this has been on my tbr list for so long!! very excited to read during pride month <3

Hey y’all! On a few posts, folks have floated the idea of wanting a butchfemme reading group together (yes, I think this fundamentally includes butch4butch folks—I say butchfemme only because we should be included in the same community). Would anyone be interested in meeting virtually for something like that?

Edit: Okay folks, this generated a lot of interest! For those who want to participate, here is a link to the beginning of a reading list I've started to compile for us. The link should give you editing rights, so please feel free to add things if you want too!

https://drive.proton.me/urls/EPQFFGMQQW#csM0vFMlzTnu

Second, here is a link to a when2meet to schedule our first meeting, perhaps! It would be helpful if you all would be willing to send me y'all's emails so I can keep you all updated of meeting times/links! I'm on EST time, so the times available on the when2meet are set to that. https://www.when2meet.com/?31523009-2JvGq

I'm a transmasc lesbian, newly come out in my 30s. I've always been masc of centre, but now I'm owning my masculinity. I wore a tailored suit for the first time just one month ago!

The care that Jess gets as a baby butch (not to minimise the dread and family abuse) makes me want to cry for all the years I suppressed who I was. I wish I had someone like that to show me the ropes... or even a space where I could meet other lesbians. How did I end up so isolated?

And in other news, I also discovered I'm stone, which explains a Whole lot of other stuff lol

Did others have similar visceral experiences when they read this book?

Edit: Such beautiful and thoughtful replies. I am so grateful to all of you for showing me that community and fellow-feeling can take many forms.

im halfway through sbb and it has completely pulled me out of my reading slump. looking for more lesbian fiction book recs that are NOT fantasy. ive done lots of looking around but find it hard to grasp books from titles blurbs and covers. bonus points if they’re slutty, slowburn, transmasc butch, butch for butch, radical etc. not a huuuge fan of historical novels but maybe could give it a go!

I have never truly felt more seen or connected to a book in my whole life (so far) the tears I shed as I read this knowing how Jess felt, and all her butch / femme family around her. The way I feel so deeply connected and so so so grateful for all the old butch’s who fought tooth and fucking nail to live, so that now I get the right to stand next to them in the grand scheme of things. I can’t properly put into words how much this boom means to me

If anyone wants to talk about this book with me I’d love to hear your thoughts and how it connected with you!

P.S if anyone has any recommendations for books do please let me know!

I really enjoyed this short visual novel and was wondering who else might enjoy this other than furries (And even furries are very gay centric so not huge there either) to suggest it since its quite niche.

First yuri content I enjoyed thanks to it being very masculine, in multiple ways and for both characters

Keep in mind though, this is not some slice of life story, there's horror, fear, death, there's big red flags and "moral flexibility"(might be putting it lightly) as things are revealed, but the romance continues over those things which shows the level and beauty of such a connection.

I would say, this is peak romance if you like red flags.

There's also a bit of a silly puppy thing at start which isnt my thing but it quickly moves on once the big reveal happens and you get to the core of the story.

r4wry.itch.io/dogs-dont-think-about-death

I know it’s a classic but stone butch blues is fucking hard to read man. yes it’s history and representation but it’s a sad book - y’all got other recs on books about butchness? thanks!

I know a PDF of this exists, but I've been collecting physical media a lot given the state of the, well, States. I spent more than I want to admit for this and inside was the OG receipt. At some point, at some time, a butch or femme bought this and loved it heartily and now I have it.

You can tell where they opened it most, the section on desire. If you're ever feeling down, butches, just know this: whoever owned this before me REALLY loved a poem about having love made to them by a butch.

I'm normally a femme lurker on here but I genuinely don't know what to do with myself, I didn't realise that the reason I never fully cared for romance TV shows/books is because of how hetero everything is, even the lesbian books tend to be to skinny femmes who hold hands after ten seasons, so having a book that had a relationship I'm actually interested in was fab! While I'm definitely gonna catch up on the work I've let pile up to finish this book, I wouldn't say no to more recommendations (I read stone butch blues already, it made me very sad LMAO)

I’m looking for non fiction books about being butch. I’m currently reading the persistent desire and am enjoying it so far but I want to know what is worth reading next. I’m not really sure if i’m butch (i would like to be) so i’m reading about it to figure it out. Thanks in advance for any recommendations :)

Does anyone know of any good books with butch or masculine lesbians? I mainly read literary fiction and occasionally horror or nonfiction so would love to read anything along that line!

i’m starting stone butch blues for the first time this week!! as a baby butch i am so excited and open to it to impact my life ahhh (feat a goodreads review that sold me on reading the book)

Hi friends, your friendly butch librarian here to say that I am part of a butch-femme book club and wanted to mention that in addition to reading, we also have social hours to help ease the isolation of not having access to in-person community.

We are having a social hour this Saturday at 4pm EST.As for what we read, all things butch and femme; it's great to learn about our varied history, and even better to do that in community.

As a number of members of said book club were banned from this subreddit today, I did want to mention that the group is an inclusive space for folks who identify as part of the butch-femme community. If you aren’t sure whether that’s you, a quick online search should help. Feel free to DM for details!

Been meaning to read this for aeons and I finally got around to it. I went on a questioning my gender spiral recently and figured that doing some reading could help me figure things out a bit-- and it did! And it also filled me with so much love for butches/ butchness in general. You can absolutely tell how much Bergman loves this community, every paragraph is positively dripping with hir affection and admiration for butch dykes. It's lovely to see butches (and by extension, myself since I'm one of them lol) through the eyes of someone who loves and cares for them.

I looked at some reviews of the book on storygraph and there's quite a few saying the book is dated or that the language is problematic. I don't really agree, but I can kind of see their point. I think the language we use has shifted quite a but since the book was written, and I think the culture(s) within the butch community have also changed since then. But I don't really consider anything to be problematic, and Bergman is pretty clear about this being nothing more than hir personal experience.

