Persistence: All Ways Butch and Femme by Ivan E. Coyote

Persistence: All Ways Butch and Femme Reviews

• 
  Elizabeth

  I would say about 25% of the essays I really liked, 50% were forgettable, and 25% made me extremely uncomfortable. Things that I loved: reading about different kinds of gender expression and gendered desire. Things I didn't like: oppression Olympics, the who's-more-radical-than-who competition, anyone complaining about "butch flight" or resenting transgender or genderqueer people for abandoning "real butches." Some essays were wonderful.
• 
  Danika at The Lesbrary

  If I could guarantee one thing, it's that at least one entry in this collection will piss you off. There are opinions all over the spectrum in this collection, and there is a lot to be debated. For example: do butch and femme constitute each other, or can you be a butch without a femme and vice versa? Are femmes more privileged by having "passing privilege", or are they invisibilized, or are people just not looking hard enough for femmes? Is the concept of "butch" too tied to whiteness to be used in an antiracist way? Can other sexualities and genders by butch or femme, or only lesbians? Where do butch and femme fit into the trans spectrum, or vice versa, or are they unconnected? It is the trans questions that are particularly divisive. But I think this range is the strength of the collection: it is a good attempt to encapsulate a broad-ranging community that is entirely in flux. And the voices are strong, so even the essays that were actively angering me were still compelling.
  
  
  
• 
  Janine

  This is an anthology of writings on femme, butch, and more. It looks at how these identities have evolved and what they mean to individuals. With an excellent forward by Joan Nestle and two fantastic editors--Zena Sharman and Ivan E Coyote--I was very excited for this anthology. As a young person in Vancouver, Coyote's novels represented an universe I dreamed of accessing. I remembered the euphoria at seeing how my high school librarians loved them. However, it took me this long to finally pick up a Coyote. Or rather, an anthology edited by them.
  
  Coyote's two essays did not disappoint, nor did Sharman's essay. I thoroughly enjoyed others as well. There were some ones that were either chalk full of transphobia or painful liberalism, so I cannot think to rate this above three stars. Despite essays in this anthology contradicting others and some frustrating as hell reads, the beauty of this anthology is not lost on me. I recommend all femmes, butches, bois, and masc-of-centre Canadians read this. While it does include American writers, I do think the experience is enhanced when you are Canadian (as most of the writers are and because it's so lovely to find a Canadian LGBTQ piece of literature). Overall, a satisfying read that taught me a lot and made me reconsider what I know about femme and butch.
• 
  Kat Heatherington

  brilliant anthology. this collection of personal stories is thoughtful, relevant, insightful and frequently powerful. anyone interested in gender studies will find a goldmine of valuable material in this book. my one criticism is the same criticism i have for most gender studies books: where the heck are the bisexuals? in only a small selection of these essays is bisexuality mentioned or addressed. i valued those essays that much more for including us. on the whole, however, this book is incredibly well-written, and covers a wide range of ideas and responses to gender performativity and experience.
• 
  Hil

  it's weird seeing the low ratings for this book based on the pieces from trans-exclusionist lesbians, when i feel like those pieces exist purely to provide the context needed for the clear, concise, and entirely necessary rebuttals that follow. the anxiety and prejudice that make up the former don't hold up once you encounter the warmth and surety of the latter, but you still need to see the journey. terf stuff is anxious and angry and defensive, and it sticks out like a sore thumb. seeing it jar like that matters.
• 
  Rachel

  There were a small handful of essays that I really loved and more that actually made me pretty uncomfortable or angry, like the ones that argued that cis women femmes are "straight-passing" or that butches and femme men are the only people transgressing gender.
• 
  Journey

  with something so heavily theorized, it's nice to get personal narratives; but then, personal narratives can also be just as grating, self-indulgent, and/or obnoxious as theory sometimes. I liked a handful of these essays: Leah Lakshmi Piepzna-Samarasinha is a wonderful, powerful, smart writer; Victoria Brownworth's commentary on how lesbian identities in the mainstream are being so straightwashed, and the forcing of lesbians to be viewed as sexually available to men, is extremely important; I also enjoyed Sasha T. Goldberg's and Chandra Mayor's pieces, and while I wasn't personally drawn to their essays, Amy Fox's and Elizabeth Marston's inclusion are notable.
  
  that said... now there's a whole lot of essays left that I don't like and/or find terrible. There's the inclusion of a self-centered misogynist (who will go unnamed... their essay in the book may not be so grossly misogynist -- I refuse to read it -- but they sure are on their popular blog); the debatable inclusion of people who are not queer women (by which I mean men); blaming feminism for setting back butch identification by the feminist practice of hating all things male/masculine (Ivan Coyote in the introduction, and also Jeanne Cordova in "The New Politics of Butch"); offering these identities up to cis straight people ("Rogue Femininity"); and then there's the bizarre essay where a gay man talks about doing lesbian porn with his bisexual woman friend -- no, you identify as a man, she identifies as a woman, that is not lesbian in any way!
  
