Stone Butches in Written Pornography

Being stone is something that is variously romanticised, looked down on, viewed as the way to be the most butch, and viewed as a failing in those butches who are some way stone. It's pretty clear that being stone means a different thing for every person that has been stone; for some it is an emotional and physical shutdown in response to hurt, in some it is a way to maintain their boundaries, and in some it is just how they are and prefer to be.

Stone tends to mean some combination of three things 1) being genitally stone (not liking one's genitals touched) 2) being physically stone (not liking being touched, especially in sexual ways) and 3) being emotionally stone (not expressing emotion). Since I'm going to focus on written pornography and its depictions of stone butches, in particular, three pieces from Set in Stone (a collection of butch/butch porn), the first two definitions are most relevant.

The three pieces in Set in Stone that most focus on a butch being stone are "A Stone's Throw" by Lesléa Newman, "Bedrock" by Jennifer M. Collins, and "Who Casts the First Stone?" by Patrick Califia. The first two explicitly mention a butch or butches being stone, whereas Patrick Califia's story makes it rather explicit, without the butch in question (whose viewpoint the story is written from) explicitly thinking the word "stone".

I find "A Stone's Throw" highly, highly problematic. First of all, the narrator is really misogynistic and femmephobic - buying into stereotypes of femmes and devaluing them and putting it hand-in-hand with her attraction to other butches. Furthermore, she equates a butch having stuff done to hir as letting hir "inner femme" out, and equates being vulnerable to being femme. And clearly, by the way she talks about femmes, and the way she talks about the current object of her desires (which she can't manage to approach), she not only views femmes as less than her, but it's pretty clear that she would view topping another butch as gaining some sort of status over the other butch, her note that "it's an honor to be the recipient of that much trust" not withstanding.

The action in the story is the description of her being taught how to be butch and how to pick up femmes. The sexual action takes place under the guise of the older butch (Lou) teaching the narrator (Squirt) how to please femmes by having Squirt take their place. When Squirt wants to turn the tables, Lou clearly tells her no, but Squirt goes for it anyway - and Lou throws her out. Squirt then talks about how she later realized that Lou was stone - equating being a "good butch" with being stone in the process - and then talks about how she never got to "see the stone dissolve and the girl emerge". Which is a rather problematic phrase. Clearly, if a stone butch identifies as a woman, then she's a woman when she's stone. And if ze doesn't identify as a woman, not being stone wouldn't make her into one. And with the narrator being a misogynist, and her gendering of sexual roles and acts, the story buys into a hierarchy of butchness which places stone butch tops at the top.

Sure, protagonists don't have to be likable for a story to be hot, but when the protagonist buys into every stereotype about butches that I hope other people don't see when they look at myself or other butches. The story clearly reinforces the old homo- and femmephobic myth that when two butches are together, one has to become the femme. Certainly, we can have depictions of problematic things in our pornography - often it is stuff that is problematic or taboo that can be the most hot - but when things are problematic in ways that are not hot, and just plain stereotypical, that's bad.

"Bedrock" is a lot less problematic. There's no indication that the narrator (Cam) views anyone as being less butch for not being stone, no equating melting stone as making someone less of a butch, and while the object of Cam's desire is clearly a stone butch (Bobby, who has expressed distaste in the past about butches into other butches) who normally goes for young, newly out of the closet femmes who won't challenge her being stone, and ditches them before they can (or before there is major commitment). On a slow night after a break up, they both leave together, and both end up working toward a sexual encounter occurring. And while Cam certainly initiates melting Bobby's boundaries, Bobby consents all the time, and Cam's narrative never indicates that she sees her as less because of this. And, while perfect reciprocation is certainly not necessary for hot porn, Cam indicates that she'll let Bobby touch her the next day.

This definitely buys into the fantasy that stone butches are only stone until the right person comes along, recasting it into a butch/butch dynamic. But that's a hot fantasy, especially where it's cast as the stone butch being afraid to let hirself open up and it's someone that ze already trusts. It definitely handles the theme of a butch/butch sexual encounter where one butch is stone in a framing story that is nonmisogynistic - in fact, Bobby's behavior that borders on misogyny is pointed out as being ultimately harmful to her.

