PFN – Call for Submissions to Sinister Wisdom on the Theme: Butch-Femme Renaissance

What does butch-femme mean in lesbian and queer communities today? What does it mean to live the pandemic, the surge in anti-trans and anti-LGBTQ legislation, and the start of a second Trump presidency through the lens of butch-femme? What are butch-femme communities doing locally, nationally, to shape lesbian and queer lives? What sort of butch-femme future are we building together?

Sinister Wisdom’s Butch-Femme Renaissance issue is interested in all genres and styles of writing from butch-femme identified lesbian, dyke, queer, gender non-conforming and trans folks. If you live a butch-femme lifestyle or see yourself in butch-femme dynamics — or have something to say about why you don’t — we want to hear from you.

We are especially interested in reported work — interviews with local community groups, Q&As, grassroots organizing features, essays, sex and dating topics. Here are some ideas:

• Interviews and oral histories with butch-femme movers, shakers, organizers, community leaders, thinkers and lovers
• Profiles on local organizations, grassroots movements or justice-seeking initiatives led by and for butches, femmes, studs, stemmes, trans and gender non-conforming people
• Intergenerational dialogue on butch-femme culture
• Writing on butch-femme sex, love and dating (bonus points if you talk about OFOS dating, stone tops, pillow princesses or kink)
• Essays (including personal essays) on gender presentation, identity, and “finding your own” (Example: the butch boxing class that changed my life, how my wife and I planned our wedding as a butch-femme couple, getting top surgery as a butch, t4t butch-femme dynamics, how you organized and threw a butch-femme book club or fundraiser etc.)
• Any work that explores power and identity in critical and unexpected ways — especially work that deals with politics, legislation, and systems of oppression explicitly. We’re especially interested in thinking about local and federal anti-LGBTQ legislation, anti-DEI and anti-education initiatives, incarceration, student protests, reproductive rights, healthcare, ID access and much much more. We are particularly interested in hearing from butch-femme identified folks who live rurally and/or in red states.
• Any work that questions, tests or maps the boundaries of butch-femme culture. Where does butch-femme thrash and upend patriarchal expectations, heteronormative social scripts, boredom? Or do you see butch-femme as restricting? As exclusionary along race or class lines? Sing it! The praise and the criticism. We want to hear from you.

We are particularly interested in hearing from BIPOC butch-femme identified folks and from those who live rurally and/or in red states. International submissions are strongly encouraged and will be prioritized.

Don’t go to the archives for this issue — get out on the street. Think fresh. Think on-the-ground. Think about how you’d talk to your best friend, not your professor. This issue is not overly interested in the academic, the formal, the historical. So much of being lesbian, queer, and trans is looking back, towards the past, to excavate traces of yourself and your community. That is vital, necessary work. But that’s not the work of this issue.

Please submit one document, even if you are submitting multiple pieces, up to 15 pages. Please include a brief bio and any social media links as well.

Written submissions can be in any language — but must include an English translation. You are welcome to use a pseudonym if you are concerned about privacy. Submissions are open to writers and artists of all experience levels, no previous publication required.

Please share this call widely on social media! And direct any questions to sara.gregory91@gmail.com