  I wish there was a place for people to read the essays individually, because the essays that are good are really good, but I'm not sure that they're good enough to justify buying the whole thing in all its messy undefined glory.
  
  p.s. alright, I'll admit "Hats Off" still gives me butterflies sometimes.
• 
  Jean Roberta

  This thick collection of essays and manifestoes, with some poems, short fiction and brief autobiographies mixed in, is a current report on the diversity of queer gender identities in the twenty-first century. Its title is similar to that of an earlier book, The Persistent Desire: A Femme-Butch Reader, originally published in 1992. Joan Nestle, a legendary femme writer who remembers the early Gay Rights movement, edited the first anthology. As she says in the foreword to the current book:
  
  "When Ivan and Zena told me of their soon-to-be-published collection, which you now hold in your hands, I did not react well."
  
  As she explains, the title seemed too close to that of her own book. However, Nestle eventually calmed down. She came to believe that the current book, like the earlier one, represents a certain zeitgeist:
  
  "The voices of another generation, of other cultural positions, new possibilities of gender discourse, and erotic adventuring are presented here, and these extend in complex ways the passionate and embattled conversation of the now out-of-print Persistent Desire."
  
  The cover image of the current paperback says it all: a drawing of an androgynous-looking brown person of unclear ethnicity seems to be looking into a mirror as s/he applies lipstick (fuschia, slightly darker than the pink background) to her/his full lips. This person is either contemplating her (?) own image or that of the viewer. The artist, Elisha Lim, has said with lines and colour what the other contributors say in many words.
  
  All the pieces in this book are worth reading, but some more than others. Besides Joan Nestle, lesbians of the Old Guard (who were “out” in the era of the Stonewall Riots of 1969) are represented by Jewelle Gomez, Victoria Brownworth and Jeanne Cordova. These voices from a time when butch and femme identities seemed mandatory in most gay/lesbian bars all lament the attempt of the lesbian-feminism of the 1970s/80s to simply erase “sex roles” as relics of patriarchal thinking. They also comment on the “mainstreaming” of the LGBT community in our time, and the effect this has had on gender identity.
  
  In “A Butch Roadmap,” editor Ivan E. Coyote writes movingly of her/his sense of being exiled by the Pride Committee of Winnipeg, when they tried to make Pride Week “family friendly” by banning “extremists,” including drag queens and butch women.
  
  Among the younger contributors, there are quite a few Canadians. This is probably not surprising for a publication from a Canadian press, but it seems unusual for the topic. Zoe Whittall (award-winning novelist who writes about 20-somethings in Toronto) brilliantly contrasts an older (more closeted) butch writer with a younger (more comfortable with Facebook) femme writer on a book tour in a short story, “A Patch of Bright Flowers.” The argument between the two writers serves as foreplay, and they agree not to write about what will happen between them after the hotel-room door closes in the last paragraph.
  
  Another award-winning Toronto writer, Nairne Holtz, writes sensibly about being the femme in a long-term relationship with a lover who is sometimes mistaken for a man. In her essay, “Slide Rules,” she says: “What makes one person butch and another femme in a couple is hard to pin down yet easy to recognize.”
  
  A third award-winning Canadian novelist, Amber Dawn, writes movingly about being both femme and a sex worker in “To All the Butches I Loved Between 1995 and 2005: An Open Letter about Selling Sex, Selling Out, and Soldiering on.”
  
  Jeanne Cordova includes a graph named “A Post-Trans Butch Continuum” after referring to Karl Marx’s comment that technology defines the direction of social change. In her youth, even the most masculine of female-born people could not have defined themselves as transmen because transitioning from female to male via hormones and surgery just wasn’t possible then.
  
  Some of the contributors seem so gender-fluid (including Elaine Miller, who coins the term “futch” for someone who is femme and butch by turns or simultaneously) that the exact meaning of “femme” or “butch” in their conceptual worlds seems unclear, as is their difference from 1970s lesbian-feminists who advocated androgyny for all. Perhaps the difference between old-style androgyny and new-style genderqueerness has to do with acceptance of those whose conception of a “lesbian lifestyle” is different from one’s own.
  
