#im low-key not the person to ask for anything that isn't butchfemme honestly 😭

[cruelsister-moved]

thank you so much for explaining!! i will save that post for reference <3 also may i ask what books would you recommend about lesbian history? I finally came to terms that im lesbian and i realized i have not read much of lesbianism history. I already bought the comic dykes to watch out for.

ur welcome!! i love this doc so much - it's butchfemme specifically but it's a compilation of excerpts from various writings by all sorts of people over many many decades (and stuff that was written later by people who experienced being a lesbian in the 50s/60s/70s etc) and it has fiction and nonfiction, essays and autobiographies and poems and manifestos. even if you have no interest in butchfemme i still recommend reading about it bc butches are a ginormous part of lesbian history and the community would be a lot better if more people knew to treat them w respect and understanding

I absolutely don't agree w everything contained here and that's why I think it's such a good resource. a lot a lot a lot of people are going to tell you to read stone butch blues but if you're going to read one single thing cover to cover make it something which covers all sorts of perspectives and contexts (including an excerpt from sbb) rather than one person's very specific fictionalised autobiography. it's also just a lot more accessible to read a lot of shorter pieces.

literally the main piece thing u should know if u want to know lesbian history is never let urself believe there's such a thing as one lesbian history. every lesbian and every lesbian subgroup has its own history and many of these actively contradict. you can find a gay elder to back up literally anything you want to say and it doesn't make you right.

personally most of my learning is just trying to read a wide range of individuals and about their lives, like i think its important to humanise lesbians especially if you just came to terms with being one so like go for lesbian historical figures and read of and about them.. its probably up to you to find people you click with but it's not super hard to google about famous and historical lesbians and look into some of them. you could also look into boston marriages, the harlem renaissance, the ball scene, and the bar scene. but try to find primary sources or people who diligently cite primary sources bc there is a lot of fictionalisation about these by people with agendas.

off the top of my head list of lesbian writers: angela davis, gertrude stein, virginia woolf, radclyffe hall, alice walker, jeanette winterson, audre lorde, emily dickinson, mary oliver, carol ann duffy. i havent read all of these extensively but they are a starting place if you really have no idea at all. the frustration with lesbian history in particular is that the further you look back the harder it is to find information about lesbians who werent white and upper class but there is quite a wealth of black lesbian literature in the last 50+ years who have been extremely important to lesbian history as a whole

ALSO the 1977 album "Lesbian Concentrate: A Lesbianthology of Songs and Poems" was released by a label called olivia records which was notable for being lesbian-run, trans inclusive, and featuring multiple gay women of colour on its roster. its not on spotify afaik but it should be on YouTube & if you can't find it I will upload it to drive for you :-) it features everything from acoustic comedy songs to this mellow soul love song written about another woman ^_^

oh also there's a magazine called lesbian connection that you can subscribe to for free or for a donation online and you can get the magazine digitally or by post all over the world. it features submissions by lesbians everywhere so once again you can get all sorts of perspectives from that in the modern day