![]() Traumatized, she drops out of school the next day, packing her bags and running away from home to a lesbian bar, where a butch, Toni, offers to let Jess sleep on her couch. At school, football players harass Jess, tackling and gang-raping her. After a police raid, the bar closes and Jess loses touch with Butch Al and Jacqueline. Butch Al and Jacqueline take Jess in and teach her about lesbian roles and culture. ![]() There, she meets drag queens, butches, and femmes. When she reaches puberty and feels the weight of gendered difference, Jess learns of a gay bar from a coworker. Her parents, frustrated with Jess's gender nonconformity, eventually institutionalize Jess in a psychiatric ward for three weeks. The narrative of Stone Butch Blues follows the life of Jess Goldberg, who grows up in a working-class area of Buffalo, New York in the 1940s. ![]() While fictional, the work also takes inspiration from Feinberg's own life, and she described it as her "call to action." It is frequently discussed as a difficult yet essential work for LGBT communities, as it "never shies away from portraying the anti-Semitism, classism, homophobia, anti-butch animus, and trans-phobia that protagonist Jess Goldberg faced on a daily basis-but it also shows the healing power of love and political activism." Plot summary Stone Butch Blues is a historical fiction novel written by Leslie Feinberg about life as a butch lesbian in 1970s America. ![]()
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