HANNE BLANK: I'll start off pitching low and slow: Why a new book on butch? I mean, don't we already have Stone Butch Blues?

S. BEAR BERGMAN: [laughing] We do, thank G-d. And Stone Butch Blues is a brilliant novel, and a classic story. I love my dog-eared old signed copy, and I reread it all the time. Butch Is a Noun, as a book, is my love letter to Leslie [ed.: Leslie Feinberg, author of Stone Butch Blues] and to all butches, and also my contribution to the public work on butch. In much the same way--and I know you know this, but--that the book-reading public can support more than one book about baseball or umbrellas it can support more than one about butch, which is a pretty complex topic in the world of gender and sexuality. And I really hope that Butch Is a Noun will be an impetus for more people with things to say about butches and butchness to make work on the topic. I would love that.

HB: I would love it, too, because there is so very little written work on butches and butchness. Which makes me realize that I've never asked you: what are your theories on why that's so? Why is butchness so seldom written about?

SBB: Well, I have theories. One is that butch, as a gender, is so visible and in some ways culturally ubiquitous that there's a sort of "Oh, there it is, we know about that." There seems to be a general sense, especially from outside the queer community but also from within it, that butch is already a known quantity and therefore isn't too interesting a subject to take up.

I am becoming ever more aware there's also a real chilling effect from some lesbian communities about it--there's a lot of investment in the "right" narrative, which I think would probably have to be decided by committee and would be published sometime in the next of never. And I think there are class issues involved, especially where working-class butches, who have always been a mainstay of butch gender, get silenced by our cultural privileging of schooling into believing that they don't have the standing to contribute.

HB: I think that's a very good point, that butch visibility actually creates butch invisibility. And the class issues--both socioeconomically as well as the hierarchies within the queer women's community--are huge.

SBB: The class issues about gender are already so big, even without the educational piece. Plus, butch is messy and scary. The book is messy and scary. There's a lot of secret, dangerous stuff about butchness that butches are--in general--far safer not to reveal. That I would have been safer not to reveal. I wonder often of people will be grateful for having expressed some of what they can't say or ripshit pissed that I let the cat out of the bag.

This is part of why I ended up insisting on including the "note to the reader" in the book. Because I really felt like I needed to spell out, in the most explicit terms, that I did not think I was writing down the One True Way.

HB: What are some of the things you worry about, in regard to whether people will be angry with you for having divulged butch secrets? What have you talked about that is verboten and taboo, and what's your perception of why those things are taboo topics for a public discussion (especially one as public as a book)?

SBB: There are hard parts about the interior emotional landscape, about what and how it works when a butch wants to meet an intimacy, or a confidence, and just can't unbend from the training of "must protect, must defend" enough to get there. I've written about trying to protect and defend women, especially femmes, and I know that for every femme who gets a little swoony there will be two cranky emails from women who want me to know that they can manage it very nicely themselves, thank you.

HB: And then there will be those of us who are a little swoony and also know that we can protect and defend ourselves just fine. Being able to do it doesn't mean it isn't also nice to know that there are butches who would get your back!

SBB: Also, talking about butch sexual desire is very hard, very dangerous. I want to open up that conversation some by talking about my desires but I am afraid of that getting mapped onto other people who don't share it--in my nightmares I hear someone saying "Well, Bear seems to manage to get fucked; I don't know what's the matter with you."

In general, I'm really trying to unpack and unmask and open what had traditionally been a pretty closed place. Which I think will be unbelievably welcome for some people and cause others to want to send me boating without benefit of a boat.

HB: If I can, I want to go back for a second to what you said earlier about butch being superficially a known quantity and thus less interesting of a subject--how much of that do you think is due to the lesbian community's general disdain for masculinity? Butches have taken a lot of shit in the dyke community just for being masculine, and I wonder if part of this sense that butch isn't interesting is really "we don't want to hear more about masculinity, we already know everything we need to know about that."

SBB: I think there's a big piece of that, yes. The thing is that the lesbian community, whatever that looks like these days, doesn't really seem to disdain masculinity so much as it does men. And there seems a pervasive belief that the things of men are suspect, so therefore butches, who often perceive themselves as masculine, are not masculine because they are, see above, not men. Q.E.D. So how does one get out of that tidy little box?

And then, in lesbians of a certain age--I would say thirty-five to fifty-five--there was all of the second-wave feminist "butch-femme is a patriarchal model" business.

HB: I still hear that. Do you get frustrated with the essentialism in those kinds of arguments?

SBB: Yes. Deeply. I am so resistant to binaries anyway, and that sort of thing just makes my ears burn, especially when I hear it from people who, when questioned, seem to just be parroting it and have no idea what they're really objecting to.

Also I think the mostly mainstream, gender-normative gays and lesbians of the world do not really want butches. They do not want visible queerness, visible otherness. They are hoping for the largest possible proof of their we're-just-like-you theory for their big Talented Tenth plan which is never going to work.

