A review by necromanticfemme
Persistence: All Ways Butch and Femme by Ivan Coyote, Zena Sharman
4.0
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!
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!