Welcome to the internet’s - and maybe the world’s - only library dedicated to butch-femme lesbian life & theory.

Stone Butch Disco is named in honor of butch lesbian author Leslie Feinberg.

Feinberg’s book Stone Butch Blues gives us inspiration, recognition, and fodder for tough and important conversations about not only butch lesbian existence, but also the centrality of female homosexuality and femme lesbian women’s desire in any conversation about what female gender nonconformity does in the world.

It is fundamentally gender-nonconforming to be homosexual as a female human being, when female people (and, the more traditionally “gender conforming” their appearance, the more this is the case) are supposed/presumed/disciplined to be sexually fluid — read: available — for everyone else’s desire, particularly but not limited to male desire. At SBD, we recognize femmes and all women-identified female lesbians for their bravery in refusing to be liquidated by queer post-sex erasure. Pretending sex doesn’t exist is the simplest and cleanest way to protect the sexist status quo.

Below, you’ll find Feinberg’s photo hanging out among other lesbian theorists’. Putting these folks in the same place forms a picture of both the diversity and the specificity of lesbian thought. It’s a rejoinder to the notion that lesbian theory can or should be subsumed into other publishing categories.

We’ve selected quotes from their work that generally aren’t the most-cited ones…because…you guessed it: They’re about lesbians. Specifically, they’re about female masculinity, how female diversity threatens heteronorms, and why butch-femme relationships are explosively radical.

We’re allowing these diverse folks’ words about gender theory, embodiment, sexuality, and lesbian difference to exist in the same place. We’re centering lesbian thought, because the phrase “lesbian theory” was unjustly purged from the academic vocabulary and deserves a full return.

You won’t find this collection in a university.

If something you read “slaps,” email stonebutchdisco@gmail.com and we’ll rustle you up a PDF.

Also, writers: Send us your wordstuffs and photo to join these esteemed humans!

NOTE: This library is MASSIVELY under construction, although every theorist’s page has at least one note. It needs about 200 more woman-hours to get it to a reasonably representative place. Rachel has no fewer than 300 academic articles written by lesbians that she would like to comb through to expand this page.

So: if you’d like to donate to help fund a 20-hour-per-week, aggressive book-scrapin’, in-depth Virtual Lesbian Library, then #1, you’re an angel, and #2, here’s our Patreon:

Click a pic to journey forth: