S/He

by Minnie Bruce Pratt

This brave memoir chronicles Pratt’s struggle to overcome the repressive traditions of Southern womanhood and live her life honestly. It chronicles her youth, her marriage, her eventual decision to come out as a lesbian, and her life with transgender activist and author Leslie Feinberg.

Genres: Queer, LGBT, Nonfiction, Memoir, Lesbian, Poetry, Feminism

189 pages, Paperback

First published January 1, 1995

About the author

Minnie Bruce Pratt (b. September 12, 1946 in Selma, Alabama) is an U.S. educator, activist, and award-winning poet, essayist, and theorist. Pratt was born in Selma, Alabama, grew up in Centreville, Alabama and graduated with an honors B.A. from the University of Alabama (1968) and a Ph.D. in English literature from the University of North Carolina (1979). She is a Professor of Writing and Women’s Studies at Syracuse University where she was invited to help develop the university’s first Lesbian/Gay/Bisexual/Transgender Study Program. She emerged out of the women’s liberation movement in the 1970s and 1980s and has written extensively about race, class, gender and sexual theory. Pratt, along with lesbian writers Chrystos and Audre Lorde, received a Lillian Hellman-Dashiell Hammett award from the Fund for Free Expression to writers "who have been victimized by political persecution." Pratt, Chrystos and Lorde were chosen because their experience as "a target of right-wing and fundamentalist forces during the recent attacks on the National Endowment for the Arts."[1] Her political affiliations include the International Action Center, the National Women's Fightback Network, and the National Writers Union. She is a contributing editor to Workers World newspaper. Pratt's partner is author and activist Leslie Feinberg.
[from Wikipedia http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Minnie_B...]

Reviews

[rie · Rating 5 out of 5]

the way this book describes butch femme sex would make any blush and feel the instinct to turn away. you can consider this maybe good and bad depending on your view but anyway, i found myself thinking how if this was a woman writing about hetero sex, would i feel this way? why, after years of iding as a lesbian and a year(ish?) of iding as a femme lesbian do i still find myself so embarrassed and ashamed (for lack of a better term) of the concept of my own sexual desire. this book is more than sex — it talks on race (pretty well enough since the author is white), class, misogyny, lesbo/transphobia, etc and while you should read the book for all those reasons, it’s how open and unashamed the author can talk about pleasure that really stuck with me. i hope i can reach the point in deprogramming that i can get there. this is like…my femme bible now.

[Anthony Ricardi · Rating 5 out of 5]

I read this when I thought nobody in the world could love my body. Minnie Bruce Pratt is an amazing writer and activist and put into words something that I didn't even know I needed to hear.

[Hannah · Rating 5 out of 5]

thank you thank you thank you minnie bruce for giving us your descendents this gift.

thank you minnie bruce and leslie feinberg for your relationship possibility model, for giving us this so publicly. thank you for giving us the fear, the sex, the romance, the hopes, the commitments, the questions, the certainties, the beginnings, the battles, the learning, it feels like you didn't leave anything out. thank you for reminding me why butch/femme was my first love & what the potential and ancestral lineage of this can be, how powerful and gentle, how it can build the deepest kind of consent the kind based in birthright, because i had forgotten. thank you for writing butch/femme in a way that holds my femme/femme, too.

i hope the queer kids who come after me keep reading this even though leslie identifies as a transgendered woman & you minnie bruce are that old school kinda femme and both transgendered and femme as the ultimate bottom with the ultimate embodied emotional intelligence have both gone out of fashion.

[Rebecca · Rating 5 out of 5]

i've re-read this one several times since the first time more than a decade ago. it always feels like i loved it on a different planet with different air in a different language. i try to visit there every several years.

[hanita · Rating 5 out of 5]

oh my god. i’m not sure any review will ever be able to do this book justice. i am so lucky to exist in the same universe as minnie bruce pratt and leslie feinberg do, may their souls meet again in their next lifetime. i am eternally grateful to their writings, their love, their visibility, their labor, their solidarity. this is what it means to be femme, to queer gender and live beyond it. Minnie bruce pratt conveys butch/femme desire with such delicacy and tends to femme wounds and traumas with her words…. this is the second book of the femme bible (paired with stone butch blues of course). leslie and minnie’s love transcends space and time and is such a beautiful example of how butch/femme love persists and persists and persists. butch/femme and stud/femme culture will NEVER die and will continue to queer gender and sex and love and performance and visibility and justice in every universe. this was so fucking incredible and healing 💋

[Bek (MoonyReadsByStarlight) · Rating 5 out of 5]