Patrick Califia's story is significant in not only does it depict both a negative and positive butch/butch encounter, but it is also the only story in question where the narrator does not use female pronouns - Tam, the narrator, uses s/he and hir, and internally muses about transitioning (and is depicted as FTM in a later story by Patrick Califia). It's heartening to see an example of a non-woman identified butch in a collection of butch-on-butch stories, as not all butches identify as women, and it helps make the collection more representative of the variety of masculinities that are exhibited by people who may be viewed as butch or identify as butch. The first encounter in the story is the negative one; it's a flashback to Tam's younger days, when hir had drooled over an older butch for a while, who finally takes hir back to hir own place, has sex with hir, and then implies that she now views hir as femme, talks about hir in a negative fashion, and overall has a rather nonrespectful sexual encounter with hir. This is a clear set up for the implied trust issues that Tam has, and hir difficulty in being touched.

Back in the present day, s/he picks up a younger butch who is tending bar at hir bar (it's interesting to note the number of stories that are set up in bars - with bars having been the location of pre-Stonewall butch/femme culture, and still, to this day, being a center of queer culture), explicitly letting the younger butch know that s/he is picking her up to bottom for hir. As one would expect of Patrick Califia's contribution, it's the kinkiest story in the anthology. And even though Tam pushes Jimmy's (the younger butch) boundaries, it stays consensual. More importantly for purposes of this discussion, Jimmy meekly indicates that she would like to reciprocate toward Tam, and then Tam makes the choice, without being pushed in anyway, to take hir clothes off, and let Jimmy touch hir, guiding Jimmy and making sure hir boundaries are respected. To me, this story does the best job of any of them in negotiating the complexities of stone sexuality and what it means for someone who had been stone to not be stone in a sexual encounter. It's not a switch being flipped as in "Bedrock" (which does a wonderful job with the fantasy of melting a stone butch) but rather a process of negotiation and both partners getting comfortable with each other. And it's also the only one that really acknowledges the gender issues that some butches have, and in a non-judgmental way.

I think that written pornography is probably the best medium to explore stone sexuality (and/or identity), as video doesn't tend to offer the insight into internal mental states that written material lends itself to. It's a lot less obtrusive to insert the internal monologue in bits and pieces during a sex scene in a written work than in video. My experience of written pornography that features butches seems to indicate that butch/femme written work is actually rarer than butch/butch - probably due to this anthology. A lot of mainstream lesbian written pornography tends to cast participants as androdykes. Also, while still viewed as uncomfortably transgressive in some areas, butch/butch has an air of hip transgressiveness to it, that butch/femme doesn't really have - in many cases, butch/femme is still looked at as rather backward.

So what sort of stories would I like to see? First of all, I'd like to see positive, hot stories where a stone butch remains stone, or more stories where the back story indicates a building of trust, especially in the context of a relationship. I want to read butch/femme stories where the butch is stone (I want to read butch/femme stories where the butch isn't stone, too). I want stone butch bottoms explored (is the butch just genitally stone? is ze doing things to hir partner in the dynamic of being submissive to them?). I want more stories where not being stone is an explicit affirmation of the butch's identity and masculinity. I specifically don't want to see stories where being a top or a bottom is equated with being butch or femme, and femmes and bottoms being viewed as less than butches and tops. And I want all of it to remain hot, and if it is going to be labeled pornography (or "erotica" which is a classist term, but that is another discussion), that it maintains a focus on sexuality. Finding good dyke pornography - written or video - is often a matter of sifting through a ton of stuff, and while it is getting easier to find, there's still far to little of it that reflects either actual dyke lives or dyke fantasies - the market is small, and video by dykes for dykes is often lost in the sea of "lesbian porn" made by and for straight men, whereas too much written pornography tries to remain as unsexy as possible, to avoid the idea the notion that dykes (and other folk who sleep with dykes) have hot, interesting sex, as that may offend a member of the community. Plus, I want to see more depictions of people who reflect the reality of the vast variety of people that interact, hook up, and love in what is conventionally called the dyke community - a variety of women (cisgendered and trans), along with a variety of genderqueer people, and FTM-spectrum people. And while video has been great at depicting a wide variety of bodies, can we have more of a reflection of that in our written pornography? Places like Babeland are making it a lot easier to find, but there is still far too little of it.