HB: At the Femme 2006 conference, Amber Hollibaugh talked about the whole issue of who gets left out of queer mainstreaming. She brought up the issue that the people whose presentations and desires are the most visibly queer--the people who are furthest out on the various spectrums--are among the ones who constantly get cut off. What can be done about that?

SBB: I am not sure that anything can be done about it. I think it happens for two reasons, both of which would require huge cultural change to address.

First, it happens when whoever is currently at the helm decides to try to reach a particular peak, and begins throwing people off the back of the sleigh to do it. As in, we want Gay Marriage, and we can only have it if Gay looks like white, middle-class or higher, monogamous, Judeo-Christian, and politically fairly moderate. So we gather those people at the front, and tell everyone else to get off. Oh, but we'll be back for you, they say, even though we all know that's bullshit.

Second, I think it's about grief. I think that your more normative, more culturally straight gay and lesbian people have given up a lot, thrown things off the backs of their personal little sleighs, in order to have the approbation and benefits the macroculture awards us when we do that. And that when they see people who have refused that, and are still having perfectly lovely lives, I think they cannot help but be angry and fearful that this is possible, but also experience a real melancholy for everything they had to kill off and could never properly grieve.

HB: It's a huge betrayal, though, on the part of a political community that built itself on the ideal of inclusivity of all sexual minority identities. I think in many ways it is a particularly large betrayal on the part of the queer women's community, since that community was built so strongly on an aggressively inclusivist politics.

SBB: It is a huge betrayal, and it is also very familiar. It has always been the radicals and outlaws who ended up making actual change, whenever in the world major cultural change has been made. It has always required someone to stand out in the rain and learn to love it, to borrow your metaphor for a minute. As soon as you draw a boundary, someone will want to police it. As a fellow of my acquaintance says: "Monkeys love buttons. And if you show a monkey a button, it will push it until its little finger falls off."

HB: So true. Okay, I'm going to change the subject and go back to the whole issue of butches getting fucked. When I read that essay in your book it made me think about the first time I heard someone in a butch/femme context use the term "ki-ki." It was said with such venom that it made my head spin a bit. Since then I've spent a lot of time thinking about butch desire and butch desire to be penetrated, specifically, and about the kinds of fear that are bound up in those issues. It seems to me that the whole issue of who gets fucked is very tricky not just for reasons of identity and what the "rules" are in terms of who is supposed to do what, but because of what penetration means in our culture. I'd love to hear what you think about that.

SBB: In our culture, I think that being penetrated means weakness, means being pervious, means therefore an inability to protect one's self. We have, even, the sort of lingering "which one of you is the man?" question that queer couples still get asked, which means "who fucks whom?"

So there's that part, and it is huge, especially because butches are always under attack anyway, in the "that which protrudes gets pounded down" sort of way.

Also, a lot of the reluctance seems to be to be about gender: that's what girls do, I am not a girl, therefore, no way.

And there is also some sexual selfishness of the part of some femmes. (Here's where I make myself incredibly unpopular.) But what I'm saying is that the world is full of Do Me Queens, and some of them are femmes, and femmes have a lot of cultural license to be that way, to really grow into that. I have seen femme things be downright pissy and shaming toward a butch who wants to get fucked.

HB: The gender role reinforcement in the butch/femme world can be really severe sometimes. And not in a fun way.

SBB: I almost said "to a butch who wants to give it up" just then. Which really points to how pervasive the sense of it being surrender or defeat is. There's a way to reframe the question that makes it not about giving something up, but about getting something. About having what you want. And I want to see if I can help make some room for that kind of language, that kind of change. Hey, it's still hard for me. I have a lover right now that I'm totally hot for, a transguy who really enjoys fucking me, and I love it and it feels good and I love him and trust him completely and even still every single time I have the voice in my head screaming "Stop! This is Not Okay! What are you doing? This is too dangerous!"

HB: I feel very hopeful about your being able to influence that positively. I really do. Because I have known many butches who have confided desires to me--because they knew that I was safe, not the sort to be judgmental--that they couldn't confide in their lovers. I think part of their shame and silence was not being able to trust that anybody, no butch or femme or queer, would support them or give them permission to want what they want.

SBB: And that just breaks my heart. What a way to reward someone for having a lot of courage, both in speaking about hir desire, and in living as a butch in the first place.

HB: It is heartbreaking. When I was younger (and not monogamous) I was prone to taking those revelations and putting my money where my "no, it's okay, it's totally okay" was. From my current vantage point, however, I think that a one-femme crusade is perhaps not the most effective solution, so I really cherish the fact that you've written about it.

SBB: Well. I am sure that many butches have had reason to be most grateful to you for that, and I certainly encourage other femmes to take up your standard there. I have also had the great pleasure of the same experiences with butches whose reassurance from me came in quite tangible ways. But, yes, this is at least more efficient, if not more effective.

I am egotistically hoping that, if I can't effect some cultural change, I can at least make a little breathing room. Even while I worry about butches (and transmasculine folks of all varieties) being shamed about their lack of desire for that, or their inability to resolve their gender with that desire.

