Butch Is a Noun

by S. Bear Bergman

"Butch is a Noun is a book that a) should be required reading in any gender studies curriculum; b) femmes should read whenever they're feeling unloved, lonely, or misunderstood; c) butches should read; d) all of the above. The answer, of course, is d. Thank you, dear Bear."--Kate Bornstein, author of Gender Outlaw

"Bear's poetry of butchness lets us see into facets of gender that usually aren't so transparent. And made me fall...

• Format: Paperback
• Language: English
• ISBN: 1551523698
• ISBN13: 9781551523699
• Release Date: August 2010
• Publisher: Arsenal Pulp Press
• Length: 192 Pages
• Weight: 0.78 lbs.
• Dimensions: 0.6" x 5.9" x 8.8"

Customer Reviews

An Awesome Book!

As a self-identified femme who has always loved women of the butch persuasion, I have been asked a million times, "If you want to date a girl who looks like a boy, then why don't you just date a boy??" This book finally gave me the words to explain what I already knew I loved: the compassion, the cockiness, the fear, the struggles, the toughness, the sensitivity, and the oft-hidden inner world that makes butches who they are. My very favorite paragraph explains it best... a butch is "someone who has taken on the best gendered characteristics of both woman and man, left a lot of the stuff born of misogyny and heterosexism behind, and walked forward into the world without apology." I think that from now on, THAT will be my answer to the question I am sure I will never stop hearing. Thank you, Bear, for this great book!

Thinking about gender? This book is required

A previous reviewer stated that this book buys into the misogynistic patriarchy, that's not the point of the book. Butch is a Noun is about what and who and why butches are the way they are. It's not about challenging the man, it's about celebrating butches in all of their flavors and forms. It's about looking at the gendered world around us and seeing it differently and how a biologically born woman can be a man in a gender binary world. I highly recommend this book to any and all readers who are curious about the butch/femme dynamic, gender, and sexuality. At times funny and at times so true that I cried, this is a book worth not just reading, but savoring.

insightful and totally enjoyable

I totally enjoyed this book on many levels. I found thought provoking essays that will keep me ruminating for a while. I found amazing personal depth shared and explored in prose. And the writing was endearing, I found myself wishing I knew how to waltz by the end. Thank You Bear for a wonderful book I know I will read again and again.

Must buy

This book is amazing. I rank it up there in the top five books about queer gender. I found it funny, moving, and very smart. Bear's prose reaches inside you to hold you close, show you something you never thought of, offer a mirror to the things you always knew, and just delight in your big belly laughs. Enjoy this book; I know I did.

...it's also an adjective... and a verb...

Bear confronts identity where most of us would prefer to quietly take it for granted, and does so in entertaining language and single-serving essays. Explaining up front the benefits and how-to's of gender-neutral language, ze lays out the realities of living as a non-normative gender in a way that is both authentic and intense. This is a book for butches, for those who love them, for all flavors of identity outlaws, and for anyone who needs a little help understanding why not everyone in society meets hir expectations (and how to deal with it). Bear is sweet, funny, honest, and charismatic. You'll fall in love with hir.