I opened a random old gay pulp fiction at the archives today and the only sentence I read made me laugh so bad. It was like. "Their cocks entered each other's mouth as the two buddies began sixty-nineing" . And. "The two buddies began sixty-nineing" is going to be something I'm just constantly saying I fear
table of contents: books; anthologies, history, novels, erotica, photography. films; documentaries, shorts. misc; zines, articles, etc.
note: almost everything has a link to access the media! if u have any links that i don't, feel free to send them in!!! not everything is specifically butchfemme, but considered relevant. enjoy!
last updated 7/17/26
Anthologies + Chronicles
A Restricted Country by Joan Nestle
Bombshells And Bois: Queer Poetry & Pin Up ed. Miss Kitty
Brazen Femme: Queering Femininity ed. Chloë Brushwood Rose, Anna Camilleri
Butch/Femme: Inside Lesbian Gender ed. Sally R. Munt, Cherry Smyth
Butch is a Noun by S. Bear Bergman
Femme/Butch: New Considerations of the Way We Want to Go ed. Michelle Gibson, Deborah Meem
Femme: Feminists, Lesbians, and Bad Girls ed. Laura Harris, Elizabeth Crocker
Lesbian Culture: The Lives, Work, Ideas, Art and Visions of Lesbians Past and Present ed. Julia Penelope, Susan Wolfe
On Butch and Femme: A Compiled Readings ed. I.M. Epstein
Out of the Closet and Nothing to Wear by Lesléa Newman
Persistence: All Ways Butch and Femme ed. Ivan Coyote, Zena Sharman
The Lesbian Erotic Dance: Butch, Femme, Androgyny, and Other Rhythms by JoAnn Loulan
The Little Butch Book by Lesléa Newman
The Persistent Desire: A Femme-Butch Reader ed. Joan Nestle
Tomboys!: Tales of Dyke Derring-Do ed. Lynne Y. Fletcher, Karen Barber
Tomboy Survival Guide by Ivan Coyote
History
Appearances Can Be Deceiving: Butch-Femme Fashion and Queer Legibility in New York City, 1945–1969 by Alix Gitner
“A Woman Dressed like a Man” Gender Trouble at the Sapphic Cabaret, Paris, 1930–1960 by Tamara Chaplin
Baby, You Are My Religion: Women, Gay Bars, And Theology Before Stonewall by Marie Cartier
Becoming Visible: An Illustrated History Of Lesbian And Gay Life In Twentieth-Century America by Molly McGary, Fred Wasserman
Before Stonewall: The Making of a Gay and Lesbian Community by Andrea Weiss
Boots of Leather, Slippers of Gold: The History of a Lesbian Community by Elizabeth Lapovsky Kennedy, Madaline D. Davis
Daring Hearts: Lesbian and Gay Lives of 50s and 60s Brighton by Brighton Ourstory Project
Encyclopedia of Lesbian Histories and Cultures ed. Bonnie Zimmerman
Female Masculinity by Jack Halberstam
Gay L.A.: A History of Sexual Outlaws, Power Politics, and Lipstick Lesbians by Lillian Faderman, Stuart Timmons
Lesbians in Germany: 1890's-1920's by Lillian Faderman, Brigitte Eriksson
Making History: The Struggle for Gay and Lesbian Equal Rights: 1945-1990: An Oral History by Eric Marcus
Naked in the Promised Land: A Memoir by Lillian Faderman
Odd Girls and Twilight Lovers: A History of Lesbian Life In Twentieth-Century America by Lillian Faderman
Uninvited: Classical Hollywood Cinema and Lesbian Representability by Patricia White
Unsuitable: A History of Lesbian Fashion by Eleanor Medhurst
Wide-Open Town: A History of Queer San Francisco to 1965 by Nan Alamilla Boyd
Novels
A Crystal Diary: A Novel by Frankie Hucklenbroich — Frankie learns what the street has to teach: how to make a buck, how to make it with a woman, how to survive as she hustles from the blood-and-beer-drenched corners of her St. Louis meat-packing district '50s youth, through the sex-soaked Hollywood alleys of her '60s baby butch years, into the druggy metropolis of '70s San Francisco.
Beebo Brinker by Ann Bannon — Beebo, a butch 17-year-old farm girl newly arrived in Beat-era Greenwich Village sets out to find love.
