Jess Louis: "Loving Butch/Femme as a Trans Woman"

https://www.autostraddle.com/with-gratitude-and-struggle-loving-butchfemme-as-a-trans-woman-399289/

Having recently discussed butch/femme dynamics through the lens of Davis & Kennedy, Lorde, and Feinberg, I was excited to see this Autostraddle piece from Jess Louis in which she describes her love for butch/femme and how this affiliation intersects with her identity as a trans femme lesbian woman. In the piece, Louis describes first coming out as queer and trans and believing in the idea that "butch and femme were just heteronormative mirrors of the gender binary, but for queers". She traces this belief to living in a femmephobic and misogynistic world, as well as being a part of a punk / DIY community which generally understood women's femininity as a "manifestation of patriarchy". Finally, she contextualizes this past belief with having grown up following the "feminist / lesbian sex wars in the 1970's and 1980's". Louis' description of the forces leading to her initial distaste towards butch/femme as well as her eventual acceptance and love for femme as an identity is fantastic and absolutely worth a read. I also appreciate her insistence that we give more oxygen to the existence of femme/femme and butch/butch love! I'll be curious to hear what ya'll think about this piece!