Stone Butch Blues

“I couldn’t find myself among the girls. I had never seen any adult woman who looked like I thought I would when I grew up. There were no women on the television like the small woman reflected in this mirror, none on the streets. I knew. I was always looking.”

Jess experiences a thrilling sense of self-validation when she tries on her father’s clothes and evaluates herself in the mirror. This is the self she feels most accurately depicts who she will grow to be. She longs to find some role model for this self in life or in popular culture, but none is available to her. She feels like she has to invent this identity herself. 

“What I saw there released tears I’d held back for years: strong, burly women wearing ties and suit coats. Their hair was slicked back. They were the handsomest women I’d ever seen. Some of them were wrapped in slow motion dances with women in tight dresses and high heels who touched them tenderly. Just watching made me ache with need.”

When Jess first arrives at Tifka’s, the gay bar in Niagara Falls that her friend Gloria refers her to, Jess encounters a world she didn’t know existed She finally meets people who reflect her vision of herself and her future. She makes friends who help her learn how to dress, how to act, how to survive in this world.

“All the stone butches and drag queens were lined up facing the wall, hands cuffed behind their backs. Several of the femmes who the cops knew were prostitutes were getting roughed up and separated from the rest. I knew by now that it would take at least a blow job to get them out of jail tonight.” 

This interaction with the police is representative of the law enforcement mentality that Jess and her friends face throughout the book. Gender non-conformists are arrested without charges, hauled off to a police station and brutally mistreated. Sexual harassment and violence are par for the course when Jess and friends are arrested and detained.

“I walked past the auto shop—that’s the class I wanted. Instead they’d had me making popovers with lemon sauce in cooking class. How did Mrs. Noble think I could ever change the world by making popovers?” 

Jess decides that her suspension for sitting at the same table as her African Americans friends is as fine a time as any to drop out of high school. The climate of her school is stifling. White and black students are not allowed to co-mingle, and male and female students have different courses, depending on gender. Jess sees no benefit in remaining in this system.

“The next time the police got their hands on me, my age wouldn’t save me. Fear boiled in the back of my throat. It was going to happen to me. I knew that. But I couldn’t change the way I was. It felt like driving towards the edge of a cliff and seeing what’s coming but not being able to brake. I wished Al was around. I wished Jacqueline would tuck me in on their couch and kiss my forehead and tell me everything would be alright.” 

As Jess becomes more accustomed to the world she is living in and begins to more fully take on her adult identity, she is acutely aware that she will be harassed and victimized by the cops. She longs for a parental figure to help her make sense of the society around her, but Butch Al and Jackie are the closest she has to parental figures since her own parents rejected her.

“Unloading trucks on the docks was male turf. It meant a lot to have another butch watch your back. Grant dug her gloved hands deep inside the pockets of her blue Navy coat. ‘Brr,’ she shivered. ‘I’m freezing my ass off out here. Let’s get inside.’ Then she sauntered, very slowly, towards the loading docks. She never hurried. She was so cool.”

Solidarity at the workplace is vital for Jess. Working with friends like Jan and Grant gives her strong allies, should male harassment become a problem. It is for this reason that Jess looks for work at factories where friends work. It is dangerous to be the only gender non-conformist on the job. As the years go on, Jess learns to emulate the confidence that elders like Grant demonstrate even when faced with homophobic judgment.

“Then the weight was lifted by the voice of one of the Native women. They were social songs, happy songs, songs that made you feel real good to hear them, even if you had no idea what the words meant.” 

Jess enjoys the company of Mohawk and Seneca women at her factory bindery job. Rather than focusing on the ways that Jess is different, the emphasis of their time together is on the ways they are the same. Singing is uplifting to all of them and makes their work time more pleasurable. The indigenous women are so pleased that Jess enjoys their music that they invite her to a powwow and to create her own song,which they will learn and sing with her.

“Boney sneered. ‘Bet you won’t, Goldberg.’ The way he said my name made me realize how much he also hated me as a Jew.” 

