Stone Butch Blues
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''Stone Butch Blues'' is an
autobiographical novel An autobiographical novel, also known as an autobiographical fiction, fictional autobiography, or autobiographical fiction novel, is a type of novel which uses autofiction techniques, or the merging of autobiographical and fictive elements. The ...
by
Leslie Feinberg Leslie Feinberg (September 1, 1949 – November 15, 2014) was an American butch lesbian, transgender activist, communist, and author. Feinberg authored '' Stone Butch Blues'' in 1993.
. Written from the perspective of
stone butch A stone butch is a lesbian who displays female butchness or traditional "masculinity" and who does not allow their genitals to be touched during sexual activity, as opposed to a stone femme. Etymology and history The term ''stone butch'' was ...
lesbian Jess Goldberg, it intimately details her life in the last half of the 20th century in
New York New York most commonly refers to: * New York (state), a state in the northeastern United States * New York City, the most populous city in the United States, located in the state of New York New York may also refer to: Places United Kingdom * ...
. While fictional, the work takes large inspiration from Feinberg's lived experiences, describing it as "Like my own life, this novel defies easy classification. If you found ''Stone Butch Blues'' in a bookstore or library, what category was it in? Lesbian fiction? Gender studies? ..this book is a
lesbian A lesbian is a homosexual woman or girl. The word is also used for women in relation to their sexual identity or sexual behavior, regardless of sexual orientation, or as an adjective to characterize or associate nouns with female homosexu ...
novel and a
transgender A transgender (often shortened to trans) person has a gender identity different from that typically associated with the sex they were sex assignment, assigned at birth. The opposite of ''transgender'' is ''cisgender'', which describes perso ...
novel—making 'trans' genre a verb, as well as an adjective." She also describes it as her "call to action." While ''Stone Butch Blues'' is a heavy read as noted by its advisory warning, it is frequently discussed as an essential work for LGBT communities, as it "never shies away from portraying the
anti-Semitism Antisemitism or Jew-hatred is hostility to, prejudice towards, or discrimination against Jews. A person who harbours it is called an antisemite. Whether antisemitism is considered a form of racism depends on the school of thought. Antisemi ...
,
classism Class discrimination, also known as classism, is prejudice or discrimination on the basis of social class. It includes individual attitudes, behaviors, systems of policies and practices that are set up to benefit the upper class at the expense of ...
,
homophobia Homophobia encompasses a range of negative attitudes and feelings toward homosexuality or people who identify or are perceived as being lesbian, Gay men, gay or bisexual. It has been defined as contempt, prejudice, aversion, hatred, or ant ...
, anti-butch animus, and
transphobia Transphobia consists of negative attitudes, feelings, or actions towards transgender or transsexual people, or transness in general. Transphobia can include fear, aversion, hatred, violence or anger towards people who do not conform to socia ...
that protagonist Jess Goldberg faced on a daily basis—but it also shows the healing power of love and political activism."


