Stone Butch Disco

Power femme Jamie Reed of the LGB Courage Coalition joins the podcast (@lgbcouragecoalition and @jamiewhistle on Substack).

Rachel and Katherine fangirl over Jamie’s bravery as a whistleblower, the process behind the New York Times article that changed everything, and her incredible work since to protect lesbians like her and us. We squeeze in some delightful butch-femme confessionals, too: it’s not the femme’s hips that Jamie’s tal...

Kath (formerly known as Akiva) explains why she changed back to using her birth name, and why “harmless” name changes aren’t guaranteed harmless in the current climate. Rachel talks about her own name and voice as sex markers she cares about, and drawing the line on pluralistic tolerance when it comes to butches getting yoked to maleness. The conversation turns toward butch-femme as a deep structure that persists against the percei...

Rachel and Akiva have fun with this one.

We start by taking apart pronouns (Dear Committee, the plural neuter is male by default, and butches are…the opposite of “multiple men”) and then take our lesbian chisel to various other anti-bravery/queer (those are synonyms) institutions of language and society.

Pride requires bravery, so we dose it out. Happy June!

We cover:

* Queer missionaries evangelizing via pronoun circles

* Akiva’s laws...

This is a long one, y’all. But it’s a real one too.

This is a rerelease from Season 1 of Stone Butch Disco. Rachel’s intro explains its relevance to SBD’s past, present, and future theory aims. If you’re interested in supporting the pod, (THANKS AND—) please join us on Substack rather than Patreon! We’re in the process of permanent relocation.

In this episode from 2022, Rachel talks to femme lesbian writer and theorist Elle Cooney. T...

Are you attracted to feminine lesbians but doubting they could be into you?

Sick of shuffling through a never-ending cycle of gender euphoria and gender dysphoria? (Not to worry, those are made-up.)

Plagued by the need to explain to the internet how you’re butch?

Keep naming the thing, but can’t feel a damn thing?

After thoroughly attempting (and giving up on) the 21st century quest to stick a flag in “euphoria” wherever it can be labe...

Akiva and Rachel talk exiting the “lesbian sameness doctrine” — one of our key points of departure from much of radical feminist discourse — and how this immediately opens your life to better sex between women.

Things that made this a difficult exit:

— Use of the word butch as an aesthetic label

— Use of the word butch outside of the butchfemme context

— Use of the word butch by queers who have postmoderned themselves so hard they no l...

This episode parachutes you down into a conversation between friends, in the style of sh*t talking they’d usually do off mic.

Rachel and Akiva discuss Akiva's listenership of Stone Butch Disco during Season 1 (episodes from which are now trickling back out to the public), gently alighting upon the matter of the project’s namesake — and everything the world needed that one bad book couldn’t give.

They discuss the MANY social groups wh...

Akiva and Rachel do the Q&A thing — whereupon Rachel has the *tiniest* breakdown over the state of the world that produced the questions. (The full arc of this has been mostly spared from listeners. Lol, we tried.)

Questions we answer:

* How do stone butches have orgasms? (Because we do. Crazy, right?)

* Why are gender dysphoria zombies such sad sacks?

* What’s the correct plural of clitorises? (Our vote’s not in the dictionary.)

* Did...

We submit here Exhibit B: recorded evidence that Akiva thoroughly persuaded Rachel of the cultural and butch importance of Greta Gerwig’s Barbie (although admittedly, it didn’t take much convincing because of Rachel’s crush on Greta; hi, Greta 😍).

Within, we:

* Rip “third wave” feminism’s empty pluralism to shreds

* Become truthers for Greta Gerwig’s female realpolitik (THAT LAST LINE and credits sequence, y’all!)

* Interpret Ken’s se...

Is this butch lesbians’ day in the cultural sun?

Rachel’s mom and sister have brought her the Good News: the internet is obsessed with a butch who 1) is not a comedian and 2) by all signals of subject position, is proud to be a woman. Her name is Loretta Bush, and she can be seen for roughly 3 shining minutes in the documentary about Gabby Petito’s horrific and infuriating murder by her piece of sh*t boyfriend, American Murder: Gabb...

In an attempt to — once and for all — stake out the difference between butch lesbians and Elmo from Sesame Street, Rachel and Akiva discuss whether we are indeed fetishists overfocusing on a specific tactile experience. Other ingredients include:

* Akiva apologizes for doing the bad thing :’P

* Love for “masc” ambiguity/androgyny and hatred for the hard (read: unchanging, specific) butch

* “Feminist” misreads of butchfemme relationshi...

Rachel gives context for Stone Butch Disco’s more explicit recent politics around affirming sex-based reality for butch/femme lesbians, while still holding the sex vs. gender linguistic distinction central to SBD’s theoretical work. More to come on that front in future episodes.

We forgot to add our updated intro when we put this out earlier this week, so we’re pushing this out again for a re-rerelease.🙃 Enjoy!

We've said it before ...

Our friend Lauren of the Courage Coalition joins us to share her experiences on the steps of the Supreme Court at United States v. Skrmetti, a case that will determine states’ powers to ban child gender transition. As Lauren’s experience shows, this case is a flashpoint between gay activists and legacy civil rights organizations, as the latter realize they’re on the wrong side (sorry, ACLU volunteer, we know this is overwhelming). ...

A special thank you to our paid Substack subscribers, who get early access to this post and our new podcast episodes. Free subscribers, enjoy this sneak peek—the full post will be unlocked later this week!

In this bonus episode of SBD, Akiva reads aloud her new article for SBD about her experience as a butch lesbian woman with a history of trans-identification- and her argument for moving beyond the “detrans” label. Read the article...

In this episode, Akiva and Rachel continue their butch lesbian firefighter quest and urge an immediate clarification of The Bearded Lesbian's mission, before even one more young person gets convinced that a quest for maleness = the lesbian experience. We do a deep dive into TBL’s credulous platforming of a 23-year-old trans-identified TikTokker who has been on testosterone since he was 17 but has for the last three months identifie...

Rachel and Akiva analyze various nonsense that people whose moral center is “comparison to men” are attempting to glom onto butch lesbian identity, and how acknowledging one’s biological sex doesn’t necessarily preclude misogynistic disidentification from women.

We cover:

* Our former collaborator Aaron Kimberly’s turn, contra his stated values, towards promoting voices that explicitly support medical transition

* Buck Angel’s history...

Paid Substack subscribers enjoy exclusive early access to new content, including video versions of the latest episodes.

You can also support Stone Butch Disco and the lesbian writing and archives project at StoneButchDisco.com by becoming a patron at patreon.com/stonebutchdisco

“…on The Barry Gibb Talk Show!” (Full permission/encouragement to watch those SNL skits before you listen to this.)

In this episode, which was originally slate...

Paid Substack subscribers enjoy exclusive early access to new content, including video versions of the latest episodes.

You can also support Stone Butch Disco and the lesbian writing and archives project at StoneButchDisco.com by becoming a patron at patreon.com/stonebutchdisco

Sam and Rachel co-chair an adventure through the hills and valleys of our recent and longstanding butch feels (including, yes, this episode's title), talk abo...

Paid Substack subscribers enjoy exclusive early access to new content, including video versions of the latest episodes.

You can also support Stone Butch Disco and the lesbian writing and archives project at StoneButchDisco.com by becoming a patron at patreon.com/stonebutchdisco

Cowboy Jen (TikTok @cowboyjen, Instagram @cowboyjippy, Tumblr @cowboyjen68, YouTube @cowboyjen1) and Rachel pick up where our last episode left off, this time...