Persistence: All Ways Butch and Femme by Ivan E. Coyote & Zena Sharman

Author:Ivan E. Coyote & Zena Sharman
Language: eng
Format: mobi
Tags: Gender Studies
ISBN: 9781551523972
Publisher: Arsenal Pulp Press
Published: 2011-05-03T05:00:00+00:00

For Annie B. (1915–81)

Donnelly Black

When I think about butch-femme identities, I remember Annie who came before me.

It was 1962. I was twelve years old. My mother, Sybil, and her friend Myrna are talking when I walk in to the kitchen. Hearing the word “dyke,” I lean on the counter and ask, “What does ‘dyke’ mean?” Sybil looks at Myrna, then turns to me and says, “It’s a word that describes women who wear men’s clothing and hang around school yards.”

Annie—my great aunt—wore men’s pants. Annie was born in 1915 in the eastern townships of Quebec. She grew up in a strict, white, Anglo-Saxon Protestant dairy-farming community.

I remember her coming home from work at the plant, walking into the kitchen to talk to Uncle Mike. Mike was often at the sink doing dishes.

Annie wore grey flannel pants to work at the plant. I don’t recall her changing when she got home. I do remember her sitting in a La-Z-Boy chair, drinking her beer while watching the hockey game. Uncle Mike would stand in the doorway of the kitchen with his apron on and a tea towel in hand, looking to see what the score was. Mike was not interested in hockey; he mostly was concerned that Annie had not fallen asleep in the chair.

I have no memory of what their sleeping arrangements were.

Sybil had five children with Orville. When I was six years old, Orville passed away from a heart attack brought on by his alcoholism. Sybil sent me to live with her father, Annie’s brother. My older sister went to live with Annie and Mike. Later, when I was nine years old, as my grandfather was dying, I too went to live with Annie and Mike in Toronto. My mother kept the two youngest boys, while the oldest boy went to live with cousins.

I have a picture of my grandfather standing next to Annie; I believe he looked out for Annie as he looked out for me when I lived with him. I always wore jeans and let it be known from a young age that I preferred pants to dresses.

In another picture, Sybil has arrived with all my siblings to visit my grandfather. My sister wears a dress and holds a doll. I am in jeans and short sleeves, and my grandfather has his giant arm around my shoulder.

Sybil would scold me terribly for wearing pants. In middle school, I had to wear scratchy wool skirts. Sybil insisted I wear a girdle. I took the girdle off at school, then put it back on before coming home, but as soon as I got home, I changed into my jeans. I feared my mother; she would take her anger out on me physically; you could not cross her.

I played with the boys, climbing trees and playing pirates in a small wooded area near our house in Ottawa. We would make small rafts and paddle down a small creek, collecting pollywogs and tadpoles. I was called a tomboy.

During my adolescence, my sister, who was only sixteen months older than I, would tease me for having no breasts.

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