HB: That breathing room is so important. It's astonishing how hard and how much work it is to be queer even to the other queers, isn't it?

SBB: Oy. Yes. And it does seem to be a theme among people that I like, especially, because I do really cherish rogues and outlaws, people who are queer even in queer contexts. I like their style and their thoughtfulness and their sheer balls.

HB: You 'n' me both. Must be why we get along.

I'd also like to ask you a few questions about butch/femme. For a book on butchness, Butch Is a Noun doesn't really talk all that much about butch/femme. Personally, I found that refreshing. As a femme I've never liked the intimation that butch/femme exist only in one another's orbit, because I know full well that I'm still femme if I'm not with a butch! But just the same, I'm wondering how you feel about butch/femme as a dynamic and as a culture.

SBB: I think that all gender dynamics that have a lot of traction, like butch/femme does, are great fun and have a lot of snap and life to them. I love getting to be a butch with femmes, or for femmes, and trot out all my gentleman butch behaviors. I love the way femmes have nurtured me and honored me and protected me as a butch, and I love how comfortable I am made to feel within that context.

I wish that some parts of the butch/femme community were a little more accepting of variations, but then I wish that about every community in the world, so it shouldn't be interpreted as a knock on anyone, I just like my edges pretty loose, is all.

It was a conscious choice to talk about butch/femme but not too much, partly because that would have meant having to try to speak for femmes (which I know is a bad plan) and partly because nearly all of the current writing about butches and butchness is specifically in that context. I wanted to offer something else, something that could encompass more kinds and ways of butchness.

HB: And because butch as something in and of itself, rather than butchness as something that is always inevitably packaged with femmeness?

SBB: Yes. Absolutely. That's very important to me. Butch is its own gender, not regardless of femme but also not bound by it, either.

HB: I think that is very important. One of the big steps in breaking down essentialist sex/gender thinking, in my mind, is breaking down that sense that sexes and genders come in binary opposites and anything else is heresy.

SBB: And you have done great, brilliant work on that equation from the femme side, I think, even by just being unapologetically out as femme without the official "butch counterpart."

HB: I'm going to go for another hot-button issue: butches transitioning. You are no doubt enormously aware of the concern in the lesbian world that there are no more butches because they're all becoming transmen. How do you feel about that? Do you think it's a realistic fear? And do people bring up that fear to you, as a butch and as someone who is in some ways a spokesperson for butches and other transmasculine things? If they do, how do you respond to it?

SBB: I am inescapably aware of it, it lives huge in my world, and it makes me miserable because no one ever seems happy.

For my money, transition if you want to do that. Don't if you don't. I really want everyone to stop putting pressure on butches to transition, and I also really want everyone to stop shaming butches who choose transition.

In every day there are at least as many people who blithely assume that I have transitioned or am transitioning to show me where they want me to go as there are people who resolutely use female pronouns for me and identify me as a woman (sometimes with a y, even) to make their point about where they need me to stay.

HB: Amen to that. It has struck me that there's a lot of--to use Jewelle Gomez's fabulous phrase--lateral hostility there, among queers on the genetically female spectrum.

SBB: Yes, lateral hostility. I think it's a product of a certain siege mentality. You circle the wagons tight enough and eventually there's no place to piss but someone else's backyard.

Anyhow, no, I don't think that "all the butches are becoming men," but it is happening that some butches are becoming men, or transmen, or transmasculine beings of some kind. I am sorry if that's difficult for some people but I am not going to be the one to tell someone not to make themselves happy and fulfilled because they owe it to the community to stay miserable. Not a chance.

I am interested, however, in the number of people I see making choices to use hormones or have top surgery and either still identify as butch or identify as men and then choose to revise that statement somewhat.

I love, and support, and encourage transmen, and all trans-things, to find a place where they feel good about themselves, and if that changes, to find the grace and flexibility to change with it. If anyone gives them any shit I am in their corner to defend and support those choices.

HB: It's a shame, I think, that it isn't easier to reshape our bodies and our appearances to suit our interior gender fluidity. For a lot of people it would make life so much simpler.

SBB: That would be nice. I vote for that. Can it also include things like having wings or a tail? I mean, while we're dreaming?

HB: I want a prehensile tail! I have wanted one since I was a little girl. But nowadays I want one because I think a prehensile tail would be the world's greatest sex toy.

SBB: [grinning wickedly] Oh, aye.

HB: I think the relative crudity of the technology we have available for that encourages severely polar statements. Not to mention the polarized nature of the whole psychotherapeutic side of the process.

SBB: The therapeutic community still only recognizes two genders, and wants them to align with one of the two sexes they recognize. Not a lot of space for inventiveness, variation, or flexibility.

HB: Before I let you go, one final thing: if you could beam a message directly into the brains of every genderquestioning maybe-butch maybe-transmasculine thing out there, what would you tell them?

SBB: How about: "You're not as alone as you think, and you are stronger than you can imagine."

HB: Excellent. I like that a lot. Thank you for talking with me today, it's been such a pleasure.