Plot summary

The narrative of ''Stone Butch Blues'' follows the life of Jess Goldberg, who grows up in a
working-class The working class is a subset of employees who are compensated with wage or salary-based contracts, whose exact membership varies from definition to definition. Members of the working class rely primarily upon earnings from wage labour. Most c ...
area of
Buffalo, New York Buffalo is a Administrative divisions of New York (state), city in the U.S. state of New York (state), New York and county seat of Erie County, New York, Erie County. It lies in Western New York at the eastern end of Lake Erie, at the head of ...
in the 1940s. Her parents, frustrated with Jess's gender nonconformity, eventually institutionalize Jess in a psychiatric ward for three weeks. When she reaches puberty and feels the weight of gendered difference, Jess learns of a gay bar from a coworker. There, she meets
drag queens A drag queen is a person, usually male, who uses drag clothing and makeup to imitate and often exaggerate female gender signifiers and gender roles for entertainment purposes. Historically, drag queens have usually been gay men, and have ...
, butches, and
femmes ''Femme'' (; , literally meaning ) is a term traditionally used to describe a lesbian woman who exhibits a feminine identity or gender presentation. While commonly viewed as a lesbian term, alternate meanings of the word also exist with some ...
. Butch Al and Jacqueline take Jess in and teach her about lesbian roles and culture. After a police raid, the bar closes and Jess loses touch with Butch Al and Jacqueline. At school, football players harass Jess, tackling and gang-raping her. Traumatized, she drops out of school the next day, packing her bags and running away from home to a lesbian bar, where a butch, Toni, offers to let Jess sleep on her couch. Jess finds her place in the lesbian community of Buffalo while the cops continue to raid gay bars. Jess is arrested, beaten, and raped by them. In a traumatized state, Jess and Toni fight, and Jess is left houseless again. She is taken in by Angie, a femme sex worker. The two have an intimate conversation and then sex. When Angie attempts to touch her, Jess cringes. Angie identifies Jess as a
stone butch A stone butch is a lesbian who displays female butchness or traditional "masculinity" and who does not allow their genitals to be touched during sexual activity, as opposed to a stone femme. Etymology and history The term ''stone butch'' was ...
, assuring Jess that there is nothing wrong with being stone. Jess gets a factory job and gets involved in
union organization A trade union (British English) or labor union (American English), often simply referred to as a union, is an organization of workers whose purpose is to maintain or improve the conditions of their employment, such as attaining better wages ...
, but is alienated by male coworkers. One man intentionally jams Jess's machine, severely injuring Jess and leaving her unemployed. At her next job, Jess meets Theresa. Theresa is fired after opposing her boss for sexually harassing her, and Jess begins to date her. With Theresa, Jess matures, learns to take responsibility in relationships, and softens her stony exterior. Jess proposes, and they are unofficially wedded at the bar, a drag queen leading the procession. Cops continue raids and retaliation increases, the crowd inspired by the
Stonewall riots The Stonewall riots (also known as the Stonewall uprising, Stonewall rebellion, Stonewall revolution, or simply Stonewall) were a series of spontaneous riots and demonstrations against a police raid that took place in the early morning hours of ...
. Jess and the others are arrested, beaten, and raped by the police. Theresa, who takes care of Jess after raids, attends feminist meetings, where others treat her love of butches as a betrayal of the feminist cause. Meanwhile, Jess talks at length about her gender confusion, feeling like neither man nor woman. Theresa is confused and encourages Jess to forget about it, but the two later argue over Jess's gender. Jess learns about, and decides to pursue, medical transition. Theresa disapproves, and they break up. Jess starts taking
testosterone Testosterone is the primary male sex hormone and androgen in Male, males. In humans, testosterone plays a key role in the development of Male reproductive system, male reproductive tissues such as testicles and prostate, as well as promoting se ...
, gets chest reconstruction surgery, and begins to pass as a male. While relieved to be safer in public, Jess has complex feelings about her loss of visibility as a lesbian. She asks out Annie, a barista, and they have a date at Annie's house. Before they have sex, Jess slips into her strap-on without Annie noticing, effectively passing as male through their encounter. The next day, Jess accompanies Annie to a wedding, where Annie makes several homophobic comments. Horrified by Annie's use of slurs and insinuation that gay people are sex offenders, Jess leaves. After years of passing as a man, Jess stops taking testosterone. She no longer passes as male and feels continually more comfortable in her gender nonconforming body. After encountering Theresa and her new partner at a grocery store, Jess decides she needs to leave Buffalo and moves to New York City. Jess forms a close friendship with her neighbor Ruth, a trans woman. While taking the subway, Jess is attacked and seriously injured by a group of teenage boys. Ruth nurses Jess back to health and they confess their love for each other on Christmas Eve. Ruth and Jess embark on a road trip to Upstate New York to visit Ruth's family. While there, Jess visits Buffalo and reconnects with friends from her past. After returning to New York City, Jess witnesses a queer rights demonstration and decides to speak about her experiences. As the novel closes, Jess feels her life coming full circle, and she is filled with hope for her future with Ruth.