Why is this important? Because good pornography not only arouses the reader/viewer, it can also educate or open up possibilities. Macho Sluts made me feel a lot better about being kinky and identifying as a leatherdyke. Seeing and reading about butches in pornography made me feel that as a butch, people could find me attractive, which was essential back when I was living in a community that was massively butch-negative. Reading butch/butch pornography has been one piece of making me feel less odd about not only being attracted to femmes, but also other butches. Depiction of safer sex in dyke-made video makes it easier to talk to partners about safer sex practices. And even when pornography doesn't have an educational or normalizing value (and when we are dealing with groups whose sexuality is oppressed, all pornography by and for that group is normalizing our desires), we all deserve pornography that fits with our sexuality, desires, and fantasies. I would advise anyone who likes depictions of butch/butch sexuality - or is intrigued by it - to purchase Set in Stone, so more anthologies like it get made, and in general, to monetarily support the pornography that gets you hot and makes you feel good about yourself and your community. A lot of queer pornography is very much in a niche market, so, if we want to continue to see good pornography that reflects our desires and fantasies, we need to support it.

Wendying and Peter Pans

Recently, a lot of criticism of masculine identities in dyke and trans communities has focused on the idea of masculine folk being engaged in an eternal boyhood. Of course, a lot of this is also from people who have traditionally attacked masculine-identified folk. The criticism is no longer aimed at them being "male-identified" instead of "women-identified" (in the lesbian separatist sense of the terms), but it is aimed at the perceived lifestyles of masculine-identified people, and often the criticisms assume that observed traits and behaviors are tied into masculine-identity. I'm particularly thinking of Ariel Levy, who was both very disrespectful of the identities of FTM-spectrum people and also equated sexual behavior that did not match up to traditional (middle class and political) lesbian standards with masculine, particularly boi and FTM, identities in a very sex negative way in Where the Bois Are.

Also, this runs into the classic problem of a more disenfranchised group by a member of a group that has more social standing - in this case, criticism of trans, genderqueer, and gender variant people by a more normatively gendered queer.

That said, there is a trend of certain behavior patterns by masculine-identified queers, particularly ones involved in dyke communities, that cuts across identity labels, that is probably best treated as a situational manifestation of the systematic femmephobia in queer communities, the systematic oppression of trans, genderqueer, and gender variant people by larger society, and also the community prohibitions on masculine-identified folk from fully utilizing traditional support networks.

A term coined by a good friend of mine is "Wendying", which is the process by which a masculine-identified person expects a femme (or a small group of femmes) to deal with hir problems and take care of hir without hir ever having to confront hir issues or actually acknowledge their roots. This ties in with the Peter Pan idea of not having to grow up, and the communal expectation that femmes will get masculine-identified people to settle down and become responsible adults. Which, of course, places the burden of encouraging adult behavior on femmes, assumes that all masculine-identified people are interested in femmes as partners, and that all femmes are interested in masculine-identified people as partners.

Now, I will never criticize anyone for seeking help from the people they are most comfortable getting help from, as long as they are also interested in actually being helped; eventually confronting the actual issues, when it is safe for them (in all ways) to do so. My personal experience is that I can talk things over in analytical ways with my more masculine-identified friends, and maybe get some suggestions on concrete things to do, but that it is with femmes close to me that I will let my guard down and actually be able to be emotional about things. The difference between this and Wendying is that the lack of expectation that someone will become my caretaker and dedicate hirself to solving my problems for me.

This is a pretty critical difference, and the behavior pattern of Wendying is destructive to all involved. The masculine person in question doesn't develop the skills ze needs to actually work on hir problems on hir own, and the femme or femmes in question are reduced to being caretakers of masculine-identified people in their community, their own needs and wants left unacknowledged.

There are ways in which we can confront this in our own communities, and the burden of this should be placed on those engaging in the behavior and their peers. We, as masculine folk, can encourage each other to look after and take care of each other in more respectful ways that are eventually aimed at working on problems and issues. We can call out people who repeatedly get taken care of without ever being willing to confront their issues. We can support femmes who don't want to spend their energy nurturing people, especially ones who seek nurturing in coercive ways or who refuse to ever engage in processes that help identify ways that they can take whatever control and responsibility for their own issues is available to them.

Most importantly, we can continue to call out harmful masculine competition that often blocks masculine-identified people from working together or being supportive of each other, and continue to challenge the cult of masculinity that says that masculine-identified people aren't supposed to need support, and if they do, they had better hide it.