Departure from the Script by Jae — An aspiring actress meeting photographer, femme meeting butch in this light-hearted lesbian romance.
Doc and Fluff: The Dystopian Tale of a Girl and Her Biker by Pat Califia — Filled with love, sex, and adventure, Doc and Fluff careens through the lives of a pair of outlaw women struggling to survive on the road.
Feast While You Can by Mikaella Clements by Onjuli Datta — A young woman who's lived her whole life in small town finds herself violently possessed by an ancient memory-eating entity that inhabits the caves bordering her home.
Last Night at the Telegraph Club by Malinda Lo — America in 1954 is not a safe place for two girls to fall in love, especially not in Chinatown. With deportation looming over her father Lily and Kath risk everything for their love.
Lucy and Mickey by Red Jordan Arobateau — Lesbian life in the late 50s, early 60s; and a powerful romance & sexual drama between Lucy and Mickey.
Mrs. S by K Partrick — Hired as matron at an elite English boarding school, a young butch begins a passionate, illicit affair with the headmaster's wife.
Patience and Sarah by Isabel Miller — Patience and Sarah's romantic bond does not sit well with the puritanical New England farming town in which they live.
Perfume and Pain by Anna Dorn — A controversial Los Angeles author attempts to revive her career and finally find true love in this hilarious nod to 1950s lesbian pulp fiction.
Satan's Best by Red Jordan Arobateau — Volume #1 in the ten book lesbian biker series THE OUTLAW CHRONICLES.
Stone Butch Blues by Leslie Feinberg — The life of Jess Goldberg, a working-class butch in New York from the 1940s through the 1970s.
The Well of Loneliness by Radclyffe Hall — The timeless struggle of a butch and femme couple to be accepted by "polite" society.
Trash by Dorothy Allison — A collection of short stories which explore a poor white Southern woman's decision to confront the violence, poverty and pain of her existence, and in the face of all of it to embrace her class, her culture and her lesbian sexuality.
Erotica Anthologies
Back To Basics: A Butch-Femme Anthology by Theresa Szymanski
Breathless: Erotica by Kitty Tsui
Hard Road, Easy Riding: Lesbian Biker Erotica by Sacchi Green, Rakelle Valencia
Rode Hard, Put Away Wet: Lesbian Cowboy Erotica by Sacchi Green, Rakelle Valencia
Set in Stone: Butch-on-Butch Erotica by Angela Brown
Sometimes She Lets Me: Best Butch Femme Erotica by Tristan Taormino
The Harder She Comes: Butch/Femme Erotica by D.L. King
Photography Books
Butch/Femme ed. by M.G. Soares
Butch: Not Like The Other Girls by SD Holman
Dagger On Butch Women by Lily Burana, Roxxie Linnea Due
Love Bites by Del LaGrace Volcano
Making Out: The Book Of Lesbian Sex And Sexuality by Zoe Schramm-Evans, Laurence Jaugey Paget
Nothing But The Girl: The Blatant Lesbian Image by Susie Bright, Jill Posener
Renegades: San Francisco, The 1990s by Chloe Sherman
The Butch/Femme Photo Project by Wendi Kali
The Drag King Book by Del LaGrace Volcano, Jack Halberstam
The Femme's Guide to the Universe by Shar Rednour
Film
A Complicated Queerness: Living Femme in a Dyke Community (2007) dir. Johanna Buchignani, Emily Hillman — This film investigates the ways in which gender, power and sexism are lived and experienced within the San Francisco Mission dyke community.
A Day in the Life of a Bull-Dyke (1995) dir. Lorri Millan, Shawna Dempsey — A Day in the Life of a Bull-Dyke follows a big boned butch into skirmishes, drag, and the arms of a beautiful recruit.
Before Stonewall (1984) dir. Greta Schiller, Robert Rosenberg — The history of the Gay and Lesbian community before the Stonewall riots began the major gay rights movement.
Bound (1996) dir. The Wachowskis — Corky, a tough female ex-convict working on an apartment renovation in a Chicago building meets a couple living next door, Caesar, a paranoid mobster, and Violet.
By Hook or By Crook (2001) dir. Harry Dodge, Silas Howard — The story follows two unlikely friends as they commit petty crimes and figure out their places in the world.
Dream Girls (1994) dir. Kim Longinotto, Jano Williams — Women join Japan's all-female Takarazuka Revue musical theater troupe, portraying men's roles. The film explores gender dynamics, desires, and complexities of female identity in Japanese society through these performers' experiences.