  The “FEMME SHARK MANIFESTO!” (in capital letters) by Leah Lakshmi Piepzna-Samarasinha is a rousing call-to-arms and a definition of fierce, queer femininity: “FEMME SHARKS WILL RECLAIM THE POWER AND DIGNITY OF FEMALENESS BY ANY MEANS NECESSARY. WE’RE GIRLS BLOWN UP, TURNED INSIDE OUT, AND REMIXED.” This piece is notably anti-racist as well as anti-misogynist.
  
  Space does not allow me to do justice to this book. It needs to be read aloud, discussed and debated. It will not be the last word on gender identity in lesbian space, but it seems unlikely to be become outdated any time soon. It covers a very large territory, both geographically and philosophically.
  --------------------------------
  
  
  
• 
  Margaret Adams

  Picked up a copy of this at my friend Dave’s house in Santa Barbara – never met the roommate who it belonged to. A mix of stories, analysis, & stories-as-analysis, some very good, some much less so. The personal is political, etc.
• 
  Iskra Ryder

  fascinating takes on butch and femme as identities
• 
  Gabriel H.

  A rich, broad collection. Some of it's aged poorly, some of it feels exceptionally prescient. Not quite my gender(s) for the most part, but definitely some good folks in the general neighborhood. It's good to know your neighbors, everyone.
  I started listing out favorite pieces but it got long enough that it stopped feeling entirely useful as an endeavor, which is a pretty positive note.
• 
  Alex

  3.5 mostly good but some of the essays were so weird about transness i can’t go higher
  anyway. Women. that is all folks
• 
  Eliot Fiend

  loved it.
  a few words of my greatest appreciation: thanks for helping me learn the names of my ancestors and remember to remember them.
  
  our butch and femme and genderfucked, trans, genderqueer, in-between stories are all too easily silenced and whitewashed over even over a decade, a generation. books like this are important for young queers to read (and without having read it yet, "persistent desire" is now definitely on my reading list for the same reason.)
  
  this book broadened my understanding of butch-ness and femme-ness. i appreciated the diversity of perspectives, and particularly the pleasurable spectrum and storytelling of how butch and femme-ness have shifted in definition over the past few decades.
  it helped me to accept and develop new narratives for understanding the increase of young masculine female-assigned people transitioning, to appreciate the legacy of feminist and lesbian thinking to creating the queer space that exists now, and to understand my own place and political choices in a rapidly evolving gender landscape.
  
  in particular, i loved joan nestle's forward and jeanne cordova's essay, "the new politics of butch." amy fox's "changed sex. grew boobs. started wearing a tie." is a sharp and insightful narrative of transbutch experience which i had not encountered and so appreciated. "me, simone, and dot" by chandra mayor is a highlight among other essays that address generational understanding of gender and the concept of 'failure'--to be a woman, or failure to be a man.
  
  almost as much as i appreciated the essays and stories, the paragraph bios of the many authors reflect a thrilling landscape of organizations, publications, blogs, and connections to the life-long work of these amazing people. i can't imagine being in a room of these authors--i would swoon hard--and getting to be in a room with their work, knowing they're out there, is definitely swoon-worthy.
  
  and of course, the "femme shark manifesto," "baby butch: a love letter from the future," and ivan coyote's "hats off" letter to "all the beautiful, kick-ass, fierce, and full-bodied femmes out there" are the indispensable and so important trani-femme-manifestos that push these stories into calls...for recognition, stepping into our power, for our communities to shape themselves so that we all fit, to stop policing ourselves and each other and find the language and path to move forward in our most powerful and brilliant (and sometimes wild and incoherent) selves.
• 
  j

  
  
  I always like to think about what audience the author had in mind when I’m reading something, whether it be a short story, essay, or full-length novel. While reading this, I struggled with that question.
  
  I identify as a non-binary gay person, “queer” when I’m feeling extra radical, and I identified with a couple of the stories in this, especially the first few (shoutout to “Home/Sickness: Self-Diagnosis” by romham padraig gallacher!) . But as I kept reading, they begun to feel...for lack of a better word, basic. By that I mean that a lot of the pieces started feeling repetitive, and some seemed like they were written for people who had never had a conversation with a lesbian before, butch, femme or otherwise. I started skimming after Ivan E. Coyote’s “A Butch Roadmap”, and by the time I got to Nairine Holtz’s “Slide Rules” I found myself completely skipping a lot of the entries. Apparently, that was for the best, because some of my fellow LGBT goodreaders have noted that some of the essays are a little...dated, to put it mildly, downright problematic to put it extra spicy. Many of the writers, it seems, grew up in the 60s/70s/80s, so are very much products of their time - in other words, I wouldn’t be surprised that some of them have separatist, or outright TERFy rhetoric, but that doesn’t mean I should have to suffer through that when I’m reading a book I was so excited about at first.
  
