2 Aug 2025
S2 E15: Conquering Fears of Both Inadequacy and Bombs
Rachel convinces an *exhausted from running to bomb shelters* Katherine that while women face our own challenges to form community, a lot of them are because of the vise-like grip of patriarchal self-discipline and self-improvement ideals requiring women to compete with/seek-to-destroy each other, and there is no need to panic. Unless the shelter alert goes off.
Rachel wrote a smutty thing (https://stonebutchdisco.substack.com/p/butch-femme-smut) and talks about why. (The new edit of the full short story, which significantly updates the already-published part, will be released soon at stonebutchdisco.substack.com (http://stonebutchdisco.substack.com/).)
We discuss:
* Random Jewish marriage trivia
* Patriarchy and capitalismâs folie Ă deux situation that inspires unhealthy competition among women
* Queer as a process of commodification
* Rachelâs theory about why the Sexual Revolution of the 1960s didnât actually âtakeâ for women; i.e., it was never about usHow a lot of âliberatedâ sexuality was really women being called to perform a new sexual fluidity. The needle didnât move much on male sexual agency, because it didnât need to (their agency to choose their object of desire was and is still assumed).
* Many thinkers at this time set the stage for queer discourse. Ironically, women pushing back in lesbian discourse tried so hard to build an entirely new system of representation around sexuality that they made language/symbol prior to reality, created a safe harbor for postmodernism, and basically let men âwinâ structure.
* Rachelâs take on the supposed academic rejection of butch-femme in groups like Radicallesbians (she thinks itâs overblown and that even academics have always known butch-femme lesbians are real across history, even as we scare them)
* Womenâs Studies and what it WAS (what it WAS was the creation of lesbians who did at least 60% of the work and then became like 5% of the beneficiaries, and finally 0% when it turned âqueerâ)
* We talk about philosopher Luce Irigaray and other early lesbian feminist philosophers who allowed women to be fluid and men to be stable, and⊠We do have the right to blame them.
* We talk about how Judith Butler started her career making space for butches and femmes, insisting that âqueerâ was not an identity, and arguing that gender could not be separated from sex or sexuality. Then, she sold out.
* We argue about why womenâs structural and symbolic relation to the truth and to truth-telling is unique compared to menâs. Katherine thinks itâs a woman problem; Rachel says it requires analysis of patriarchyâs reward structure
* We discuss experiences whether/how straight women have felt like allies, successfully, and when the field has felt hostile
* Rachel: âI feel like it's just a socialized tendency for all of us to seek others' approval. And I think that comes from the patriarchy. I think there's no way that it doesn't. Women are to be seen, like it's John Berger, we always think about what we look like to other people. Men just exist.â
* We talk about feeling more or less comfortable with men and women, socially (and feel differently, as predicted)
* We talk about similar feelings about gender and similar experiences with bullying as we were growing up, before our opinions/experiences started to somewhat diverge
* How we played as kids, and how Rachel felt like boys could be ambiguously feminine but she would be disciplined if she was too masculine or âunladylikeâ (Texas), while Katherine felt like the girls created a conformist and hierarchical social world that felt similarly to how âqueerâ feels now
* Drag queens pretending like (or truly thinking?) they know things about lesbiansSad meme lesbians and why that doesnât help us find each other
* People belittling femininity and femme identity, and our anger on behalf of femmes
* FEMMES CAN HAVE SHORT HAIR AND WEAR ANY CLOTHES
* How lesbians may be afraid that taking the âbutchâ or âfemmeâ label means they need to conform to a narrow version of femininity or masculinity, when thatâs not actually what it is â what makes it coherent is the relationality. Without the living thing being the sexual tension, masculinity becomes conflated with maleness.
* Dyads, dildos, and meaning-making
* Defending our womanhood versus defending our masculinity: where this puts us in feminist camps
* Rachel convinces Katherine in the 44th minute that itâs worth blaming the patriarchy, because thatâs whatâs going on (women are made to feel like we are nothing BUT appearances)
* Katherineâs flabbers are gasted despite having experienced the same herself(!!): âI didnât realize that women [in general] donât get that they have intrinsic worth separate from their appearance.â
* Extremely stupid definitions of butch like âa woman known to be a lesbian everywhere she goes.â Katherine says thatâs ethnocentric, and also: people assume she and Rachel are men so it doesnât quite work.
* How do internet trolls get mad at *us* for saying butch is part of butch-femme and supposedly overly-âdefiningâ it that way, when what they say is 100% of the time wayyyy more of an extremely-specific and usually unworkable âdefinitionâ like the above?? We know not.
* On Julie Bindel and Kathleen Stock saying butches arenât âmasculineâ when they probably mean âmale,â but donât separate femininity/masculinity out as a relational lesbian thing. For them, masculinity belongs to maleness (which is cray because it has no definition and is just a floating cultural concept).
* How dressing in the menâs section can be both totally normal and related to butchness but also at the same time not integral to it. The center is relating to the femme; the rest is auxiliary.
* How the structure of what weâre saying and what we have faith in (a purely female form of exchange) really scares the shit out of people
* How the idea of ârolesâ has reason to especially turn women off since patriarchal bullshit constantly accuses women, who are SOCIALIZED TO THINK OF THEMSELVES AS NOTHING BUT APPEARANCE, of being âfake.â
* The scariness of establishing that butch-femme is real and then realizing that what you give your partner might be something another butch or femme can provide. Itâs actually helpful to both parties, but a big negative for codependent people!
* What resolves anxieties? A potent cocktail of words and freedom (*eagle screech*)
* At one point, Rachel engages in an epic rant about fulfillment. Epic.
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