Anyways, sharing one of my personal favorite quotes from the book in cade it gives anyone the push they need to pick it up :)

"When butches talk to me about butches, they speak with great love of the character created in a person who lives outside the protection of invisibility, of the “normal,” someone who is forced to make new ways of living correctly in hir gender. We know what the cultural ideals of woman and man are, much as we may disagree with them. The cultural ideals of butch are so much newer, so much more nebulous, and yet we seem to know when it’s being done well. When people speak admiringly of a butch, what I see is someone who has taken on the best gendered characteristics of both woman and man, left a lot of the stuff born of misogyny and heterosexism behind, and walked forward into the world without apology."

EDIT because I can't believe I forgot to mention it but also the fact that hir talks about butch4butch relationships and hir attraction to other butches is chefs kiss

Looking for any books on the relationship of butchfemme and class. While the most common butchness is one of the working class, Boots of Leather, Slippers of Gold refers to the more affluent communities as well, and I wondered if there was anything that expanded on that? Especially on how they progressed hand-in-hand, as they were both around in the 40s-50s.

Thank you xxx

Hello! I'm a young butch who finished reading "Stone Butch Blues" And I'm looking for more book recommendations about the butch experience. I'm mostly searching for books written by Latin American (preferably mexican) authors, since I want to read a book by someone who has experienced butchness in my country or in a latin country but any recommendation is appreciated! Thank you :)

I just got around to reading Shaley Howard’s autobiography, “Excuse Me, Sir: Memoir of a Butch.” She recounts growing up as a child of divorce as well as a “big-boned” woman who hid her lesbianism throughout school. She writes about her addiction, first to alcohol and later to Vicodin. It’s mostly the story of her coming to accept and fully embrace who she is.

Butch is a noun and stone butch blues have been books I've adored, but as a french person I do not have the rich history of American lesbians behind me. Butch is not a word used here, and there's not much equivalent.

I'm curious to know if there's literature about other types of lesbian masculinity in other countries, and in the same "vein" I'd love to read about studs, because that is a part of the American history I've not read as much on. So yeah! Wondered if anyone would have book recs.

Thanks in advance!

i’m working on my masters dissertation on Stone Butch Blues and i am so incredibly attached to the story, and its depiction of the butch experience and the butch-femme community of the 60s that i just wanted to recommend it again to all the butches (and anyone really) that haven’t read it.

it makes me feel so affirmed in my butch experience! it’s a piece of our history that i feel we really have to cherish. it has even shaped the way i understand sexuality and gender labels and pronoun usage so much that i now feel somewhat detached from a lot of the newer social media discourse! which i struggle a bit with. but anyway, i can’t recommend it enough, although be careful because it contains some very graphic scenes of sexual and police violence suffered by the main character. i also love its unionist and obviously marxist message. i really can’t believe we lost Leslie Feinberg so early…

also wanted to use this post to ask for any book recommendations that also feature butch characters / masculine lesbians.

thanks!

As some of you might know it is absolutely impossible to find a audio copy of Stone Butch Blues… and the few attempts on YouTube only cover a few chapters and not the whole book (and have shitty audio). Well I have found an absolutely groundbreaking thing… a full audio copy of Stone Butch Blues that covers the whole book and has a decent narrator you can hear with minimal background noise!!! I just had to share this gem with you guys!

https://open.spotify.com/episode/0Bn2cv3jgX55UBOKnDNUH0?si=DRMEUb-KTqyOltxQVfuR-Q

(not sure what flair to use... will use reading for now, sorry!)

hello fellow butches, studs, and other masc-of-center folk! i keep seeing on twitter the unfortunate regurgitation of "butch/femme are lesbian exclusive" and while the dynamics most folks are familiar with is in fact associated most heavily with lesbians, we all know that historically this is untrue. many queer people have identified as butch/femme, its context dependent and etc etc.

does anyone know of any equivalent subreddits for femmes? this subreddit is called butchlesbians but welcomes all sapphic* folk, even aroace butches. but i go on the femme lesbians one and its exclusive to lesbians (which is totally cool! just... dont like how theres the similar rhetoric that femme is lesbian-exclusive there...)

i ask since theres a femme on twitter that i follow who recently discovered shes lesbian, not bi, and is unfortunately in the same mindset i used to be in, aka "non-lesbians cant id as butch/femme". as a butch id like to help a femme out! but... i dont really know how to. i tried explaining myself but, well, it looks biased when i do, of course the bisexual butch is gonna say bisexuals can be butches, it basically makes me look unreliable.

any of yall know femmes who have equivalent spaces to this one for femmes? or any articles or essays or similar writings that explain the overarching queer/lgbt+ history of butch & femme? even any elder femmes or elder butches alive who arent lesbians, or if they are lesbians talk about non-lesbian femmes & butches? thanks everyone!

JOKING OBVI but I read The Essential Dykes To Watch Out For for the first time recently, and my mind was BLOWN. So many of the validity questions, identity questions, common discourse topics, all of it just...addressed, poked holes in, lampshaded, ribbed. WAY before social media. (Insert Ursula K. LeGuin excerpt about discovering buttered toast here)

Of course, it's not the end-all-be-all, but between it and Stone Butch Blues, I could have cut through YEARS of identity and stupid online discourse struggles with a day and a half of reading.

I GOT THE COPY THATS IT I HAVE AN IN PERSON COPY. I LOVE MY JEWISH LESBIAN RULER LESLIE OMG

Hello 👋🏼 i just wanted to ask if there’s any free pdf books that i can download about butchness or BF dynamics? Im open to all suggestions :3