Why we write:

“It’s as if the category of lesbian is just emptying out.” —Judith/Jack Halberstam, quoted in The New York Times, 08/20/06

and then:

“I left the lesbian community in the Eighties because it was too depressing.” —Judith/Jack Halberstam, 2018, Penn LGBT Center, personal communication.

“I wrote a book about the history of transing gender in the UK & US in the 18th & 19th centuries. I use ‘they/them/theirs’ throughout the ENTIRE book for everyone who transed gender, as a way to make space for their varied identities, which the historic records don’t capture.” —Jen Manion, in a tweet, as though there’s any such thing as a neutral pronoun when she’s using “they” to mark women out of line, 09/12/21

“I do want to play a Cassandra role for a moment…and warn that in many locations and many ways the discourses of lesbianism – and specifically, Lesbian Feminism – have been all but silenced [in academic spaces]…[This has resulted in] the appropriation of our work and ideas (including Feminism itself) without any recognition or citation of sources, the vilification of our values and continued existence, and the misrepresentation and ahistorical construction of the past thirty years.” —Bonnie Zimmerman, 2007, p. 49-50 (see Working Bibliography below)

“The manifest discourse, therefore, is really no more than the repressive presence of what it does not say; and this ‘not-said’ is a hollow that undermines from within all that is said.” —Michel Foucault, The Archaeology of Knowledge and the Discourse on Language (1969)

We believe women need to write. especially when we disagree with each other.

To all my fellow self-identified feminists, of diverse minds and bodies: I believe writing will help us see each other’s humanity, discipline assholery without canceling people, end the TERF wars, and get on each other’s teams. My goal in the essays below is to provide witness to how the patriarchy divides and conquers feminists and to lay out a program for coming together. I believe that means writing, loving, and listening. Love, Rachel

Note: The longform essays below are Rachel’s original writing; thus, they’re her responsibility and no one else’s. If you have a question, comment, or concern in response to them, we invite you to send a wonderfully civil email to stonebutchdisco@gmail.com, with subject line “For Rachel.”

Keep in mind: “Hate mail,” if any, may be published in its entirety, but with all identifying information redacted. I will reinsert the spirit of dialogue if it’s not offered.

Seen around the web:

Katherine Park, “The Rediscovery of the Clitoris: French Medicine and the Tribade, 1570-1620,” in The Body in Parts (Hillman and Mazzio, 1997)

Excerpt from Svetlana Alexievich’s The Unwomanly Face of War, re: how patriarchy structures our stories

Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie, “It Is Obscene: A True Reflection in Three Parts”

  • “…And so we have a generation of young people on social media so terrified of having the wrong opinions that they have robbed themselves of the opportunity to think and to learn and to grow.

    I have spoken to young people who tell me they are terrified to tweet anything, that they read and re-read their tweets because they fear they will be attacked by their own. The assumption of good faith is dead. What matters is not goodness but the appearance of goodness. We are no longer human beings. We are now angels jostling to out-angel one another. God help us. It is obscene.”

Formerly lesbian/currently “queer” website Autostraddle’s film critic Drew Gregory (a Top Critic on Rotten Tomatoes) on Drew’s demands of lesbian sexuality and Drew’s blatant hatred for “cis women”:

  • “And if I do eventually trust you enough to let you interact with my penis it certainly won’t be the same as whatever experiences you’ve had with cis men … But this would never be my rebuttal, because my loyalties do not lie with some cis woman and my desire to get laid. I will always care more about trans women who will never have access to surgery. I will always care more about trans women who don’t even want surgery. I will always care more about trans women who do want their dicks sucked. Because discomfort with one part of your body does not make you trans and does not make you a woman.”

  • “I’m not asking for perfection. But I am asking for effort. Not for my sex life — I wouldn’t date most of you anyway — but for my humanity, for the humanity of so many. Don’t repeat platitudes. Really unlearn your binary connections between genitalia and gender. Really unlearn the associations you bring to bodies you’ve yet known. Really unlearn these things and start seeing trans people as individuals, as people. Unlearn these things because if you don’t trans lives will continue to be debated in the Senate and I will not fuck you.”

  • Excerpt from comment chain, including comments from Autostraddle’s CEO Riese Bernard

  • Note: Autostraddle’s “About” page (accessed March 19, 2023) still describes it as “the internet’s most popular, and oldest independently-owned, website for lesbian culture.” This is where Rachel went when she first came out as gay, for information about the community. It’s now owned by binder company “For Them,” and staffed by zero proudly female butches.

Drew Gregory on how, quite strangely, “Women Talking” wasn’t about women talking at all, nor about males causing pain to females

George Packer for The Atlantic, on words: “Prison does not become a less brutal place by calling someone locked up in one a person experiencing the criminal-justice system.”

The r/detrans 2023 screened demographic survey and:

TO CITE:

If you ever want/need to formally cite any of my (Rachel’s) writing — THANK YOU and BLESS YOU for writing about lesbians, and this could help for copy-pasting:

Rachel of Stone Butch Disco [(Month Year)] Web blog post. [“Title of Essay.”] StoneButchDisco.com. Opinions Her Own, accessed online at https://www.stonebutchdisco.com/opinionsherown.