Jess is acutely aware that co-worker Jim Boney hates her for her gender identity because of his regular taunts on the job. When her baseball team faces off against his at the company picnic, Jess sees an additional component to his hate: he is also anti-Semitic.

“Duffy added, ‘I don’t think I really realized how hard it is for you. I know what jerks the guys at work can be sometimes…[b]ut when I went to the hospital with you, I saw how you were treated, how they talked about you.’He rubbed his face. When he looked back at me, I saw tears in his eyes.”

Duffy becomes one of Jess’s more loyal friends and one of the few straight men in her life that fully grasp how difficult it is for her to simply survive in the world. When she is set up by a coworker to beinjured on the job, Duffy goes to bat for her, making sure she is able to get paid leave. Duffy is the one who drives her to the hospital and is aghast by the sub-par medical attention Jess receives by unethical and uncompassionate medical providers. This is an issue for Jess throughout the book; she is not able to get the same health services as any other person simply because of her gender identity.

“Jan once told me that Rocco had been beat up so many times nobody could count. The last time the cops beat her she came close to dying. Jan heard that Rocco had taken hormones and had breast surgery […] I only half-believed it but it haunted me. No matter how painful it was to be a he-she, I wondered what kind of courage was required to leave the sex you’d always known or to live so alone.” 

When Jess discovers that a friend, Rocco, is now transitioning to male, she wonders what to make of this decision. Life is hard for her at present, but Jess wonders whether fully embracing a male identity would be any easier. Jess imagines it being a very lonely mode of existence, one in which her present relationships may be voided.

“Milli was bleeding in the backseat. Her face was all busted up. I got in and held her head on my lap. We had to take her to a goddamn veterinarian to get her arm set in a cast. We were afraid the ER might call the cops. It was an off-duty cop who beat her.”

Milli’s trauma is representative of those of so many in the book. The officers who are supposed to protect and serve instead harass and beat LGBTQ individuals they encounter in public spaces. In dire situations, medical attention is nearly impossible to attain. As if they were animals, these women have to be treated by vets. If the cops are called, they may further harm Jess or Jess’s friends. 

“What cruel hand controlled this scene? I saw them just as they saw Ed and me. It was Ro’s family—father, mother, and brothers. They saw us the moment we walked in and whispered into the funeral director’s ear. In a flash, the director announced that the funeral home was closing and we all had to leave. Just like that.” 

When Jess’s friend and butch elder Ro passes away, the family is determined to keep Ro’s friends out. Though many of the butch women dress up in frilly dresses, hoping to play the requisite part to be allowed in, Jess does not. The family kicks all of Ro’s mourning friends out, including her long-term partner, Alice.

“I grew up in leaps and bounds. I learned to reduce the anxieties of life by paying bills on time, keeping receipts and promises, doing laundry before I ran out of underwear, picking up after myself. Most importantly, I learned to say I’m sorry. This relationship was too vital to let dust accumulate in its corners.”

Jess’s relationship with Theresa is unlike any other in her life. Theresa challenges Jess to be a more mature and thoughtful person. She helps Jess manage the little details of life and engages in intellectual discussions with her on topics that Jess comes to see she needs to think about more, such as racial inequality and women’s roles in society. While her previous relationship focused on sex and passion, her romance with Theresa involves both mind and body.

“I frowned. ‘What happened?’ Grant shouted, ‘Stonewall!’ I looked at Ed and shrugged. Jan grinned. ‘The cops tried to raid a bar in Greenwich Village but they got a fight instead. The drag queens and he-shes really kicked ass.’”

News of the Stonewall riots coincides with an incident in Jess’s life in which she and Theresa, flanked by some friends, confront a cop in the act of beating up a gay woman. Though the experience is terrifying for Jess, it is also exhilarating, and she is inspired by Theresa’s courage.

“The police really stepped up their harassment after the birth of gay pride. Cops scribbled down our license plate numbers and photographed us as we entered bars. We held regular dances at a gay-owned bar using police radios to alert us when the cops were about to raid us. We heard about weekly gay liberation and radical women’s meetings at the university, but Theresa was the only one of us who knew her way around campus […] I wondered if this was the revolution.” 

