The Lesbian Take
Lesbians (homosexual women) are facing a virulent new strain of modern homophobia, and the bitter irony is that it’s not coming from our old adversaries, but from people loudly proclaiming themselves our allies. Lesbian erasure is spreading like wildfire, and we will go extinct if we do not act. Now, more than ever, it is important for lesbians to take a stand, making and promoting content that is for us by us. On this podcast, we say what many lesbians know but are terrified of voicing. Our aim is to address lesbian issues and subjects that matter to us.
The Lesbian Take
The Butch Extinction is a Rebrand Lesbians Reject
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We're chatting with Stone Butch Disco about the "Butch Extinction" that is devastating femmes around the world. On this episode, we break down how lesbian language keeps getting diluted, misused and rebranded, and we discuss how sexuality remains the core of butch identity.
Read Stone Butch Disco's Article: Keep my name out of your mouth, queers who would draw this
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Read MC's Substack essay: I wasn’t born in the wrong body, but the world keeps telling me I am
Want lesbian fiction? Check out MC's Books
Stonebutch Disco is a lesbian feminist project featuring critical commentary, essays, and podcast episodes focused on lesbian issues and culture. I reached out to Rachel and Catherine after I read an article published by Stonebutch Disco that dives into the Butch Extinction, which, you know, if you follow me on TikTok, you know I've been bitching about this forever. And so I think that this episode is going to be super insightful and interesting. I just want to say thank you so much, Rachel and Catherine, for joining me today.
SPEAKER_00Thank you for having us. I was like really stoked to get the invitation because I'd been watching some of your stuff on Substack, and I was like, I think we're really aligned. And turns out from the chat that we just had before before time to record, like we definitely are.
SPEAKER_02Yeah, it's so great to be here. Like, same, I saw like a couple of your episodes, like as like you started this like new chapter in the podcast, and definitely a lot to discuss. Yeah.
SPEAKER_01Yeah. I like Substack because I don't go viral. That's why that's why I had one video that like went like super viral on TikTok, like over like 1.5 mil or something, and I freaked out. I was like, no, some people want to go viral. I don't. I'm I want more quiet, like community that slowly builds of like-minded people. So oh my god, yeah, but I am super, super stoked to have, you know, met and chatted with guys and have you on the podcast. Like, you've no idea. But let me jump right into the questions. One of the big reasons I wanted you on today is to talk about what I'm calling the butch extinction. I've got my theories about how we got here, but I'm really interested in hearing yours.
SPEAKER_00So I I I actually think it's good to start with the word extinction and to talk about what what it means or what it what it could mean to see a reduction of the word butch in society. Like it because extinction does imply maybe something that it something that's happening in at least discourse, but may not be happening on the ground, on the plane of reality. So like when we think of extinction of animals, it's like they're actually dying. I don't think that that's what ha what's happening to butches. I think that the, and this is something that I've been kind of trying to theorize since my like nerd days. And actually the website, stonebuchisco.com, still has a bunch of like essays where I was trying to talk about what's happening to words, is that our words are being co-opted. And that feels like a disappearance, but the same, the motor of like lesbian attraction and sexuality that is Butch femme and Butch identity is still there under the surface. It's kind of been so to me, when we talk about extinction, it is a it is an illusion of extinction, I think. And I think that like that's coming from things that people are doing to edit themselves, to edit their bodies, to edit their language. I think editing is a way to think about it. But it's not going to change the fundamental existence of butch femme sexuality. It simply won't. We're just seeing a lot of people who are turning away from the reality of it, who continue to deny that it's like a female experience, our our sexuality specifically, um, who want to relabel it as male, as queer, as trans. And there is simply no reason in built into the world to have to do that. But we're seeing the extinction as people try to try to erase the aspects of themselves that are proudly female. I guess that's kind of how I would diagnose the extinction.
SPEAKER_01Do you have anything to add, Catherine?
SPEAKER_02Well, I I I think Rachel said it really well. Like I kind of shy away from describing it like that, just because I think that the underlying structure of of Butch Femme sort of like just like it's part of humanity, in in my opinion. And maybe like people can people can avoid saying it, people can call it different things, um, people can tr you can try to like pretend that you're like a man and a woman, um, or you can pretend that like one of you is not masculine. Like there's all these different ways, but it's just going to happen, sort of regardless. And and the only thing is is the is the discursive erasure that that is happening. And it's it's really harmful because it's really like putting people down paths, like where it's really corrosive for both butches and femmes to sort of exist in a world where there isn't space for that kind of sexual expression. I think like to the extent that there's hopelessness around that, that's when you have people turning like either to like drugs and alcohol or to like other drugs that doctors give them to change them, like like transitioning, like that kind of thing. Like that's what what causes like the communal problems are caused are are caused by the discursive erasure. But the underlying thing itself, I I don't think it's possible to extinct it without like, I don't know, like I'm not even sure genocide would be true. I think it's like you'd have to get rid of like every human being on earth and make it so there's like no more female humans ever in order to really like yeah, so for there'd be butch extinction, like that it would just always like it just always would emerge. It's like part of it's part of humanity.
SPEAKER_01So it's not so what I'm hearing is that it's not so much of an extinction of like the sexuality itself, but uh linguistic editing that gives the perception that we're extinct.
SPEAKER_00Uh that's kind of how I feel. And all that it does is set us back, and all that it does is make it difficult for us to communicate about our bodies. Like this is something that I that I wanted to check with him, see we could talk about before we hopped into the pod. But we always, and this is it's also what makes it uncomfortable is you have to go immediately to sex and sexuality. You have to talk about what's happening on the level of the body because the thing that you'll never be able to erase is the fact that some female people want to have the kind of sexual experience that we want to have. And we've all called it stone. We all have an identical definition of stone, the three of us. And it's it's like it people associate stone with trauma, with sexual assault, and it's because they're not gonna grant to female humans the ability to have like variance and diversity within femaleness. Like, but some of us prefer a sexual experience that is associated with like we we call it proceptive outward, like investment in energy. Like we we like want to be doing all of the action that is outward away from our body, and that is what actually makes us have orgasms. Some some female humans are like that. Some female humans are either neutral or slightly negative, or it feels clinical to receive penetrative attention on our bodies. And what has never been permitted, even though it's actually like documented in the historical record, is for that to just be a legit fucking thing that like that actually, and this is what lesbians discovered together, it's incredibly compatible to find a woman who like matches with you because you feel this outward thing that is modally associated with men, and she feels this inward thing that is modally associated with with women. And instead of just granting that women can have that variance and diversity, the whole world needs to redefine it, relabel it, re-whatever, because and we all know the only the only group of people that cannot be shown in Hollywood movies are us. We're it's just too threatening. Like every single one of me, I have a rant about this in text somewhere. Every single one of me in any A24 movie is like a is like a they them or non-binary or like somehow like erasing the fact that they're female. And that shit ain't hot. That that's not hot. But the the the reason that it's on television is because that's what's easier to talk about.
