Resources
This Resources page is an ongoing work-in-progress. If there’s anything we haven’t covered or you’d like to report a broken link, please contact us.
We’ve divided the resources into the following sections:
Australian
- Butch-Femme-Australia email list: This list includes a range of members, including people who are transgender
- Butch/Femme/Trans Sydney: A group that organises Sydney-based events for people with a connection to butch/femme/trans identities
- Pink Sofa: The forums section of this dating/chat/community site has sections dedicated to butch/femme topics as well as transgender identities
- Australian Transensual Femmes email list: This list, which began in 2001, is “specifically for femmes in Australasia and the transguys who admire and desire us. Transguys are transgender butches, FTMs and transmen”
- Trans Melbourne Gender Project: “Trans Melbourne Gender Project is a coalition of people of all genders. We engage in activism and support around issues of gender. We meet in person and online”
- TransGender Victoria: TransGender Victoria’s mission is “To achieve justice and equity for all transgender people, including those who identify as cross dressers, those who identify as being transsexual, and all other people with gender-related issues”
Overseas
- Butch-femme.com: Created in 1996, Butch-femme.com is a portal that includes forums, mailing lists, and online chat. While the site is primarily for those who are into the butch-femme dynamic (including transmen), “our community is accustomed to a variety of queer & curious folk wandering in”
- ButchFemmeMatchmaker: A personals site for butches, femmes and transfolk
(Back to the top of this page)
- Abode: Australia’s first (and only) fixed location, permanent alternative/fetish club
- King Victoria: Drag King shows every Friday night at the Opium Den hotel in Collingwood
- TransReSext: A “pansexual transgender + genderqueer sex party based in Melbourne and surrounding areas”
- Upstart Alley: “Queer/trans/freak friendly wheelchair accessible events with gender neutral bathrooms to boot!”
(Back to the top of this page)
- Del La Grace Volcano: A gender variant visual artist. “I believe in crossing the line as many times as it takes to build a bridge we can all walk across”
- Fairy Butch: An author, performer and sex educator
- Joan Nestle: A working-class Jewish lesbian femme, writer, teacher, activist and co-founder of the Lesbian Herstory Archives in New York City
- Judith “Jack” Halberstam: An academic and the author of books such as Female Masculinity and The Drag King Book
- Leslie Feinberg: An activist and writer of various works, including the ground-breaking novel Stone Butch Blues
- S. Bear Bergman: Bear is “a writer, a theater artist, an instigator, a gender-jammer, and a good example of what happens when you overeducate a contrarian.” This site features samples of Bear’s writing, including a piece from the book Butch Is A Noun
- Tristan Taormino: An award-winning author, columnist, editor, and sex educator
(Back to the top of this page)
- “Butch and femme” at Wikipedia: The entry on “butch and femme” at Wikipedia
- “Butch-Femme Relations” at glbtq.com: The entry on “butch-femme relations” at glbtq.com, an online encyclopedia of gay, lesbian, bisexual, transgender and queer culture
- Hudson’s FTM Resource Guide: Contains “information on topics of interest to female-to-male (FTM, F2M) trans men, and their friends and loved ones… Transsexual, non-transsexual, intersex, transgender, genderqueer, questioning, and ‘just plain folks’ are all welcome”
- Miss Vera’s Finishing School for Boys Who Want to be Girls: “The world’s first and only crossdressing academy, the place where dreams can and do come true”
- XX Boys: A renowned international photo project, “XX Boys strives to depict the wide variety of transboys, and to promote trans visibility”
- Transensual Femme: “This is a place for Femmes who are primarily attracted to transgendered butches and other guys on the transgender spectrum.” This site hasn’t been updated for years but if you take the time to look around, you may find some useful resources.
(Back to the top of this page)
There are many books available. Below are just a few.
(Note: If you’re based in Melbourne, you might like to buy these books from Hares and Hyenas, Melbourne’s queer bookstore.)
- Carol Queen, The Leather Daddy and the Femme
- Ivan E. Coyote, Close to Spiderman
- Joan Nestle: Many of Joan’s books cover butch/femme/trans topics. In particular, she edited the landmark anthology The Persistent Desire: A Femme-Butch Reader
- Joan Nestle, Clare Howell and Riki-Anne Wilchins, GENDERqUEER: Voices From Beyond the Sexual Binary
- Kate Bornstein: Most of Kate’s books cover issues concerning gender and sexuality. In particular, check out Gender Outlaw: On Men, Women and the Rest of Us and My Gender Workbook
- Leslie Feinberg: Leslie’s books include the classic novel Stone Butch Blues, as well as non-fiction titles such as Trans Liberation: Beyond Pink or Blue and Transgender Warriors: Making History from Joan of Arc to Dennis Rodman
- Minnie Bruce Pratt, S/he
- Patrick Califia: Patrick has written erotic fiction, non-fiction and poetry. His works include the erotic short fiction collection Macho Sluts and non-fiction works such as Sex Changes: The Politics of Transgenderism and Speaking Sex to Power: The Politics of Queer Sex
- Radclyffe Hall, The Well of Loneliness
- Taste This collective, Boys Like Her: Transfictions
(Back to the top of this page)
Here are some of the available films:
- Bound (directors: Andy and Larry Wachowski)
- Boys Don’t Cry (director: Kimberly Peirce)
- Butch Jamie (director: Michelle Ehlen)
- By Hook or By Crook (director: Lynn Breedlove)
- If These Walls Could Talk 2 (second segment) (director: Martha Coolidge)