An irreverent, tender, funny, difficult, sexy narrative, Butch is a Noun tackles growing up butch and coming out butch, wrestling with it and embracing it and then wrestling with it some more. Butch is a Noun is a story of butch in its best moments and its worst, about butch in the context of femme and butch in the orbit of another butch and butch trying to stand alone - sometimes bravely and sometimes foolishly, sometimes successfully and sometimes fatally. In this book that began its life as a popular lecture by the same title, butch is revealed as a rich, complex, and highly nuanced gender in its own right.

Written by award-winning playwright and inveterate storyteller S. Bear Bergman, Butch is a Noun picks up where gender theory leaves off. It makes butchness accessible to those who are new to the concept, and its finely observed detail makes gender outlaws of all stripes feel as though they have come home ­ if home is a place where everyone understands you and approves of your haircut.

Stark stories of life on the margins and stories of being embraced by community; rough moments and tender moments and delicious occasions of both; from girls' clothes to men's underwear and what lies beyond, Butch is a Noun chronicles the pleasures and dangers of living life outside the gender binary.

Gender