It’s time for another installment of Ask Your Friendly Neighbourhood Lesbrarian! This month I’m responding to a necessary call from Corey Alexander, who tweeted “I cannot read Girl Mans Up. Need your recs for YA about butch, stud, genderqueer, or masc girls w/ no sexual assault.”
Girl Mans Up by M-E Girard is a recent queer young adult novel that’s pretty revolutionary, as butch lesbian characters in YA are a hardly dime a dozen and ones that honestly explore toxic masculinity in and out of queer culture are even rarer (for more about it, read the Autostraddle review). But as Corey points out, it contains sexual assault. And in fact, many books that feature masculine women characters or characters on the trans masculine spectrum depict sexual assault: Leslie Feinberg’s Stone Butch Blues, Ivan Coyote’s Tomboy Survival Guide, Shani Mootoo’s Cereus Blooms at Night, Susan Nussbaum’s Good Kings Bad Kings. Many of these books are by survivors who powerfully write about sexual assault as part of the cissexist heteropatriarchy. But it’s important for survivors to be able to read books that reflect their gender experiences and identities that don’t have sexual assault triggers, too. Below, eight books that center on masculine women/transmasculine spectrum characters that don’t show sexual assault.
The Difference Between You and Me by Madeline George
This quick feel-good queer young-adult novel is deceptively complex. It stars Jesse, a baby butch teen activist in training who cuts her own hair with a Swiss Army knife, and Emily, her preppy, uptight, student council vice president and complete opposite. It seems like they have nothing in common, except they happen to enjoy kissing each other every Tuesday in their scheduled “private meetings.” When a Walmart-like corporation moves into their town, the two find themselves on opposite sides of a fight for their school’s well-being. Jesse is a delightful anti-assimilationist advocate for weirdos everywhere and a joy to read about, while Emily, despite being frustratingly prim and proper, isn’t made out to be the villain. It’s refreshing to read a queer YA novel that has real, complex characters and doesn’t give you all the answers.
100 Crushes by Elisha Lim
100 Crushes is a love letter to and celebration of queer and trans people of color, disguised as a stunning collection of five years’ worth of comics by genderqueer artist Elisha Lim. In the first part, Lim gushes about their crushes — on friends and historical figures — while in the second, they portrait people met on their world-wide travels. Drawings are paired with hand-lettered narratives where featured QTPOC friends talk about their stories, race, gender, sexuality and other smart stuff in their own words. Butch, stud, genderqueer and masculine women are out in full force here, along with trans feminine/female spectrum folks. This is a sweet, affirming, intelligent book that will probably make you fall in love with everyone in it, just like Lim seems to have.
Something True by Karelia Stetz-Waters
Karelia Stetz-Waters describes her books as “so-ro,” romance with a social conscience. Something True is the perfect embodiment of this sub-genre, and is full of Portland culture and lesbian inside jokes to boot! Tate is a soft butch with a tough exterior; she’s the kind, caring, loyal manager at Out in Portland Coffee, which is owned by the woman who took her in as a homeless teen. Although Tate loves the floundering coffeeshop, she’s feeling a bit stuck in her life. Enter a mysterious one-night stand, who turns out to be closeted femme Laura, the daughter of a Republican senator and real estate developer whose company is aiming to shut down Out in Portland. Can Tate make Laura fall in love with Portland — and maybe Tate herself? — in a single week, saving the coffeeshop and hopefully her love life too?
Treasure by Rebekah Weatherspoon
A winner from the always-reliable Rebekah Weatherspoon, Treasure centers on Alexis Chambers, a shy baby stud and once-popular athlete and violinist now struggling with her mental health. Alexis has had precious little to celebrate this past year, except her sister’s bachelorette party at a strip club. She is keenly aware of being the only lesbian at the party but can’t keep her eyes off a particular stripper named Treasure, especially when one of her sister’s friends buys her a private dance. A few weeks later, Alexis is astounded to see the same woman, who is really Trisha Hamilton, in her comp sci class. Trisha doesn’t usually have much time for a social life with her busy schedule, but she can’t deny her feelings for Alexis. Can Alexis overcome her worries and be as fearless as Trisha?
The Olive Conspiracy by Shira Glassman
The Olive Conspiracy is the Jewish cozy mystery slash sub-tropical fantasy novel you never knew you needed. Although it’s the fourth in Shira Glassman’s Mangoverse series, it’s accessible as a standalone, too — though check out the rest of the series for a plethora of queer and POC characters, including masculine-of-center and trans masculine/male spectrum folks. The Olive Conspiracy’s central mystery is the death of a bad dude named Ezra, who tried to blackmail famous chef Yael about her being trans. Queen Shulamit launches an investigation that uncovers an eco-terrorist plot. Good thing friendly foreign witches and dragon-shifting wizards are on her side.
