer butch swag in this production is my downfall

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bi4bihankking · 2 months

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Stone Butch Blues Summary:

Stone Butch Blues is a powerful and groundbreaking novel that tells the story of Jess Goldberg, a young butch lesbian coming of age in the 1960s and 70s. Set against the backdrop of the gay and feminist movements, the book explores themes of identity, gender, and the struggle for acceptance and belonging.

All For The Game Summary:

Neil Josten is the newest addition to the Palmetto State University Exy team. He's short, he's fast, he's got a ton of potential—and he's the runaway son of the murderous crime lord known as The Butcher.

Signing a contract with the PSU Foxes is the last thing a guy like Neil should do. The team is high profile and he doesn't need sports crews broadcasting pictures of his face around the nation. His lies will hold up only so long under this kind of scrutiny and the truth will get him killed.

But Neil's not the only one with secrets on the team. One of Neil's new teammates is a friend from his old life, and Neil can't walk away from him a second time. Neil has survived the last eight years by running. Maybe he's finally found someone and something worth fighting for.

#stone butch blues #leslie feinberg #all for the game #aftg #the foxhole court #nora sakavic #lgbt books #lgbt literature #queer books #queer literature #lgbt #lgbtq #lgbtqia #poll #bookblr #booklr #books #literature #queer lit

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marzipanandminutiae · 7 months

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hello!! i’m so sorry to snoop in the tags, but i saw you mention a book you were reading where one of the women uses a spell to disguise herself as a man and the other one is into it!! may i ask what book that is? id love to read it or something like it

A Restless Truth by Freya Marske. Generally quite a good book, I thought, though it took me some time to get into it! It's a fantasy murder mystery/MacGuffin HuntTM story set on a luxury steamer in 1909.

The disguise part is very brief; the character is a generally femme bisexual cis woman, but she's played trouser roles in a music hall and used her magic powers to enhance the illusion. And she demonstrates that to her new lover (femme cis lesbian) while they're kissing at one point. It doesn't happen again after that.

I found it offputting, especially because the lesbian has just figured out whey she's never had any interest in men and now here she is briefly pretending the woman she's falling for is a man. Genderfuckery is not generally something I'm into in terms of reading romantic or steamy lit and trying to lose myself in it, but if that's something you like, that aspect of the scene will probably appeal!

(I should hardly have to say this, but it's Tumblr, so: obviously IRL I support people in whatever gender or presentation they find most authentic. You don't have to be attracted to someone to want them to have basic rights, and be happy and comfortable in their skin. I'm also perfectly content to read books that don't reflect my experience or what I personally find attractive. This specific book was very much in Comfort Food territory for me, though, so I approached it from that angle and that colored my reactions. Clear? Excellent.)

#ask #books #queer lit #sapphic lit #I also felt like it might have betrayed an imperfect understanding of why trouser roles and male impersonators were popular back then #there's not SUPPOSED to be a total illusion that the performer is a man. the appeal is in knowing that she's really a woman #some straight men even found such performances titilating because Woman In Trousers (showing off separation of legs!!!)#and for sapphic women it's like how butch women are different from men

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laylaslibrary · 10 months

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Sure, I have time. I always have time for you. Sure, whatever you need. Whatever you need.

-Bear Bergman, Butch is a Noun

#quotes #literature #aesthetic #poetry #books #poem #dark acadamia quotes #dark acamedia #lit #love quotes #timeless #in love #lovers #love #tenderness #love poem #love poetry #bear bergman #butch is a noun

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pretty-lil-ladybug · 4 months

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"If the butch deconstructs gender, the femme constructs gender. She puts together her own special ingredients for what it is to be a "woman," an identity with which she can live and love"

Joan Nestle, The Persistent Desire: A Femme-Butch Reader

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