Reception and impact

''Stone Butch Blues'' has received high praise for many years. Laura Sackton of
Book Riot ''Book Riot'' is an independent literary website founded in 2011. The site publishes a range of book-related articles, book reviews, newsletters, and podcasts. The site is operated by Riot New Media Company, which was co-founded by Jeff O'Neal ...
named it as one of the forty best queer books of all time, describing it as "the kind of queer, trans narrative we badly need: honest, freeing, and vital." The
New York Public Library The New York Public Library (NYPL) is a public library system in New York City. With nearly 53 million items and 92 locations, the New York Public Library is the second-largest public library in the United States behind the Library of Congress a ...
has listed it as one of 125 books they love, marking it as the forefront of a "new movement of transgender political identity and solidarity that was taking shape in the 1990s." The Guardian also listed ''Stone Butch Blues'' as one of the "top 10 transgender books." Feinberg covers topics related to union organizing and political activism in her real life, making ''Stone Butch Blues'' a political piece in addition to an LGBT work. The novel is also a significant work for many labor organizers, listed in
Autostraddle Autostraddle is a queer and trans-owned online magazine and social network for lesbian, bisexual, and queer women ( cis and trans), as well as non-binary people and trans people of all genders. The website is a "politically progressive queer fem ...
as essential LGBT labor history reading. As mentioned by
Diane Anderson-Minshall Diane Anderson-Minshall (born March 19, 1968) is an American journalist and author best known for writing about lesbian, gay, bisexual, and transgender subjects. She was the first female CEO of Pride Media, publisher of ''The Advocate'', ''Out' ...
in
The Advocate An advocate is a professional in the field of law. The Advocate, The Advocates or Advocate may also refer to: Magazines * The Advocate (magazine), ''The Advocate'' (magazine), an LGBT magazine based in the United States * ''The Harvard Advocate' ...
, Jess's relationships throughout the novel also highlight the historical significance of femme sex workers within lesbian communities. ''Stone Butch Blues'' is considered a cult classic in LGBT communities, and continues to be popular almost 30 years after its original publication. At the Michael C. Weidemann LGBTQ Library, which houses over 9,000 books, ''Stone Butch Blues'' "is forever being checked out." LGBT people often find comfort within the novel's sense of "bleak hope, the core to queer self-preservation." However, it has also been discussed as a novel that should be read outside of the LGBT community, with Jo Livingstone stating "''Stone Butch Blues'', the cornerstone of her career, is a very good book by any measure," and that it is worth reading "if you're middle-aged or elderly or a teen who hasn't yet decided what to grow up to be." After Feinberg's death in 2014, the book received renewed media attention, mentioned in
Slate Slate is a fine-grained, foliated, homogeneous, metamorphic rock derived from an original shale-type sedimentary rock composed of clay or volcanic ash through low-grade, regional metamorphism. It is the finest-grained foliated metamorphic ro ...
,
The Guardian ''The Guardian'' is a British daily newspaper. It was founded in Manchester in 1821 as ''The Manchester Guardian'' and changed its name in 1959, followed by a move to London. Along with its sister paper, ''The Guardian Weekly'', ''The Guardi ...
,
CNN Cable News Network (CNN) is a multinational news organization operating, most notably, a website and a TV channel headquartered in Atlanta. Founded in 1980 by American media proprietor Ted Turner and Reese Schonfeld as a 24-hour cable ne ...
,
Jezebel Jezebel ()"Jezebel"
(US) and
, and others.


Publication history

The novel was first published by
Firebrand Books Firebrand Books is a publishing house established in 1984 by Nancy K. Bereano, a lesbian and feminist activist, in Ithaca, NY. Karen Oosterhouse, its publisher since 2003, describes Firebrand as "the independent publisher of record for feminist ...
in 1993, and picked up by
Alyson Books Alyson Books, formerly known as Alyson Publications, was a book publishing house which specialized in LGBT fiction and non-fiction. Former publisher Don Weise described it as "the world's oldest and largest publisher of LGBT literature" and "th ...
in 2003. A 20th anniversary edition was released in 2014. A free e-book edition is currently available on Feinberg's website. Feinberg requested that the 20th anniversary edition was made available for free as "part of her entire life work as a communist to 'change the world' in the struggle for justice and liberation from oppression."