SPEAKER_03It's easier to talk about and it's not sexual.
SPEAKER_00It's like it's like it's like the person is pitiable. Yes. They're never gonna be, and that's what men need to hear is that they're we're never, we're always gonna be wannabes, we're never gonna be our own thing. And that is so aligned with patriarchy and man worshipping queer women and all the by we were talking about like people who claim that they're that they're bi when we all know that eventually you choose a life. Are you choosing a life with a man or a woman? That's not a that's not a coin flip for anyone. Like, go ahead and make your call and stop lying. And if you're obsessed with men, don't bring that shit into a lesbian arena. Like we are our own people.
SPEAKER_01Yeah, I I get that. Yeah, so stone is so legitimate, and I think this is why it's like so important that you know. I I have an article that maybe I'll like share with you after I wrote an article that uh is about I wasn't born in the wrong body, but the world keeps telling me that I am. And it's basically about how Sarah Waters saved my life. I don't know if you you read uh Tipping the Velvet. Okay, I know it.
SPEAKER_00I haven't read the whole thing, but yeah.
SPEAKER_01I read that book when I was 18 and I think that maybe if I didn't read that book, I would have been captured. Like like captured by this ideology because I read that book and the message that came out of that for me was masculine women can be coveted. Like they are they are the creme de la creme and they are wanted and they are desirable. That is what uh the um like a key message I took away from that book. And after I read that book, I was like, I want to be a hot masculine woman. Yes, like nothing else. So I do recommend that book. It changed my life, and I think all young lesbians should read it because it is about you know, there is a butch femme pairing in it, and it's it's wonderful, like it's a really good book. So I've personally aligned more with Butch than Stud growing up. I think it has to do with some insecurities about like maybe not feeling black enough, like to be honest, because I am a mixed race, uh, but we're not gonna get into that today. Uh for me, and and we sort of spoke about this a little earlier about like we're we're maybe a little aligned about what stone is. We're probably a little not as aligned on Butch, but for me, butch is a lesbian category that's completely intertwined with womanhood. Like I don't think it can be separated. I see it as an experience where masculinity comes very naturally. Like it's not a performance, it's not an aesthetic, but simply the way I move throughout the world and how the world and people perceive me. Uh, so for most of my life, including right now, I've been mistaken for the opposite sex, and that's not something that I tried to do on purpose. It just is. And because of that, I also never really had a closet, you know? People knew I was gay before I even had the words for that. Because I was visibly different from a very young age. And because of that, I also had to develop a tougher exterior just so that I could make it throughout the day and not be teased. Like in some respects, even I was the bully so I wouldn't be bullied. And, you know, looking back, I'm like, oh well, that was a shame. I I I wish I that wasn't the case, you know. But for me, Butch, it really shaped me early on. And I think that uh looking back, there's some things I wish could have been different, but I think it was a very beautiful experience. And so, you know, I right now in my 30s, I love being a masculine woman. And so I'm just really curious, Rachel and Catherine, what does butch mean for you? Catherine, you want to take it first or yeah.
SPEAKER_02So for me, the the starting point of the identity is really that sexual exchange with femmes. I see like the the external masculinity is sort of like is sort of secondary. Like it's a tool that's really useful to communicate like how I connect on that level. And it has far-reaching like sort of personality impacts in that like that sort of like outward direction, like also really connects to sort of um how I feel when I'm when I get upset. Like it's often like it's often very like outward focused, just very different from from most of the like more feminine partners that I have. So I think that that's kind of that's the starting point is really the the place in that exchange. In terms of how I see, I'm I'm not African-American, but like I do, like living in Israel, like we don't in general, like people who are like who can read English well, like know about like people who who are lesbianly educated and have decent English, like know about Butch Femme and will like use those words and understand them. But if you're going on a dating app, there's other like language, usually people say like tomboy, like just with a Hebrew accent, basically, or they'll write like masculine, or they just write feminine in in Hebrew to refer to like Butch Femme. And I really find like there's terms for this in like every culture. Like I've talked to so many lesbians from like all over the world and like from so many different backgrounds. And I think that ultimately, like butch femme are the words that we use like in academia to speak about this exchange. I feel grounded in in butch as the term only because like the largest amount of literature talking about this experience is under that, is under that term. And same with femme, like same with femme in terms of describing this dynamic. Like if it was the terms are almost immaterial to me. And I do like think that it's useful, like especially in contexts like the US and Canada, to talk about like studs as like a separate thing. But I think that that like stud femme would like denotate like the African American lesbian community. But everyone understands fundamentally that they're talking about like the same thing because it's not it's not an aesthetic thing. It's it's culturally expressed, but it doesn't come from culture. It's like it's like prior to that. It's like it's a it's a lesbian structure that's like part of that's like really part of our humanity and womanhood.
SPEAKER_01Yeah.
SPEAKER_02The way it arises.