Drifting Flowers (2008) dir. Zero Chou — Three poetic tales of seeking the true identity. In the first story, Jing, a blind singer, falls in love with her band’s tomboy accordionist Diego. In another time and place, Lily, an elderly lesbian and Yen, her gay friend, create an unexpected bond and support each other in a time of crisis. Finally, we see Diego before she joined the band, when as a teenager she came to grips with her gender identity.
Fingers and Kisses (1995) dir. Shu Lea Cheang — Cheang has taken her camera to the streets for a candid glimpse of lesbian public sexuality. The film challenges to the question “What do lesbians do?”
Forbidden Love: The Unashamed Stories of Lesbian Lives (1992) dir. Lynne Fernie, Aerlyn Weissman — Ten women talk about being lesbian in the 1940s-1960s. Interspersed among the interviews and archival footage are four dramatized chapters from the pulp novel Forbidden Love.
Gay Tape: Butch and Femme (1985) by Cecilia Dougherty — The Gay Tape brings “a little fine-tuning” to the question of representation, honing in on the subjective particularities of the butch-femme dynamic as experienced by members of Dougherty’s local Bay Area dating pool.
Gender Troubles: The Butches (2016) dir. Lisa Plourde — Butch lesbians from a wide range of backgrounds and ages provide a compelling exploration of society's assumptions and challenge ideas about what it means to be female.
Hubby/Wifey (2005) dir. Todd Hughes — From 1911 to 1946, Gertrude Stein and Alice B. Toklas lived together in Paris as husband and wife. Although they were not "out" as lesbians, the inseparable duo forged a prophetic and enduring same-sex union. In HUBBY/WIFEY, a modern lesbian couple shares a fever dream with their foremothers, Gertrude and Alice, of the joys and trials of gay marriage.
If These Walls Could Talk 2 (2000) dir. Jane Anderson, Anne Heche, Martha Coolidge — This anthology of short films tells the stories of three lesbian couples - who live in the same house at different periods of time - who are at a crossroads in their lives.
Last Call at Maud's (1993) dir. Paris Poirier — The life and times of Maud’s, the longest running lesbian bar ever.
Lives: Visible/Leftovers (2017) dir. Michelle Citron — Two thousand private snapshots hidden away for over fifty years reveal the rich history of Chicago’s working class butch/fem life in the pre-Stonewall era.
Living with Pride: Ruth C. Ellis @ 100 (1999) dir. Yvonne Welbon — Documentary on the oldest known black lesbian activist, who pioneered in creating a safe space for people like herself in the heartland of America.
My Femme Divine (1999) dir. Karen Everett — A blending of personal memoir, performance, and group discussion to explore the complex, passionate dynamics of butch/femme lesbian relationships.
One Small Step (1999) dir. Catherine Crouch — A rambunctious 8-year-old tomboy, Ernestine “Teen” Miller is taught by her parents that she can be anything she wants. Teen learns there is one exception to this rule when she announces to her mother that she is determined to marry the neighbor girl.
Rebel Dykes (2021) dir. Siân A. Williams, Harri Shanahan — A heady mash-up of animation, archive footage and interviews tells the story of a radical scene: squatters, BDSM nightclubs, anti-Thatcher rallies, protests demanding action around AIDS and the fierce ties of chosen families.
Salmonberries (1991) dir. Percy Adlon — A woman (played by k.d. lang) who grew up in a small town in Alaska goes to the public library to try and find out who her parents were. She eventually befriends the librarian, an East German immigrant who lost her husband while escaping from behind the Iron Curtain. They help each other try to find closure to the events in their past.
Sex, Lies, Religion (1994) dir. Annette Kennerley — Lesbian cruising in Abney Park cemetery, featuring the filmmaker and a woman she’d met the night before at the capital’s short-lived Clit Club.
Shinjuku Boys (1995) dir. Jano Williams, Kim Longinotto — Three trans masculine hosts working at the New Marilyn Club in Tokyo’s bustling Shinjuku district talk frankly about their lives, revealing their views on love, sex, and identity.
Stormé: The Lady of the Jewel Box (1987) dir. Michelle Parkerson — Through archival clips, Stormé DeLarverie, bodygaurd of a women's club and former drag king looks back on the grandeur of the Jewel Box Revue and its celebration of pure entertainment in the face of homophobia and segregation.