How to Get a Girl Pregnant by Karleen Pendleton Jiménez
Karleen Pendleton Jiménez’s candid and funny memoir is about something that some people think is an oxymoron: being butch and being pregnant. Pendleton Jiménez, a butch Chicana lesbian, has known since she was three that she was gay, and she’s known almost that long that she wants to be a mom. When she finally goes after her dream as an adult, she isn’t quite ready for the challenges, failures, and humiliations she’s going to have to endure to get the kid she longs for. A well-paced memoir that shows this screenwriter’s talents, How to Get a Girl Pregnant has a lot of heart and, perhaps surprisingly for a lesbian pregnancy memoir, some hot sex scenes. For more on this subject, check out graphic memoir Pregnant Butch: Nine Long Months Spent in Drag by A.K. Summers.
Radical by E.M. Kokie
Bex is a butch lesbian teen living in rural Michigan and steeped in her community’s pro-gun, prepper survivalist culture. Bex is an expert on the gun range and would be a leader in her community, except her sexuality and gender render her an outsider. This contemporary dystopian young adult novel is an intense look at what it’s like inside survivalist groups, with their conspiracy theories and constant worry about the apocalypse. And it’s also a story about Bex exploring her sexuality for the first time, in a sweet and sexy relationship with anti-gun Lucy. Bex’s paranoia permeates the novel; when this paranoia is finally realized as the situation at their survivalist community comes to a head, she discovers just how much of an outcast she really is.
I Am Your Sister by Erika K.F. Simpson
This coming-of-age novel about an 18-year-old stud comes highly recommended by Rena, who runs the Black lesbian book blog Sistahs on the Shelf (if you head over there, check out this list of memorable stud characters). Symone Holmes has just graduated from high school and is a pretty tough cookie: she left her parents’ house at 16 after her coming out resulted in disaster, but she’s persevered to become a gifted basketball player and successful entrepreneur. She’s excited to leave Virginia for her first year of college. But when everyone at school finds out she’s a lesbian and isn’t exactly supportive, it turns out that there are a lot more obstacles on her path then she originally thought. I Am Your Sister refreshingly depicts a queer character leaning on their faith in the face of homophobia, adding an ample dose of basketball and romance to this tale of reconciling religion and sexuality.
A few books in previous columns also fit the bill here, including the high-fantasy Fire Logic, the BDSM romance The Night Off, May-December relationship novel Landing and audiobook romance Patience and Sarah. What others do you love?
I LOVE 100 Crushes! It’s one of my favourite books of all time.
Bookmarking this page immediately. Thank-you!
I came into this post knowing that I already have too many unread books and not enough time to read them, and I’m leaving it with lots of new tabs open because apparently I can’t resist!
*evil lesbrarian laugh*
This is just what I need. I have no desire to have violence in my literature.
Now if you could just do the same for all books, and actually while you’re at it all media, that’d be great…!
Seconded!
To the very best of my abilities I always try find out about sexual/physical assault and other triggering things in books so I can mention them in the descriptions of books I do.
Thank you for this! Just ordered Radical. Being a rural-born Michigander myself, can’t wait to read it!
I may have sqealed as I read the description of The Olive Conspiracy. It sounds awesome.
I’ve read Treasure and I can confirm that it’s great. Also, Patience and Sarah is the first lesbian fiction that I unreservedly loved – I came out in like 1990 and read some really grim lesbian novels. I am so down for this list.
And I have one to recommend – The Butch and the Beautiful by Kris Ripper. It’s not YA but it’s great. It’s the 2nd in Ripper’s Queers of LaVista series and it works as a stand alone (later books in the series aren’t stand alone because there is an overarching murder mystery).
I love this book – the protag is a 30-something dapper soft butch high school teacher who has a strong group of friends and a great relationship with her father. She hooks up with, and then falls for, a beautiful, toppy femme woman – they meet at the wedding of their respective exs. The romance is sweet although a little understated and there’s a side plot involving a couple of her queer high school students.
I love this whole series. It portrays a diverse and real feeling queer community.
They meet at the wedding of their exes!! Gayest how we met story ever.
Exactly! They’re each standing up for their respective ex so they get thrown together doing wedding things and I’m sure one of them propositions the other saying it’s pretty much a rule that they have to have sex. It’s a very cute meet-cute.
YAY thank you so much for this list! just what I didn’t know I was looking for
I like it when I run into you here. THAT IS ALL
I know nothing about you except that I like your choice of name. Now I totally want to write a children’s story called The Adventures of Anastasia Picklewomp. It would be awesome.
THANK YOU!!!!
Very much appreciative of this list. I had to put down Stone Butch Blues because I had too many flashbacks, and I felt guilty about it for a long time. I need to remember that I don’t have to soldier through things that are too overwhelming.
such a useful list! thank you! it would be great to have a list of trans YA novels that don’t have the protagonist get beat up (right now i’m looking specifically for afab trans stories, but a comprehensive list of all YA novels with trans characters who don’t get beat up would be great). there are probably enough trans characters in YA now for not all of them to be subjected to violence, right?