SPEAKER_00Yeah. I mean, I agree with all of that. We've we obviously work together and have written a lot on this stuff. So we we have similar perspectives on what on what butch is, and that, and I do think it's like really, really key. You know, most of the internet hate that I've received that isn't you should die for XYZ reason is from people who were like, and those people are just like you should die because you think female bodies are real. Like that's what I'm talking about. There, like there are those crazy motherfuckers, but then there's also like people who were like, How dare you use the word butch and only mean this thing that emerges between butches and femmes? And I'm like, I don't know what you're saying. Like to me, the de it is a sexuality. Like I wouldn't, I wouldn't have come up out of the ground. Sorry, that's not how I was born. I wouldn't have like sprouted into humanity. Yeah. That was like the weirdest thing to say. But I wouldn't have to be. I know it's kind of biblical. I think it kind of works. I wouldn't have naturally on my own, without an interest in other women, labeled myself a butch, right? Like it's within a lesbian context that this term even comes to have meaning.
SPEAKER_02Well, they always say, like, they're like, it's a lesbian culture. Like, none of those people kind of have problems about this are are denying that it's a lesbian cultural term. So it's like, if it's not aesthetic and it's not, you can't say it's related to specific sexual experience, then what is it exactly? Why can't lesbians use it? Just because you want to be in the cool kids club? Yeah. Like, well, there's all these people.
SPEAKER_00That's what our article, keep my name out of your mouth, that line of quite of criticism is we're we're saying that because so many people are using the term butch to describe essentially alienation from their female body as an ontological category that they think they just they think that's what that is. I'm like, how dare you? First of all, that's not even close to what the meaning of it is for people who actually use this word to find our partners. Like, what the hell are you doing?
SPEAKER_02And but also, but also alienation from feminine women. That's all it's really important. That's profoundly so I'm saying that I'm saying that intentionally to include like women and like fem feminine lesbians and also other feminine women, because it's it's all important.
SPEAKER_00And to me, it seems like a misread of it's I I just hate. I wish that I could like physically gatekeep this. That's what I say at the beginning of that article. I because everybody's like, stop gatekeeping. No, get the fuck out. Lesbians need to gatekeep.
SPEAKER_01I'm like, I'm so pro-gatekeeping. I'm like, honestly, we need a test. We need a test. You need to be uh we we need to do a lie detector thing.
SPEAKER_00But it's like, it's I think that I think that it's a misread. These these people who do hate us, who hate butch women who bring to the internet confidence, they hate us so much because they misread in our description of our sexuality. That's where they see dysphoria. They think that if they want to fuck with a strap, they're broken. And for us, it's like, no, that's exactly why we're hot as women. But they're like, no, you do the same thing, but you're they're trying to convince us that we're broken. Well, a lot of people sorry.
SPEAKER_02Maybe I don't know if we'll want to keep this in. Keep this in. I think a lot of them, like, there's a difference between like wanting to fuck with a strap because you really want to give that, you really want you want the physical experience, you want to give that to another woman. And then there are people who are doing it because they want to have a dick. It's not the same. Yeah, it's not the same.
SPEAKER_01I think they're kind of the same because I I would really love to have a dick. And I just also I don't know, like just like the thought of me penetrating somebody for me, that is the hottest thing in the world.
SPEAKER_02Yes. That is what I don't want to be a man.
SPEAKER_01Like, you know, like, but I don't know. Like, if if there was like a little pill that I could take, like right now, and I could be a man just to feel it, like for like an hour, I think that would be really cool. But now I love being a woman, right? Like I it took years of me to to sort of disentangle my my internalized misogyny. I don't want to be a man, but I would love to know what it feels like. Like I would love to.
SPEAKER_00Haven't like Greek philosophers written about both men and women would love for like one minute to feel what the other person can feel, but that's not like I've I've thought and written about this this like difference for me between wanting to penetrate with wanting to give an experience, as Catherine was saying. Yeah. And be part of that experience. Like that social element of it, like if it wasn't for another woman, I would not be interested in just wearing or or having any implement like that. It is true for sexuality.
SPEAKER_02Would you want here's here's a good one. Would you want to have like a flaccid dick in your pants? No. I would exactly. Yeah. So likely. And there are women who want that. Like, and that's what they're getting. That's what that's what's they're like, oh, like I'm like that's like the the butch thing to them. It's like this, it's this aspirational maleness. Like for us, it's like we we want like this, like like I'm speaking to me and Rachel, and you can include yourself in this, of course, like if you if you identify with it. I'm not making that call for call for you, but like we want the tool. We want the tool and like the the proprioception, like the uh the feeling that it's an extension of our body for that time, which for which for us, like is it naturally happens. It's yeah.
SPEAKER_00Well, I'm I need it to be temporary. And for me, it's like really like I call it the lock. Like if you look at the sex ed page on the Stoneboard Disco website.
SPEAKER_02That's great language for this, Rachel. Yeah.
SPEAKER_00Like when you when you accomplish the lock between the strap and like the clit, it feels like an extension in the way that I need temporarily, and then I can get rid of it. Here's what I would never trade. Women have better orgasms. I have better orgasms than men do. Um, I can have more of them. I like the way that my clit functions. I don't want to change anything about the way that I am built in a in a permanent sense. That's what I would never give. Like there is a curiosity around, okay, how how different would it be to feel like an actual penis on me versus the strap? But I am perfectly happy with the way that the strap, like the texture of the strap, helps me feel. I call it like like butch sonar, like a bat, helps me feel the inside of my partner. That's enough for me because I can feel her responding to it. I can feel where it gets like this is so TMI, but I don't care. Um, like I can feel where it gets like caught, like in like, you know, like the when she gets a little tight tighter. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. That's that's plenty. That's plenty for me. And I and I wouldn't trade the good things about being a woman for pretending to have a dick. Also, so much of I guess I'm calling it pretending, but for the for the idea of like wearing a flaccid one or whatever, like I don't want that. It's not a I don't need the performative aspect of of whatever that is.
SPEAKER_02And there's not also there's not like a longing for like the idea of like, like, yeah, I think that like, you know, just in in the reality of human sex difference, there's like a curiosity of like, what if I was the other type of human? Like, yeah. But that's separate from like, like, I really think that also like part of it is like, this is like my pet issue. And maybe one day I'll do something about this. The dildo market has gone to shit in the last 10 years. Like anything, like Rachel and I are big proponents of dildos with a flat back and big ass balls because they give you feedback when you thrust. I'm sorry if this is more explicit than you typically have. It's fine. But um, but it is so like there was like one model, there were there were two models of this that were easily available, and one of them has been out of stock for six months. So I'm like, like, there's pretty much if you go to like Vic Skin still has good stuff, but there's like no other options. There used to be like entire the entire company that made like amazing ones like this. And of course, they went out of business like like six months after I turned 18, and I learned about them when I was 19. So I totally missed the boat on that one. And like now I'm like asking myself, I'm like, do I need to freaking like get like I've like done all the research, I'm probably gonna start making dildos because I just don't even know like what to do. And the mark the direction the market's going in now, like anything that will Wasn't closed or bought out by private equity.