Stud Life (2012) dir. Campbell X — JJ, a lesbian, works as a wedding photographer with Seb, a gay man who is her best friend. After JJ falls in love with a gorgeous diva, her friendship with Seb becomes strained, and she may be forced to choose between Seb and her lover.
The Aggressives (2005) dir. Daniel Peddle — The Aggressives is an exposé on the subculture of masculine presenting people of color and their femme counterparts.
The Watermelon Woman (1996) dir. Cheryl Dunye — An aspiring black lesbian filmmaker researches an obscure 1930s black actress billed as the Watermelon Woman.
Two Girls against the Rain (2012) dir. Sopheak Sao — How two women fell in love, survived the Khmer Rouge, became a family, and transformed a community.
Miscellaneous
A Butch Road Map by Ivan Coyote — spoken word
A Dyke's Bike Repair Handbook by Jill Taylor — motorcycle care/repair handbook
Butch Between the Wars: A Pre-History of Butch Style in Twentieth-Century Literature, Music, and Film by Karen Allison Hammer — dissertation
Feminizing Theory: Making Space for Femme Theory by Rhea Ashley Hoskin — thesis
Femme: Feminists, Lesbians, and Bad Girls by Laura Harris, Elizabeth Crocker
Lineage To My Femme Foremothers by A.N. — zine
Lipstick & Dipstick's Essential Guide to Lesbian Relationships by Gina Daggett, Kathy Belge
Narrating and Negotiating Butch and Femme: Storying Lesbian Selves in a Heteronormative World by Sara L. Crawley — dissertation
On the Appropriation of Femme from Lesbians Over Everything, a discussion between four femmes — article
The Misunderstood Gender: A Model of Modern Femme Identity by Heidi Levitt, Elisabeth Gerrish, Katherine Hiestand — study
The Mythic Mannish Lesbian: Radclyffe Hall and the New Woman by Esther Newton
To All the Beautiful, Kick-Ass, and Fierce, Full-Bodied Femmes by Ivan Coyote — spoken word
Namaygoosisagagun First Nation/Collins has burned to the ground. The entire community is nothing but ashes after being quickly consumed by wildfires. They did not have any support from emergency services, and no one offered aid. The community saved themselves by escaping into boats because no one came.
Mishkeegogamang and Cat Lake have lost power. Families are ending up in shelters with nothing. Armstrong, Lac La Croix, Whitesand, Gull Bay, Lac des Mille Lacs are currently in the fires path and all members are being evacuated.
All this loss, all this devastation, and it was entirely preventable.
After steadily underfunding wildland firefighting and purposefully excluding Indigenous wildland firefighters and Indigenous wildfire organizations from wildfire operations, firefighter training, decisionmaking, and resource exchanges, in 2025, Doug Ford slashed the forest firefighting budget.
It's hard to ignore his decision to cut funding and leave us out of adequate fire training (even though we've lived with forest fires for thousands of years—far longer than settlers have been in Canada—and made sure fires like the ones we're all seeing today were prevented through kinisitotēn) when, despite making up less than 5% of the population, we account for 42% percent of all wildfire evacuations in Canada.
And when we are successfully evacuated, we face discrimination and racism—like Kashechewan—because it's always been easier to blame us than it is to blame the true culprit: denialism, corportate greed, and colonization.
The people of Collins and every other impacted community deserve better.
Right now, the AFN is currently accepting donations to help Collins First Nation. If you're able to, please consider donating.
ONWA (Ontario Native Women's Association) is another great place to donate to. They have outreach vans going to motels and inns and offering food, water, resources, and cultural support to those impacted by the wildfires.
Other places to consider donating to are Mikinakoos Emergency Fund, Red Cross, True North Aid, Indigenous Climate Action. You can also send donations directly to Whitesand First Nation via e-transfer ([email protected]) and they request that you add your full name in the e-transfer comment section to receive a tax receipt.
*Before sending money, verify that the appeal appears on an official First Nation, Tribal Council or registered charity channel.
If you can't offer financial support, please consider donating items of need. Moontime Connections is currently accepting drop-off donations. If you live in the Thunder Bay area, Namaygoosisagagun Health Office is also taking in donations! They can also bemailed to Superior Inn Hotel & Conference Centre at 555 West Arthur Street, Thunder Bay, ON, P7E 5P8.
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