I hope so! I’m going to bookmark this and see if there are enough books like the ones you want to make another column. If there aren’t enough but I find a few, I can message you suggestions!
https://xanwest.wordpress.com/2017/01/07/reviews-of-trans-andor-non-binary-lit-by-trans-andor-non-binary-reviewers/
this does not speak directly to your question, but might be a useful resource!
Wow, thanks!
Thank you thank you thank you!
There are so many prestige books/tv shows right now that I just can’t read because they have sexual assault and it’s always awkward to explain.
Ash by Malinda Lo is a beautifully written fantasy novel (very loosely based on Cinderella) with a butch love interest.
Tremontaine is a fantasy filled with chocolate and swordfights and banter. One of the POV characters is butch and most of the others are queer. I don’t know if it counts as YA (the POV characters range from children to middle aged adults) but I would have loved it in high school.
The Miseducation of Cameroon Post is about a butch teenage girl growing up in rural Montana. It’s funny and sad at the same time and has a strong sense of place. The first part is about her grieving over her parents death. In the second part she gets sent to a gay conversion camp.
I don’t know any good trans-masc YA but Ari Banias’ poetry collection Anybody talks about being a trans teenager. He’s accessible but deep and sometimes funny. I think the book would be enjoyable even to people who don’t normally read poetry.
Thanks for adding to the recommendations!
Bex sounds really good I’ll add it to my ever expanding wish list.
I love lgbt books but (for selfish reasons) especially afab masculine ones I can relate to. My ex-best friend (petty but he deserved it) once asked me if I liked reading books where everyone died at the end. I explained that no I didn’t but that’s all the school library had about lgbt characters. I’m so glad to come across lists like that one that show you can write a good lgbt story without killing the characters off for it.
” I explained that no I didn’t but that’s all the school library had about lgbt characters.”
SO TRUE
What about Susan Smith and her Drag King series?
Wow, E.M. Kokie found the actual stenographer from my first queer hook up!!
Very Confident Femme: *carefully covers all the gender-non-conforming bases, like a very considerate Grace before this yummy meal*
Baby Dyke who’s sole queer exp is that odd feeling anime gives you when it’s kiiinda about identity and being into girls is properly portrayed as this Giant Helpless Thing you have: “What?”
““’How do you know you’re not a boy?’” Olivia asks Pen about halfway through the book.
“It’s hard to come up with an answer to her question,” Pen reflects, but ultimately replies, “’I don’t feel wrong inside myself. I don’t feel like I’m someone I shouldn’t be. Only other people make me feel like there’s something wrong with me.’””
I read the linked review of Girl Mans Up, where this is quoted.
For someone who was out in the 90s, all this feels so tupys-turvy. In the past people only ever asked: “How do you know you’re a boy?” and you’d spend months arguing with them, and they would never get it.
Now it’s the other way around, a complete 180°. How did that happen?
And it must be difficult for the young ‘uns too, if they are constantly asked that and ask themselves that.
Both both questions cannot really be answered. And that might screw with people seriously, swallowing them. So why do people ask these questions?
And also, why does it always have to be one or the other? I mean the whole world view that lies behind that? Where does that come from?
How does the Vancouver Public Library have zero of these in ebook form? Sigh…
This is probably for a couple unfortunate reasons! Sometimes small publishers (the ones that publish risky queer books) don’t have the means to make print and ebooks. I think some of these don’t exist as ebooks at the library or not! And public libraries believe it or not are charged more for access to ebooks than print books (the opposite of how it works for individual consumers) so libraries are limited in how many ebooks they can afford. And since they get ebooks in cheaper big bundles made by third parties sometimes this might mean queer books aren’t included b/c of assumptions they aren’t as popular, or aren’t as well known, even if the library doesn’t agree with those ideas!
Fair enough — this is the kind of writing I’m happy to support with my own book budget anyway. But I really would like to see more queer content in the VPL ebook collection.
Thank you for this list!! Adding 3 more-
– The Stars and the Blackness Between Them by Junauda Petrus- amazing book with actually 2 masculine of center characters including one of the main characters, also all Black and POC characters.
– Last Night at the Telegraph Club by Malinda Lo- 1950s San Francisco, main character is Chinese, super sweet and poignant, loved it.
– Tipping the Velvet by Sarah Waters- a long amazingly fun ride through different communities in Victorian England. This book has a super hot scene where the masculine of center main character uses a strap on for the first time, it’s very much worth it. This book does have an instance of sexual violence that does not progress past threats/intimidation, perpetrated by a woman with privilege against her employee, it blurs the lines of the qualifications of this post.