Awards

The book was a 1994
Lambda Literary Award Lambda Literary Awards, also known as the "Lammys", are awarded yearly by Lambda Literary Foundation, Lambda Literary to recognize the crucial role LGBTQ+ writers play in shaping the world. The Lammys celebrate the very best in LGBTQ+ literatur ...
finalist in the category of Lesbian Fiction, and shared the award in the Small Press Books category with ''Sojourner: Black Gay Voices in the Age of AIDS''. It also won the 1994 American Library Association Gay & Lesbian Book Award (now the
Stonewall Book Award The Stonewall Book Award is a set of three literary awards that annually recognize "exceptional merit relating to the gay/lesbian/bisexual/transgender experience" in English-language books published in the U.S. They are sponsored by the Rainbo ...
).


Major themes

''Stone Butch Blues'' is most commonly described as a
genderqueer Non-binary or genderqueer gender identities are those that are outside the male/female gender binary. Non-binary identities often fall under the transgender umbrella since non-binary people typically identify with a gender that is differ ...
narrative. It is sometimes seen as
postmodern Postmodernism encompasses a variety of artistic, cultural, and philosophical movements that claim to mark a break from modernism. They have in common the conviction that it is no longer possible to rely upon previous ways of depicting the wo ...
because of the ways it presents gender as a signifier lacking a fixed referent in the body, and the way Jess's identity breaks down the categories of male and female. As such, it is also about crossing boundaries and seeking home. Jay Prosser writes that, "Jess does not feel at home in her female body in the world and attempts to remake it with hormones and surgery." Because of her masculinity, she is also not at home in her community of origin, and thus the search for home becomes a theme as well. While physical changes help Jess to feel more at home in her body, Jess has greater difficulty finding a home in the world. Ultimately the book takes a stance of supporting coalitions. Jess's stone butch identity illuminates the extent to which sexual trauma can affect one's sexual subjectivity. The first mention of Jess's stone butch identity occurs in her first sexual encounter with Angie, who tells Jess she is "stone already" after Jess reacts negatively to Angie's attempts to touch Jess in a sexual way. Leading up to this encounter, Jess has experienced rape at the hands of boys her age and police officers. Jess admits to Angie that she has been hurt, but cannot discuss the details. Her difficulty opening up to femmes, both sexually and emotionally, is a sign of the sexualized trauma she experiences both at a young age, and throughout her life by way of police brutality. ''Stone Butch Blues'' is also a novel of the working class. Much of the action takes place within factories in Buffalo, New York. The novel involves a great deal of union organizing and discusses the treatment of working-class people. Feinberg also shows how gender and class intersect to shape Jess's identity, by portraying her discomfort with the middle-class feminists who disdain both the butch and femme identities that are standards of Jess's own working-class community. Cat Moses writes that "''Stone Butch Blues'' is informed by an underlying yearning for the development of a revolutionary class consciousness among the proletariat, across gender and racial divisions."


Translations

''Stone Butch Blues'' has been translated into Chinese, Russian, German, Italian, Hebrew, Slovenian, Basque, French, and Spanish.


References


External links


Free e-book download of Stone Butch Blues

Leslie Feinberg's official site
* For a look at the history of gay bars in Buffalo, NY during the time of the novel, se

by Elizabeth Lapovsky Kennedy and Madeline D. Davis.
"Building our own Homes: Frustrated Stereotyping in Leslie Feinberg’s ''Stone Butch Blues''
Warkentin, Elyssa, ''America@'', 2(1).
Free e-book download of Stone Butch Blues in Basque pdf
{{Authority control 1990s LGBTQ novels 1993 American novels American autobiographical novels American LGBTQ novels Butch and femme Jewish American novels Jewish-American working class Lambda Literary Award–winning works Novels about transgender topics Stonewall Book Award–winning works Working-class literature Novels about lesbian topics 1993 debut novels Lesbian fiction Lesbian working-class culture Novels set in New York (state) American historical novels Books about trans men