In her touching foreword, Nestle admits to initially feeling at odds with a project that at first glance seems merely to replicate a feminist analytic that was, as she writes, “born out of its own time’s struggles over erotic territories and gender certainties.” I likewise prefer my butch-femme with excessive specificity-not to mention flannel and fishnets-but time and time again Persistence delivers the real goods of queer living: fearlessness, self-awareness, and, well, persistence.Ĭoyote and Sharman pack their House of Persistence with some big names while admirably insisting that everyone should have a fist in defining, exploring, debunking, and glorifying butch-femme. The book feels fresh and radical throughout, despite somewhat awkwardly presenting itself as this generation’s update to Joan Nestle’s classic The Persistent Desire: A Butch-Femme Reader (1992). With this same spirit of generosity, Persistence excels in the extreme sport of queer truth-telling, thanks to its ambitious editors Ivan E. This thick volume is so personal and comprehensive that it feels a bit like my most recent lesbian camping trip where butches, femmes, and the otherwise queerly-gendered made fires together, grilled up fine-grade tofu, and then spent hours bonding over our spontaneously-assembled archive of queer experience. The rowdy, queer contributors to Persistence: All Ways Butch and Femme (Arsenal Pulp Press) address the immediate, often loaded, topic of butch-femme from every angle, confirming once again just how central this label-and-experience is to queer history. ‘Persistence: All Ways Butch and Femme’ edited by Ivan Coyote and Zena Sharman

The Persistent Desire by Joan Nestle