SPEAKER_01Yeah.
SPEAKER_02All of the individual manufacturers are going to like this weird postmodern, like alien shit, like fantasy shit.
SPEAKER_01Or like bad dragon.
SPEAKER_02Yeah. Like everything's a bad dragon clone. Yeah. Yeah. They're going hyper realistic. And like for me, I don't like skin color, veins, I'm all here for it. I do not need it to be like painted. I don't want that. Like there's a certain point where there's a certain point where it's like it's like not, it's not hot anymore. And it's not like, I mean, for me, like what it looks like isn't that important. Like, if that was all that was available, whatever. But I'm like, I'm like, I have to do something about this. So anyway, so we'll just go dildo.
SPEAKER_01Have you heard of Wet for Her? Because like I was about to buy something from them. Are they good? They they carry some of the ones that we like support.
SPEAKER_00Like we, I, I which one of you?
SPEAKER_02We have a sex ed page. Well, we can give you the password and you're you know what I would love.
SPEAKER_01This is what I would love. Because I have I have a maybe I'm being a little TMI. Go for it. I love the satisfiers. Like a vibrator doesn't work for me. I like the satisfiers that do like the little if we could get like a strap harness that does that that is part satisfier, and then it can you could put your your dildo in it, that would be the joy of my dreams.
SPEAKER_00Well it's that would that's something that needs to exist. I'm just like, how do we live in a world where the whole universe still doesn't know that women get off on penetrating each other? Like that we can have an orgasm from it. People are still surprised when I tell them that when that when I like strap somebody, I come. I'm like, how? Like, how are we the last frontier of anybody understanding what the fuck is going on? Like the amount of women that I've been with who were like, oh my God, you can do that. And just so happy to find it. Words get me off.
SPEAKER_02You finish and they're like, they're like, was that enough for you? And I'm like, what do you mean was that enough for me? I gave like more than you did.
SPEAKER_01Like words get me off. How are you? Words are like if if if if I am so into a woman and she is like giving me verbal feedback and saying certain things, like I feel things, like you know what I mean. Like even if I'm at like a bar, like I I was telling my friend once, like we were at a I was like, have you ever just like been so turned on by someone that you can't pee, even though you have to pee? And it's like you come a little when you have to pee because you're just so is that TMI? No, but like that's what I'm trying to say.
SPEAKER_00Like no, it's real, like it's all it's all part of like actual our female real sexuality, and like people just don't fucking talk about it. And but if but if if the young uns knew that they could it just exist without editing their bodies or their language or their whole fucking life, and without editing feminine women out of their world, which is what's the other thing that's happening that Catherine mentioned, like that they would be okay. Like the kids would be all right if they knew that this was a way to be gay, which is why we just started talking about it.
SPEAKER_02And it when I was like, when I was really young, I I didn't even think like I didn't go to to lesbian first because there was nothing like there was nothing stimulating in the like you know tumbler aesthetic of like two women like in white, white wedding dresses, like cottage core. Like to me, that was like when there were other terms and other things that like female homosexuality was operating under that were like actually had like some amount of exchange going on and not just like posing next to each other in an aesthetic way. It took a long time through my teen years to like get myself out of that and then like really get down to the to the bones. And I can only imagine it's so much worse now.
SPEAKER_01Like I didn't have there was no short form video social media when I was I guess it was Vine, but that last I actually think the short form video and all the social media is making things worse. Like, I think people need to get off the internet and go read a fucking book, but maybe not Stone Butch Blues, because I partly blame Leslie Feinberg for a lot of this bullshit because she has a lot of stupid ideas, and people think because she wrote a book that she knows whatever the fuck she's talking about, and she does I'm working on a piece about this right now because I read it really young, but we've talked about it a lot on the podcast.
SPEAKER_00Well, obviously, like the reason I named like I I always feel the need to like explain why I named the project Stone Butch Disco, it's because it's because Stone Busch Blues fucking sucks and it should be a disco and we should be happy, and it's also because I I figured that would get the people who read Stone Butch Blues get their attention so that we could talk to them because a lot of people believe that that picture of misery is what it means to be a butch, and you know, that's why like I didn't even finish it.
SPEAKER_01Like I I probably read most of it and then was and then I was like, I've had enough. I actually got to the point where I was like Pardon? Do you know the ending? I'm gonna go. No, I got I got to the part where I can't well it this was like maybe even two decades, like a very long time. This was one of the after I read Tipping the Velvet by Sarah Waters, which is a huge difference, very different, but I I was looking for a lot of lesbian uh media and uh I came across Stonebush Blues and it just was trauma porn and I was like if I was in the mood I would finish it, but I wasn't in the mood for for trauma porn right there. I was looking for I think I was looking for romance. Like that's what I actually wanted. I wanted lesbian romance and that's not what it was, and then now 15 years later I'm just like fuck you, Les Leslie. Everybody thinks that we have trauma, and maybe I didn't really help the whole thing because I wrote a book and I I'm gonna be honest, it has a stone lesbian in it, and and I think that as I was writing it, I didn't say why she was stone, but maybe I was also impacted by Stone Butcher Blues and thought that the only some way somebody would actually understand this, like for the reader, was if she had trauma. And so I did put that in the book. I probably now in h hindsight's always 2020, right? Yeah, there's a lot of things if I could go back I would do differently because that's not my experience with stone. Yeah. But you know, I was actually the next question is about like your article keep uh my name out of your mouth, queers who would draw this. That article really resonated with me and uh got very angry because I've seen a lot of the stuff that you're talking about. I would like to hear from you like what inspired you to write it, and can you summarize some of the the key points? And I'll also link to the article in the podcast show notes. Thanks so much.
