Butch/Femme by Manuela Soares

Butch/Femme Reviews

• 
  Tzipora

  *dreamy sigh*
  
  I loved this little book that I picked up years ago at a used bookstore. I only wish it were longer and had more actual writing to it because the essays were wonderful and spoke to things that have fallen out of fashion these days but the entire thing speaks to the kind of lesbianism I came of age in, figured my very young self in. Largely online, only to both simultaneously find community and really come into my own femmeness and find that I was of a dying breed.
  
  Every woman should get to be whoever she wants to be and times have changed in so many ways, the language, the acceptance, all of it. And it’s changed rapidly, leaving me feeling rather ancient in “lesbian years”. And while it’s not so unusual at all for kids to come out very young, I was an anomaly in my time. So in many ways I’m also out of step with folks my own age. Suppose it’s good I’ve always been into older women. ;)
  
  I watched a documentary the other day on the last lesbian bars and it gave me a similar wistfulness. There are a lot of things I miss about the way things used to be. Yet there’s an essay in this book, the author came out during the women’s movement, another period when butch and femme were falling out of favor and a time in which femmes were especially disliked. I could relate to that. Being asked what are you. Do you know where you are. Being told you’re not a real lesbian. The irony was always strong to me considering how young and how long I’d been out. How I may still be the most stereotypically femme in appearance in the room yet see countless lesbians debate and stress over how to ask a woman out. Something I have no trouble doing.
  
  And that’s what’s I loved most. How much this little book talked about the interplay of various traits, the first essayist joking about their being one bitch between her and her partner, that they took turns being in control, being strong, each taking over for the other when necessary. That’s what it’s all about to me. What I still so love about being a lesbian, that for all the criticism of the butch/femme dynamic supposedly mirroring heterosexuality that in actual practice it doesn’t at all. That all queer women are constantly bending stereotypes and expectations, shifting and using power in a way that is unique to us. I find younger lesbians who are ignorant of their history or the full depth of the dynamic continually miss what I even mean when I choose to use the label that works for me or I am forced to add modifiers because femme is aesthetic, what makes me feel sexy, how I want to be seen, appreciated and loved, but it doesn’t say what one might assume about the role I take in a relationship or in the bedroom. But then as the essays in this book so appreciate and describe, it was never that simple to begin with. And I don’t know. Sometimes I wonder how any of the younger lesbians who are lacking in physical spaces to meet and who are so averse you’re many labels ever really get to know who they are without those things. But far be it for me to judge.
  
  All I know is even if I’m one of the last of my kind I’m glad I came out/grew up when I did. That I got to experience a few bars even if I didn’t always feel welcome in them, before they all closed down. And reading this book felt so beautifully familiar and special to me and spoke to things that I think, feel, and know. In the language I learned it. I’m glad we don’t have to hide anymore. Glad we can marry. Glad the trans community is vibrantly making themselves heard as well. Certainly I wouldn’t want any of that to change. But this is the language I grew up and came out with and that speaks to me lesbian experiences and desires. I could point to a woman in this book that is exactly my type and another who is rather like me. And it feels damn good to see yourself somewhere. Five stars for giving me that, but I wish it was ten times longer. So I’ll just be over here sighing and smiling about how deeply this little book spoke to my heart, my identity, my desires.
• 
  Leona

  Little cheek of a book. It's basically a couple of essays that don't go anywhere. Not worth it.
• 
  Freyja Vanadis

  A tiny little book that cost $12 and change back in the mid 1990s - nice pictures and thoughts, but definitely not worth that much.