  This has been in my “want to read” for a while and I finally got it as a gift for the holidays, so I felt like I had to read through the whole thing but, honestly, it was a little meh. When I really enjoy a book, I simply can’t put it down, but trying to get through 310-pages of essays that started feeling interchangeable 1/3 of the way through felt like getting my teeth pulled. Still, I’m giving it three stars because some of the pieces were very good, but some of them couldve been omitted. The “Always Butch and Femme” subtitle implies that we’d be getting a wide variety of engagement with butch and femme identities, but many of the stories, like I said, were very similar. Perhaps this would’ve been a lot better if the book itself, as well as many of the entries, were shorter.
  
  To save anyone reading this some trouble, my faves were:
  “Ride”
  “Coming Back Around to Butch”
  “A Dad Called Mum”
  “Never Be Hungry Again”
  “Home/Sick: Self-Diagnosis”
  “Looking Straight At You”
  “A Butch Roadmap”
  “Femme Shark Manifesto!”
• 
  C.E. G

  3.5 stars. Some of the essays here were fantastic, but mostly I felt like they were written for a different crowd. As you can guess from the title, the essays here talk about butch and femme - being one or both or bouncing between the two. But there wasn't much about being neither, which is something I've been aching to read about. Not the fault of the book, but an explanation for why it wasn't a personal 5-star read.
  
  Still, a lot of good writing, and I appreciated the diversity of voices, even if one or two of them pissed me off for being a little trans- or andro-phobic (ugh, just looked up androphobic, and it means fear of men. but what I mean here is dislike of androgyny, which I felt in Victoria Brownworth's essay). Plus, it's a very Canadian collection, and I like to think I'm very Canadian at heart.
  
  And again, I want a poster of this book cover.
• 
  For Books' Sake

  "At times simplistic, at times sentimental, at times uncomfortable and alienating, despite its flaws overall Persistence makes for fascinating reading. With a contributors’ list featuring authors, performers, artists and activists, there’s a diverse range of identities and experiences represented, from butch pregnancy to femme invisibility to sex work and all sorts that’s inbetween."
  
  (Excerpt from
  review of Persistence: All Ways Butch & Femme at
  For Books' Sake)
• 
  CaseyTheCanadianLesbrarian

  Edited by the impressive team of Ivan E. Coyote and Zena Sharman—an adorable married couple (see photo below)—the collection Persistence: All Ways Butch and Femme (2011) certainly does live up to its name. It’s refreshing to see an anthology reflect a remarkable diversity of perspectives on these two loaded concepts and identities. It’s exactly what you’d expect from the Vancouver-based Ivan—a storyteller and writer—and Zena—a radical government bureaucrat and gender researcher, and from the fantastic queer-friendliest publisher Arsenal Pulp Press.
  
  See the rest of my review at my blog:
  http://caseythecanadianlesbrarian.wor...
• 
  Victoria

  I really liked to read a book that validated femme identity as more than just a choice to wear fabulous clothing. I also appreciated that most of the essays were personal stories as opposed to academic takes on gender theory. The anthology had a number of different voices that took part to create a more textured vision of the butch-femme dynamic. I do appreciate the effort, though it had its flaws.
• 
  Felix

  Some of these were powerful and beautiful and great, and some of these just seemed to valorise (cis women) butch and femme identities at the expense of androgyny, trans* and other queer identities, which was just effing punishing, tbh. There really was a broad spectrum of essays and pieces, though, and many that I really enjoyed reading.
• 
  Pearl

  This hit me like a tonne of bricks, like a comet from out of space, like any other cliche you can think of.
  
  I’ve only recently begun putting effort into my outward appearance regularly. It’s embarrassing to say that my teens traumatised me this thoroughly...but they did. It was a combination of never wanting to be seen to make too much effort (because then the ridicule hurts more right?) and my clumsy understanding of what feminism meant. I spent years in overalls, hair shaved off, no makeup on, mumbling my own little mantra ‘I don’t have to be palatable’
  
  But here’s a thought: maybe I want to be palatable. Not for cis men, but for my own people. Maybe someone who has a nine step skincare routine, who watches the amount of YouTube make up channels I do (for relaxation), and who loves a nice dress could be feminine. Or at least adopt aspects of femininity that appeal to only me. A shorthand of fish-nets, unshaven underarms and dangling pearl earrings meant for no one but other girls. A Dimestore Diamond as The Gossip sings.
  