SPEAKER_02Before you answer that, MC, I just want to tell you what the ending of Stonewitch is because it's it's really important that you know. So after all the trauma porn at the beginning, where you get like these little like snippets of lesbian culture just enough to get you keep reading.
SPEAKER_01Yeah.
SPEAKER_02She like her she goes to New York, her apartment burns down in New York, so she moves somewhere else. She moves in next door to a trans woman. She discovers that she's attracted to femininity and not like female women. So she's not a lesbian, she's a she's a bisexual. Yes. They go like road tripping across the US and like everyone's mean to them because they're trans. Then she comes back, Stonewall happens, and she like gets on the top of a bus at Stonewall and then becomes a communist activist.
SPEAKER_01Okay, so Leslie Feinberg is a bisexual.
SPEAKER_02Yeah. Watch her interviews with Kate Bornstein. They're on YouTube. She's like really hardcore flirting with Kate Bornstein the whole time.
SPEAKER_01Who's Kate Bornstein?
SPEAKER_02A trans woman activist.
SPEAKER_01So yeah, so Leslie is a bisexual and she needs to get the lesbian label out of her fucking mouth.
SPEAKER_00Yeah, I tend to agree. And I don't know, I don't know to what, you know, I I can't speak to her like development as a human, but I also know that her her her partner, her like lifelong partner, who was like a like a self-identified femme, says some pretty interesting things about like enjoying sex with male people. Like I don't think that she had like a solid femme experience in the way that people assume that. Right, precisely. So it's like I don't think that they had the But Femme thing going at all.
SPEAKER_01They're two bisexuals cosplaying as lesbians and filling the younger generation of lesbians with bullshit. Yeah.
SPEAKER_00I'm so mad. No, yeah, it's bad, it's bad. Yeah. Any text like that that pulls toward the the atomistic, individualistic interpretation of Bush identity is totally insane. But that book is I just think that's fundamentally like not what it is. It is a lesbian experience with female body.
SPEAKER_02I'm going through it right now to like write something longer about it. And seriously, like every time, like like the femme she writes that beautiful letter to is like vilified for like not going along with her transition. She like hooks up with a straight woman, she's like the most evil person ever. Like every woman in that book is like the most evil person ever, and then she gets to the like man, like the feminine man, she gets to the end, and then it's like, oh, this is like perfect.
SPEAKER_01Do we want to meet again? And like maybe we do a book club type thing where we all read this stupid book and then like bitch about how stupid it is.
SPEAKER_00Yeah. I would like to do that.
SPEAKER_01Maybe we'll go back to the article.
SPEAKER_00Well, yeah. So the article, like, it dovetails quite nicely because like the thing about Stone Butch Blues that sucks so fucking hard, just like on a philosophical level, is the idea that like you are the idea that you can be a butch alone, or that and that you can just take that into and out of relationships with differently sexed people, like male or female, and that that's your identity. Like it's the woe is me perception of butch. And that is exactly what I wrote that article about. This is one, usually when it comes out and it says Stone Butch Disco, like I'm I tend to be the primary author on those. And Catherine is just like the best fucking editor of all time. But there's also ones that where she is the primary author and then her byline will be on it. This was something that I got pissed off about. Actually, what's the current are you still queer realism?
SPEAKER_02No, I just it's just Catherine's Substack. Yeah. So like when I started, I was like, I started before I joined Stone Bachisco. I had like a Substack where I wrote like two articles where I was just like, everything's queer already. So that's kind of why. So I was writing like from a very cynical but like lesbian perspective of like we lost. Yeah.
SPEAKER_01We lost. It feels that way sometimes.
SPEAKER_02And I still, I still think that a lot of like what I wrote in those, like I keep those pieces up because I still stand by everything I said. Like I like of my like observations, because I was basically saying that like all this stuff on on TikTok, it's a a collective fantasy of lesbian community life that doesn't actually exist. Like I watch like people I know like here who like they're like, oh, I have to like wear a carabiner so that everyone knows that I'm lesbian. And it's like you or like or like people like who are they just like I'm mask, I'm mask, I'm mask. And I'm like, you don't like actually do you like fuck women? Like you like date and stuff, but then you like date and you're just like doing like the little performance like in front of each other. And it's not, it's not that there's nothing like obviously there are elements to Butch Femme that are like signaling, but it's it's it's at the end of the day, it's like body to body, man. It's like it's there's something that's real.
SPEAKER_00That's so for sure. I think that that's what what I was thinking when I like I just I reached a tipping point last, it was last summer actually. And then I kind of like the interesting story about that article is that I kind of shopped it to different places where that I thought might be interested in it. And then nobody was willing to say what we're willing to say. So I was like, all right, I'll just put it out myself. That's fine. I don't need a collab. Like, I'll like I'll I'll just finish it and release it, and then if people find it useful, great. But the the core two things happened last summer in Pride Month or right around Pride Month that pissed me the fuck off. One was a femme lesbian arrives on the Butch Lesbians subreddit, which people who listen to Snowbush Disco know that there is nothing that pisses me off in this fucking universe more than the R slash Butch Lesbians subreddit. It is like full of self-hate. It is full of people that-lesbians. They're not. They're not lesbians. They're not. They're doing the Feinberg thing. They just want to talk about being sad. Like that's what it feels like. And I'm I've always been, I've been watching for forever the development of the discourse. Or really, it's not a development. It's like the the like toilet bowl circling of what they define a bush lesbian as. And the idea that they even have the word lesbian in their mouth is fucking crazy based on the content. They're they're all they don't bring any of the core questions about how to relate to other women. They they really exclude feminine women from the whole thing. So what had happened was shortly before the the picture that actually becomes the like the head of the article, like I needed to talk about how fucking annoyed I was with pictures of mastectomies representing Butch identity. So put put a pin in that. Shortly before that, another one of those pictures gets promoted as R identity, a femme lesbian came to R slash butch, R slash Butch lesbians and asked, Am I not a lesbian? Because people are telling me that the people, that the women that I want to date who are masculine are not women. And she was like, it was the most genuine, honest question. She was like, I I want to date like masculine female people. Um, I'm paraphrasing, but she was like, Is there something that that is in me that's not lesbian? Because the women that I want to date tend to pass as men. And and what happened was somebody Oh my God, they said she's straight.
