Jeanne Cordova and Lily Burana from Dagger: On Butch Women, edited by Lily Burana, Roxxie, and Linnea Due, Cleis Press, 1994
[Jeanne: Until butches and queens are safe on the streets, the movement really hasn’t done what its core is all about. When I was in activism, I would be passed over to go on television because I was butch, and our movement participates in this butch-phobia. It’s sort of a strange homophobia. It always comes back to fuck us in the end.
Lily: Why is that?
Jeanne: Because that’s not who we are! This whole assimilationist thing that says, “We’re really just like you except for what we do in bed”— that’s garbage. The opposite is true, I think. It’s only in bed that we do the same things as straights. The rest of what we do is totally different— how we think, how we feel, how we walk, how we relate to each other, our culture. Until butches and queens are accepted, then society has not changed about gender roles. When they look at you, and it’s so important for them to decide if you’re male or female that they can’t even enjoy their pancakes…
Lily: Well, then, it’s not about how you have sex, it’s about gender.
Jeanne: I think so.
Lily: Why not the sex? Why the gender?
Jeanne: It’s so firm to the straights. It’s like the sun rising in the east and going down in the west. It’s an archetype that we threaten. When we go on TV, we should put on the meanest-looking butches and the nelliest men. Then we’d get some progress, which brings me to why I think this new queer movement is so critical. I know a lot of people don’t understand that the queer politic goes beyond feminism and cuts to the chase. While I still think it’s important to say that a lesbian identity is very different from a gay male identity, I think the queer movement is the most important ting that’s happened since AIDS or since feminism.]