Jess is excited by the prospect of identity politics being discussed and even celebrated. It seems to her like a bold act. Though it feels like progress, it is still a revolution that is being launched on college campuses, far away from the factory where she works. Gay rights and women’s liberation sound appealing, but Jess wonders if they are for the educated middle class. 

“‘Honey, I can’t survive as a he-she much longer. I can’t keep taking the system head on this way. I’m not gonna make it.’ Theresa held me tighter. She didn’t say a word. ‘We were talking about maybe starting on hormones, male hormones. I was thinking I might try and pass as a guy.’”

Jess is nervous to bring up the topic of hormones with Theresa because she knows that Theresa is committed to not being a man’s wife. However, it feels to Jess like life has gotten too hard and that daily interactions are fraught with danger. Jess is interested in taking hormones not to be recognized as male so much as to stay safe.

“The amazing part was that this courtship dance could take place in public and everyone—coworkers and strangers alike—encouraged and approved. Meanwhile, Anita Bryant was thumping the Bible in a well-publicized campaign to overturn a simple gay rights ordinance. I wondered how human affection could be judged so differently.” 

Jess is amazed when she, passing as a man, is able to flirt with and ask out Annie, the waitress of a diner Jess frequents. Not only is it not controversial but the romance is seen is sweet and encouraged by others. It is mystifying to Jess that some relationships can be seen as fine and appropriate while others are seen as dangerous and illegal.

“The more I thought about the two of them being lovers, the more it upset me. I couldn't stop thinking about them kissing each other. It was like two guys. Well, two gay guys would be alright. But two butches? How could they be attracted to each other? Who was the femme in bed?” 

When Jess connects with her old friend Frankie, she demonstrates the limits of her own progressive thinking. Jess is judgmental when Frankie confides that she is dating Johnny, another butch lesbian. Frankie tells Jess that she doesn’t have to get it, but she does have to accept it if they are truly friends. Jess decides that she cannot accept it, for the time being at least. Later, Jess comes to see how biased and narrowed-minded she was in her own thinking.

“I didn’t want to make waves. Why couldn’t I just sign a union card like everyone else and do my job?”

Jess rightly senses that union organizing is dangerous and time-consuming work. She feels that her gender identity is already a strike against her. She is worried about becoming more vocal and putting herself in greater danger. With time, though, and thanks to encouragement from Bolt and Duffy, she comes to see that she possesses a talent for union organizing and has too much to offer to not try.

“‘I know I’m not a straight woman and lesbians won’t accept me as one of them. I don’t know where to go to find the butches I love or the other femmes. I feel completely misunderstood. I feel like a ghost too, Jess.’”

Edna and Jess discuss the ways that evolving ideas of gender identity have impacted them. As women’s liberation and gay rights gather momentum, the two of them feel oddly left behind. Their sense of self now reads as outmoded and even politically incorrect. It is difficult for them to find company that does not want them to label themselves differently or dress or act differently.

“I sighed. ‘I don’t know. There’s never been many other women in the world I could identify with. But I sure as hell don’t feel like a guy either. I don’t know what I am. It makes me crazy.’” 

Being forced to choose between rigid definitions of masculinity and femininity is off-putting to Jess. She does not fit into either of these categories and feels inauthentic as a person because of this.

“Who was I now? Woman or man? That question could never be answered as long as those were the only choices; it could never be answered if it had to be asked.”

Though Jess expects to feel more comfortable and accepted when she passes as male, that is not what she gains from the experience; instead, she is lonelier than ever. She feels like a fraud and like she must conceal her true self. For these reasons, Jess decides to stop taking hormones. While she understands that this is a more dangerous identity to present to the world, Jess feels that she has no choice, as it is the real her.

“I wondered if men know that women talk differently among themselves. I guess the same must be true for the Black and Latino workers too when no whites were around.” 

Jess observes a group of women workers and notices how at ease they seem to be together until a male supervisor temporarily joins their conversation. It occurs to Jess that minority groups are more comfortable when given space of their own to connect and talk in a manner similar to the group of women.