SPEAKER_0210 well, so I don't have 10 minutes before I got on this call, I saw the same post on another lesbian subreddit, pretty much. Like obviously not word for word, but like someone else. This is a common, like it's a common, it's a common problem.
SPEAKER_01And what did they say though? Like, sorry, I like answering.
SPEAKER_00So that's what so what happened was we, and I'm just gonna say we, because a lot of different people like use different accounts that we are trying, we're trying to make an intervention in those spaces. So we, one of us, posts um a response that's like, hey, you should check out Stonebutch Disco. They actually talk about this in great detail. There is nothing wrong with you, you're a lesbian. Like, if you want to get into the nitty-gritty of sexuality, that's where they're talking about it. Go be free. And shortly after, the the post is deleted. Like the original question is deleted, and our account is banned from Butch Lesbians for saying there is nothing wrong with you, and here's a place to talk about female sexuality of this nature, specifically the kind that this femme lesbian was asking to talk about, like in real terms. And then we we ask, why are we banned from r slash butch lesbians? And there are two reasons. One is that the account had previously posted at all. It wasn't even about the content of the post, because we tend not to post controversial things. We're just like, hey, we're real. Here's where you can get us talking about the fact that we're real. It was the fact that the account had posted on r slash d trans. So the Butch Lesbian subreddit is not willing to speak to R slash D trans at all. They're not willing to have people in their space who have been to that other place, which is completely fucking insane, right? Just like on face. Like this is a community where many of our many of the members of the Butch Lesbian world are in both of these camps simultaneously and need to be able to speak to each other. So they're shutting down discourse there. The second reason that we were given that we were banned was that Stonebutch Disco is willing to, so it listed the things that are wrong with Stonebusch Disco as a project, which This was great. I fucking loved because I was like, they know exactly who the fuck we are. Like everybody hates us, but for like all the same reasons. And they were like, one thing that we don't like is that Stonebutch Disco refuses to label people transphobes for things that they say. And I and we were like, well, yeah, we don't think it's useful to apply a label to an argument when you're trying to have a conversation with someone. So obviously that's fucking dumb. Like we're not doing that. And then the second one, what was the second reason? It's listed in that article. Keep my name out of your mouth. But it was like, Oh, it was about the word female. We use the word female, yeah. They so they think it there were three actually. One of them was like, they think that female people are real. And we were like, yep, check. And then the other one was Stonebutch Disco doesn't reliably pronoun people the way that they want to be pronounced. And our thing is we don't fucking care. I don't care. We genuinely don't care. Like if you if you have like completely abandoned ship and you and you function like a man and you look like a man and you're like in the world as a man, like we will he him, Buck Angel because Buck Angel has decided not to be on the female team. That's fine. We just don't give a shit. So those three reasons were why any mention of Stonebutch Disco is to be banned from the R slash Butch Lesbian subreddit. So I was like flattered, but also like, wow.
SPEAKER_01It's because we're you're real. That's why it's because like they are trying to, you know, we spoke about this, linguistically edit lesbian culture, lesbian definitions, and you're showing up and you're saying, actually, no, and they have a problem with that because it goes against their agenda. Yeah. But we were talking a little bit about the impact of femmes. So I recently was on a call with a bunch of lesbians, and we were talking about how the decline of Butch is visibly affecting femmes. And one of them described being at an event with her butch partner, right? So clearly like they looked like a lesbian couple, and she noticed like this envious kind of longing from another femme across the room who was with a trans identifying female partner. And it just sort of stuck with me because I got to thinking there's something about being with a woman who is masculine in and she's fully rooted in that fact. Yeah, she doesn't deny that she's a woman, but to the world and how they're perceived, like she's very masculine. And I gotta be honest, even I'm attracted to that. Like I for me, I actually am most attracted to other butch or stud women. I can't date them though. Like it's very it's like I can't actually see us together. I can only see myself together, like in my head with somebody who is less masculine than me.
SPEAKER_02But I must be breaking your self-esteem because I really struggle with it. Like I think that's also literally don't understand.
SPEAKER_00Like well, is it I mean, is it that you can't see it or is it that you don't know how it would play out, like in bed? Because that's the real thing is like the compatibility seems to be.
SPEAKER_01It might be, it might be both of those things. And I don't know if it's that the attraction would fall apart the moment they were submissive. I don't it's probably a whole rabbit hole, but like I could tell you that the first girl that I ever really, really fell in love with going by her locker every day at school, she kind of looked just like me.
SPEAKER_00She kind of looked like we talk about that, like I talk about it with femme partners that they're they're like attracted to feminine women, but they don't want them. Like they don't want to like, I'm doing I'm doing fuck motions with my arms. They don't want to be like, same thing, maybe.
SPEAKER_01Yeah.
SPEAKER_00Yeah. Like they that like, but it's a respect. Like I think I could see that.
SPEAKER_02There's like there's like an energy there. Like there, there, there, there's an energy there, and I think there's just something, there's a knowledge there. I don't know. It's weird because like I I can tell that I can tell when other masculine women are are attractive. I wouldn't characterize it because for me, like attraction is very want, want to fuck, and saying I'm attracted is like the same thing. So I can like tell that there's like an there's like an energy there. And it can be like like that tension can be very powerful and compelling, but it's not it's like weird.
SPEAKER_01Yeah.
SPEAKER_02When I was younger, I thought like there was a while where I thought I was butch for butch, but it was really about being like really alienated from feminine women and like just looking for that like kind of similarity with all the difficulty I was going through. And like, I don't know, I I think that like other butch women are like beautiful, but it's it's a totally different category of thing. You what when you're similar to someone, it's a different kind of connection than when you're complementary. And for me, that's not like a dating connection. It doesn't, it doesn't work on the sexual level. We have a we have an episode actually where we were talking about this. Um, because we were talking about, I don't know how like explicitly we kind of say that say this earlier, but like for us, like stone and butch, like stone is like an adjective on butch, but we think of it more as like an emphasizer because ultimately, like what butch is, is a sexual thing. It's not an aesthetic thing. So, so separating it out like that, like it's it's useful for emphasis, but it's not constitutive, I guess. Like it's they're not like discrete things. And so well, we we once had a conversation where we had people give us a lot of shit for like like one of the groups who kind of allude to this earlier, like butch for butch people um really don't like what we have to say because they're they're unable to understand that like it's not about this superficial flagging, it's about like this deeper, this deeper thing, like exchange. I guess the word would be exchange. Exchange, yeah. And and so and so we were we like we're joking. We were joking, like what could you do? Like you like rub the strap-ons against each other.
