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Recommendation RequestBooks on gender non conformity and personal presentation without trans speak?
I have difficulties with the term GNC, but think it is probably the most applicable here and the easiest one to employ to get my point across!
I am a younger butch lesbian, at times (depending on my haircut) I have found it very easy to be read as male. I also have a hormone disorder which has caused a deepening of my voice, and I can grow facial hair. I was reading an interview with JD Samson (moustachioed member of Le Tigre) the other day and realised that apart from my own experience, I have so little frame of reference for thinking about being a GNC woman/lesbian. (Samson does self describe as non binary, but she uses sex based pronouns, and also refers to herself as a woman, female and a lesbian.)
Being a butch/androgynous lesbian can be incredibly isolating and it is certainly what prompted TIF identification in me when I was younger.
I was wondering if there are any books - memoirs, poetry, fiction even if it's the right kind (not fantasy) - that discuss GNC women/GNC lesbian experiences without deferring to 'then I realised I was male'.
Thank you in advance!
Haha I was going to suggest this book but the author has since transed herself:
https://www.dukeupress.edu/female-masculinity-twentieth-anniversary-edition
(Not really 'haha', it's depressing.)
Wow. I was familiar with her work and read Fun Home: A Family Tragicomic. I’m depressed she took the insanity plunge.
Alison Bechdel wrote Fun Home. She's not trans, at least not yet.
She's 62, so I would hope she's safe, but since we lost k.d. lang, anything is possible.
Alison Bechdel is on record saying that if she'd been born later, she might have gone the trans route, and therefore she is glad she wasn't--that she's proud to be a GNC woman. So no worries about her transing :)
Good to hear. I'm devastated that so many other GNC women have been lost.
It honestly feels like an extermination, like society hates us so much it has convinced most of us to obliterate ourselves. Maybe some people find that hyperbolic, but it's not just a metaphorical extinction. Women who go on hormones are headed for an early grave. It's not like we don't know the effects of testosterone on the female body. We know what happens long term, and it's not good. Soon there will be no older butch lesbians like Bechdel because most of their generation will be dead.
:( It was an older lesbian friend who alerted me, years ago now, that all the butches were being transed away. It is extraordinarily fucked up. You come into your own in a huge way when you accept you are a gender non-conforming woman. Deciding to pretend to be a man instead is like refusing to grow up.
It's terrible because the young girls growing up now don't know anything else. For them, it's not even a choice. It's presented to them that they must be male simply because they are masculine.
I almost fell prey to transition myself. But I was in college before the trans craze started in earnest, and by that time, I could not convince myself that I wasn't female. I wanted to be a non-woman and flirted with labels like "transmasculine," but I just couldn't make myself believe it. Then I discovered gender critical feminism which honestly has been the only thing that has helped me become more at peace with being female.
I'm glad you did! I feel lucky sometimes to be older. I thought for a long time I was supposed to be a man, but it didn't occur to me I could change myself into one. I can't even imagine how difficult it would be to be confronted with this narrative young when you're still trying to sort out who you are.
It infuriates me how little people are willing to let women have of ourselves. Things considered 'genius' coming from a man are 'quirky' when they come from a woman. For years, men simply weren't able to metabolize the possibility a woman could be funny, even when they witnessed it. Thankful that's changed, though there are still plenty of holdouts. The big sticker still is unwillingness to accept women can quite naturally have what has traditionally been known as 'male' energy.
Fun Home is by Alison Bechdel, who as far as I know hasn't personally adopted a 'gender', though I don't know her position on gender ideology.
I think I replied to the wrong comment. I’m so glad to hear she’s GC apparently
Thank you for the rec this looks fantastic! And damn… feels like when Beatriz Precaido became Paul. Sigh.
I had no idea! That is totally crazy. I can only hope she regains her sanity.
you might be interested in Lisa Selin Davis's book Tomboy. i haven't started it yet, but it's in my stack, and i've heard several podcast interviews with her. she has a gnc daughter and has written about how everyone kept encouraging her to socially transition her daughter at a young age. one of her big interests is who gets to decide what's "normal" when it comes to gender and sexual behavior, and she's currently writing another book exploring that more. Tomboy is about how the label functions as a protective bubble, so girls can explore more masculine presentation and behaviors. I believe she interviewed several gnc women and lesbians while writing it.
It seems like Tomboy was Davis's attempt to get back into liberal good graces on the trans issue.
But she's definitely peaked hardcore since the book was published a few years ago. I have wondered if she reads here.
I've heard great things about Leslie Feinberg's 'Stone Butch Blues' (1993). It's been adopted by the new trans generation, but she was very clear her intent when using the word 'transgender' was GNC, not transexual. She has this to say:
“The use of the word ‘transgender’ has changed over the two decades since I wrote Stone Butch Blues. Since that time, the term ‘gender’ has increasingly been used to mean the sexes, rather than gender expressions. This novel argues otherwise.”
You can download a pdf copy for free here:
https://www.lesliefeinberg.net
Just a caveat: I haven't read it yet (it's on my to-read pile), so I can't personally recommend it, just passing on the recommendation of the friend who sent it to me. But from what I've heard and what you wrote above, her story may resonate with you.
I can recommend three books. Fun Home by Alison Bechdel, Tomboy by Liz Prince, and Girl Mans Up by M.E. Girard.
My favorite is Girl Mans Up. It's a teen book, but if you don't mind that, it's a good story about a butch lesbian with some physical dysphoria who resists a transgender label. She denies being trans on the page when asked by another character. TRAs on Goodreads are crying about the book supposedly being "transphobic" because the main character makes it clear that she's a girl. It was written in 2016 before things went insane, so I don't know if the author is gender critical or just hadn't been swept into the craze yet.
I’m seconding Fun Home. I don’t remember why I liked it so much, so I might re-read it.
I still like to recommend Daphne Scholinski's "The Last Time I Wore a Dress" which is a memoir of her time as a delinquent teen who was put in inpatient psychiatric care on the spurious basis of "gender identity disorder". It's still a poignant and relatable book even though she later transitioned as an adult. After testifying in front of the fucking UN about how false transgender diagnoses are a way to pathologize homosexual kids.... facepalm