  The essays in this collection opened my eyes to a whole spectrum of lesbian experience outside of the androgynous cool that surrounds me here in Berlin. Some essays (Laiwan, Ivan Coyote, Leah Lakshmi Piepzna-Samarasinha, Debra Anderson) hit me more than others, but I think there’s something for everyone in here.
  
  Some of these essays will annoy the shit out of you, and that’s good too. Read this book. Something in it is bound to speak to the little sewn up pocket in your soul.
• 
  Amelia

  as other reviews have already stated, this anthology is a mixed bag. naturally, not all of the contributors are a monolith and there is a huge, huge variety of opinions and identity and lived experience contained within these pages. some made me viscerally uncomfortable! some were kind of annoying! and there were many more that made me feel seen, understood, or felt like they helped me see and understand others.
  
  i absolutely recommend this to anyone interested in honestly any kind of queer history, even those who have never identified as lesbians, but especially if you do find yourself in proximinity to the labels of butch or femme then i think you might find some really magical use of language in here.
  
  the main word of caution is to just read it all as an array of different people's viewpoints. there are some heavily transphobic undertones in some of the essays, but also plenty that are extremely vocally trans-inclusive, or by trans writers, so just taking what works for you and leaving what doesn't is probably the best strategy here.
  
  overall really wonderful as a more recent work exploring butch/femme, but read with your critical thinking hat on!
• 
  Joules

  So, I've been looking forward to finally finishing this book since I first bought it sometime last year or the year before. Zena and Ivan are both people I look up to and aspire to be like, and I think I was hoping to find something like home in this book.
  
  Compilation books are kind of a tough read, since you have so many different voices and experiences to read through and digest. Each entry of this book, whether it sat right with you or not, definitely demanded and deserved a special kind of attention. I liked to read a handful of essays before putting the book down for the time being, but that doesn't mean there weren't essays that I just skimmed through. It's a great book regardless, but not every entry is going to check all the boxes.
  
  It is at least worth noting some of my favorites:
  
  1. Looking Straight at You Zena Sharman
  2. Changed Sex. Grew Boobs. Started Wearing a Tie. Amy Fox
  3. Hats Off Ivan Coyote
  
  Anyway, overall a lovely read, and something really eye opening. I'm glad I can finally put it back on the shelf. :]
• 
  Molly Roach

  Sometimes books of essays can be hard to rate. Some of these essays were so good, yet others were hard to stomach. There was a theme of “butch flight” in many of the essays, making them very TERFY. I get that many of these essayist grew up in the 50s-70s, and the idea was to include generational perspectives, but this was just bad.
  I think there were great essays in this collection also. Leah Lackshmi Piepzna-Samarasinha wowed as always. I also very much enjoyed the pieces by B. Cole, Chandra Mayor, Sinclair Sexsmith, & Donnelly Black. Reading Elaine Miller’s piece made me feel so much love and community. Id give half of this collection a 1/5, but the other half a 5/5. Together the entire collection gets a
  3/5⭐️
• 
  Liv

  Several of these essays are excellent! However, it’s a bit dated... I mean... I guess it’s interesting in a way to read that weird perspective some butches and femmes had that non-binary and trans ppl were erasing butch/femme culture. But... eyeroll! Very diverse group of writers in terms of background, ethnicity, gender orientation, age, mental health, (dis)ability. Funny how much focus there was on butch/femme couples. Not much femme 4 femme representation which would have been nice. Read this for a book club and it sparked a lot of good discussion, debate. A good read overall!
• 
  Kirstie

  To anyone looking for a book on how butch and femme has developed over the years,with personal experiences crossing intersectional lines I would say either:
  
  1.Wait for a reprint and hope they remove the TERF crap
  Or
  2. Rip out pages 137-148, that���s what I’m doing
  
  There is a bunch of wonderful trans voices in this book but the inclusion of one “their stealing our butches” toxic take ruined it.
• 
  Ellie

  I don't think I can give this one a rating.... the essays were super hit or miss for me, and I have to admit that I did skip some of them entirely after reading the first few lines. as other reviewers mentioned, some of the topics in these essays were uncomfy in both good ways—pushing me to think critically—and bad—terf-y, weirdly gender essentialist, or just poorly written.
• 
  Emi

  one of the best things i've ever read
  
  as a femme, this book speaks directly to my heart. i've reread it...three times now? and every time i find something new that resonates with me. incredible, amazing, might actually buy a physical copy so i can hug it.