SPEAKER_01Like, how would it work? I get what you're saying about attraction is wanting to have sex with somebody, and it's very interesting though. But like I have been in love with but in love romantic, like I would want to kiss them and all this, but I couldn't think about how like we would have sex though. I don't know how it would work. So it's very, very interesting. I don't know if it's a narcissism thing though. Maybe it's that like I'm only because it's a narcissism thing, but I usually tend to date the tomboy boys, they're a little bit more like outdoorsy type, but like clearly more feminine than me. And then or if I'm go for a femme super like Kim Kardashian, the nails, the everything like I want like the super femme. Hi Femme, yeah.
SPEAKER_00So it's either well, so when you like when you are with, I'm just curious, when you're with somebody who's like more of a tomboy but more feminine than you, do you still use the term or do you ever use the term like my femme, my butch? Because we use those like possessively and and it's like part of the monogamy of it all.
SPEAKER_01Only when I dated a femme. Like only when I am I'm with like someone who's clearly femme will I use that terminology.
SPEAKER_00Yeah. But does and would she use it for you too like my butch, my femme.
SPEAKER_01Yeah. Like when I was in couplings like that, we would use that terminology. But I I don't currently use so my partner is bisexual. So we don't use you don't use lesbian. Yeah. Right. But I identify as a butcher a stud.
SPEAKER_00And you feel like you still feel like that your sexuality which because I do think it sounds like we share that it's that there is a like that the core meaning of butch is a sexual one. Is that do you still do you agree with that and still feel that with your partner?
SPEAKER_01I think that I can't speak for anybody else, but I think that it's all connected right like I am just the way that I am and I think it would be really hard to sort of dissect that up. I think it's like a bigger part of the whole. So I think it would be very difficult to remove the sexuality piece. If that makes sense. Am I making sense?
SPEAKER_00It does. Our argument is always that the sexuality piece is like the basically like from a psychoanalytic angle, humans are sexual beings. So it's constitutive of the rest of the whole and like so without the sex without the sex of being female and the sexuality piece of being a lesbian you don't get a butch.
SPEAKER_02And but but also like being a lesbian in the in this like in this like way that again like it's hard because of all of these like other me like we with the psychoanalytically like masculine like the like the the modally like so it's it's not like the aesthetic masculine like so again we're describing it like with all these other words to like communicate it like this like outward focus like this like wanting to do the action all of this stuff that we've we've talked about already.
SPEAKER_01I hate all this surface level bullshit. I feel like if we just all got rid of all like we scraped all of this bullshit surface level bullshit and we just like got back to who are you inside like really yeah like we could just Yeah everyone's afraid of themselves also and yeah and I think the whole like celebrate the sell the the like the like butch joy like I don't know what whatever joy um like this like kind of like fake celebration thing.
SPEAKER_02Like it I think it actually makes people like it's like the only things you can really be like unapologetic, like you can have an uncomplicated relationship to things you aren't really.
SPEAKER_00Yeah. So that's I think that's our our primary like our hope hopeful contribution to this whole discourse Catherine and and my contribution is is the sexual aspect is so just because of the patriarchy. Like patriarchy finds creative ways through queer and through trans to again tell women to shut the fuck up. Yeah just because of all that just because of the fact that women are not allowed to have our own definition of our bodies, ourselves, that female sexuality that I keep saying is natural and has has just been disappeared from the historical record. It it has always been there and you can actually uncover people have been using straps forever. People have been interested in in having this experience between like female homosexuals have been doing this shit forever and like male anatomists have been terrified by it. Like they don't like that some people's clits look like that like do this thing and they don't like they don't like that some women like it. Like the the the anxiety the way that it appears in the historical record written by men is cultural anxiety about what women are doing together, which is how you know that it's real. But that cultural anxiety that keeps getting repeated and repeated and repeated is now exists in queer and trans. And that is like what I think we want to intervene in most is to correct the record, to put, to explain like on a philosophical plane why this repetition continues, why the discourse continues to erase this specific type of thing because it's the sexuality piece of it that if if that had its own cultural and discursive territory, we wouldn't have any of these fucking problems. Like it's the sexuality it's the shame around that the the absolute misogyny around thinking that female people can can decide not to be, decide not to receive a certain thing or decide to do a certain thing. That's the idea that society cannot even get with that idea still is why we're like stuck in this morass with all this it's got to be aesthetic. And before before we go to another thing I wanted to I didn't get to the part of the of Butch Lesbians the the the subreddit that pissed me off the the most the first part of that story was that femme lesbian who wanted to talk about sexuality this is related because it's like we just keep silencing the sexual part. Butch lesbian doesn't want to talk about sexuality. But the femme lesbian who came to Butch Lesbians to you know talk about Butch lesbians and got told that's we're not about lesbian shit basically they were like deleted the comment, deleted us banned us for saying it's a real sexuality and those other stupid reasons. She went to another subreddit asked the same fucking questions literally the same text copy pasted put it in another subreddit we responded in the same way and she was like oh my God thank you so much. This is exactly the podcast that I needed this makes me feel real like it was basically like they so Butch lesbians silenced the the actual thing that needed to be talked about which is a lesbian experience. So that pissed me off and then about a week later um we get yet another one and you know the type of media that this is we've all seen shit tons of this all over visual culture. It's a picture and it's at the top of our article um keep my name out of your mouth it's a picture of a of a person who looks male in all regards except for the fact that like like there are mast there are like it's it's like the sickly green color and it's a picture of like somebody from I guess like the waist up and the only spot color is like these like gashes, these like red mastectomy scars meant, meant to look like the like violence, bright red and then the word butch is repeated like scrawled repeated repeated repeated behind this image. And it was supposed to be like for pride basically and all these people chime in like this thing gets thousands of upvotes almost instantly and all these people are like oh thank God like I'm trying to be like prideful about my editing of my body my my mastectomy experience and that's and it's being described as canonically butch, right? When you repeat the word butch behind that image you're saying that's what Butch identity is. So one week after this femme lesbian who's actually trying to fuck Butches gets excluded from the Butch Lesbian subreddit, there's a bunch of Butch lesbians navel like not sorry, not Butch lesbians there's a bunch of assholes navel gazing about their own experience of self-harm as as what Butch means. So that is like that was that was what pissed me the fuck off and why I decided to write like this entire that's like 25 pages long this this like rant about what it all means to remove lesbian sexuality from the definition of Butch. That shit is crazy. And until we return it back like we're fucked.
SPEAKER_01Yeah we're we're super fucked because you know at the end of the day right this is fucked up lesbians are homosexual women if you're a homosexual woman and you want to dress a little masculine or whatever and that's like how you feel inside like I think the problem is there's some people who they aren't butch they aren't masculine but they want to be masculine and for that reason you know and I think some of them are lesbians where they're they also have that layer of some of them are femme lesbians. I think that's the thing some of them are probably femme lesbians and they struggle with that because the world the messaging we get from the world is that there's a hierarch there's the hierarchy and it's like masculinity is at the top and femininity is at the bottom and what I could say is that the more I have leaned into my femininity the stronger and more confident I've actually felt so like we need to like find a way to like change the the narrative flip the script honestly I could talk to you I think forever I think we can talk but we're like sort of at time right now what I would like to know is Rachel Catherine where's the best place to find and support you to learn more about Stone Butch Disco?
SPEAKER_00I vote the Substack like if just look up Stonebutch Disco that's where we can disco.substack.com is great.
SPEAKER_02And we can send you like the I mean you can get it also from our podcast but we can send you a list of links we also have a website that Rachel has spent tons and tons of hours um maintaining to uh well the website itself is pretty shit but like the essays there are useful it's a lot of stuff about you have tons of content about like other academics.
SPEAKER_00Oh sorry say what I didn't do no no I uh the Substack like our right now what we're doing is like paid subscribers this is for like self-protection mostly but like paid subscribers get access to like video footage of us and and audio right like free free people have like have the writing except for the sexy stuff.
SPEAKER_02I wrote like a really highly like a hot in my definition what it was it's like NC17 you should you should you you'd probably love it MC so I'll sign up today and I'll have a read.
SPEAKER_00Yeah so erotica is behind a paywall but it's just so that it's like so that we don't get in trouble.
SPEAKER_01You don't get in twobble no trouble but the other writing is free I believe if you want like I don't know if you like read like romance I can like forward you some some romance books. I have uh a few all of them feature butches and femmes nice one of them has a really like what I consider like the femme of my dreams like just like really takes care of herself but like is also I don't know I I love the dynamic to be honest. I I think that the dynamic between butch and femme is actually beautiful.
SPEAKER_00Like people think oh well like you're just trying to like mimic the patriarchy and like heteronormativity but it's like no it's not heteronormativity because we're both women yeah duh so it's still very special but I'm talking and talking and now yeah I I wanted to say like that I'm glad you said that because there's one thing that I really really wanted to say which is to us butch and femme are second order labels that are useful to like find each other but what we're describing exists between women naturally it is like it doesn't need a label to be and also I was gonna say I I don't know if you would agree with this MC and it's a question do you feel like that dynamic like even if it's not labeled as Butch and Femme, but that dynamic, that motor of exchange is still at the root of what you're doing with women because you did say women you get with tend to be more feminine do you do you agree that it's this it's this exchange that maybe doesn't require a label regardless of if if the if the doesn't even need a label.
SPEAKER_01I think it's just that the labels are fun. Yeah like you know at least it was fun when I was a kid before people were taking this all so serious. It was just sort of fun sort of like how the gay men have otters and you know like and what else twinks and whatever. It was just fun. You know what I mean? It was like a fun thing and we we would go around are you chapstick? Are you lipstick? Right I just thought it was like a fun little thing. I was like oh it's another little like it's a little spice to my meal like you know what I mean so but at the root of it were lesbians. Like that's actually all that matters that you're a homosexual woman.
SPEAKER_02I don't know I I don't think I agree with that. Like to me I really I don't feel like my my my lesbianism is butch and like to me like the thing that I'm interested in is the Butch Femme Exchange and like I also like occasionally like date bisexual women and like I just don't like to me that's like a superfluous label. Like the exchange that we're having if if it's a relationship I actually want to stay in the exchange that we're having I would describe as Butch Femme. Maybe I wouldn't say that the other person is stably femme I don't know depending on what's going on in like her life but like all of the sex that I have is butch femme sex because that is the type of connection I choose to engage with. So I also process my my relationships like that. Like because I think that like I I feel like just allowing like there are all these like micro labels that can be really fun like like I mean I guess they used to be before they're so serious like of like but they they get into these like aesthetic minutiae that that to me are not like the the actual thing the actual thing and I think it's nice like when you operate in a community like a lesbian community that actually does do those self-labels it's easier to pair yourselves because you know like you kind of have shared expectations but it's not I think as long as you're a lesbian as long as you are a lesbian or whoever is actually like a homosexual woman I think that whatever makes sense to you is fine.
SPEAKER_01Like you know I mean my problem is when people are not lesbians and then they try to adopt and change our language to fit themselves. So expand it.
SPEAKER_02That's the whole aesthetic term yeah right so because I if it's a carabiner anyone can buy a carabiner.
SPEAKER_00We just yesterday recorded something about the utility of the of the terms as like inductive like descriptions of our inductive experience like we're collecting experiences the the terms become of use but under what circumstances I think I think our content it like it is really going to fit together in the next few weeks.
SPEAKER_01Yeah you know what like we should definitely I hope we could chat again but this was like super fun and we already said where to find you I'll put in the show notes thank you so much for coming thank you. This is great
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