This is the sort of memoir that you can tell is written by a poet. Told in series of vignettes, Minnie Bruce Pratt recalls parts of her life from her childhood in a mostly white southern town, through her marriage to a man and subsequently coming out as a lesbian, and experiences with a variety of lovers until finding Leslie Feinberg. There are reflections on her experience of activism, lesbian community, her own experience of gender as a femme, sexuality and autonomy, and so much more. As much as this is about her experience and her and Leslie's relationship, it is also about the time, community, with a lot about importance of solidarity regarding race and gender. There are elements that are vulnerable and visceral, raw and erotic, and reflective and layered

[Lune · Rating 4 out of 5]

Vraiment super, et incontournable pour comprendre comment peuvent se mettre en place des discours essentialistes et essentialisants, même au sein des milieux féministes et queer/lesbiens (ou du moins qui se réclament comme tel). Permet de mettre fin aux débats incessants et insupportables de "est-ce qu'on peut utiliser des pronoms masculins et se dire lesbienne ??", "wlw ou non-men loving non-men ??", ou encore "les relations butch/fem son hétéronormatives". Et plus globalement de se décentrer des définitions strictes et toujours oppressives de ce qu'est une "vraie" femme.

[Thanh · Rating 5 out of 5]

an ode to butch-femme culture with such beautiful prose! what a blessing to get insights into the tender love shared between her and leslie feinberg. the other reviews weren't lying...there are indeed brazen descriptions of desire, sex, and love. i feel like i've really learned to appreciate femininity and womanhood through the words of minnie bruce pratt: "i don't want woman to be a fortress that has to be defended. i want it to be a life we constantly braid together from the threads of our existence, a rope we make, a flexible weapon stronger than steel, that we use to pull down walls that imprison us at the borders." central to the book is allyship not only to her own femme identity but also to others. i appreciate how she took the time to delve into intersectionality and queer identities. perfect way to end femmeruary - i love femmes and i love their active decision to be feminine despite it all <3

[tegan · Rating 5 out of 5]

sort of like the bible but way more influential. phenomenally insightful and wise on gender, love, desire, etc etc etc.. if you are lesbian adjacent i implore you to read this

[shrav · Rating 5 out of 5]

I’ll never find the words to express how this memoir makes me feel. We are indebted to dykes and sissies who existed before us. Forever thankful grateful beholden. Love you Minnie Bruce Pratt love you Leslie Feinberg. The only butch femme ever !!!

[liv · Rating 5 out of 5]

“desire is like a poem. the knife can mean death and life, but whose hand holds it? the rose can mean petals and canker in the bud, but whose hand spreads it? with each criss-crossing gesture the meaning of lust will shift. if we dare claim our lives as our own, we must read all the poems we write with our bodies.”

i’m going to get emotional just writing this. this is such a beautiful, powerful, important depiction of butchfemmeness—butchfemme sex, butchfemme politics, butchfemme gender, butchfemme bodies, butchfemme love, butchfemme rage and pain and fear. minnie bruce pratt has such a moving, tender, sharp, fiery, wholehearted way of writing and i am so grateful for how extensive this is, how she left nothing unsaid. i have loved femmes my whole life, i will die loving femmes, i will die loving butches, i will die loving transgenderism and transsexualism, and i will die loving communism and the interconnectedness of everything. thank you minnie bruce pratt ❤️‍🔥

[Mina · Rating 5 out of 5]

Wahou juste wahou. C'est tout simplement sublime. Un vécu singulier et une voix quasi jamais entendue. Une fem plus gouine que la plus gouine de tes copines qui évoque son mariage hetero comme une experience pas pire. De l'érotisme aussi lubrique que poétique. Un couple iconique. J'ai adoré... Le pendant parfait et sensuel de stone butch blues...

[Caitlin · Rating 5 out of 5]

Anyone who has any interest in gender identity and different expressions of gender should read this. And anyone who has no idea what that really means should also read this. (fyi minnie bruce pratt is les feinberg's partner)

[Juexist julia · Rating 3 out of 5]

Des réflexions très intéressantes sur la féminité des fem lesbiennes et sur le danger que représente être perçue comme féminine dans l’espace public. L’écriture est fluide et agréable, j’ai beaucoup aimé le début du livre et les derniers chapitres. Par contre, j’ai été un peu épuisée que la grande majorité de l’ouvrage ne parle que de sexe. Je vois bien sûr en quoi cela est important dans le récit de la vie de l’autrice, mais cela devient un peu répétitif et lourd au bout d’un moment.

[Ana · Rating 5 out of 5]

Dicidí leer este libro por que Minnie Bruce Pratt fue por muchos años la pareja de Leslie Feinberg, y para mi era una forma de entender a este ser maravilloso que me dió el mejor regalo de mi vida: "Stone Butch Blues". En gran parte leer S/He fue para mi encontrarme con Leslie, pero también con Minnie, sus reflexiones sobre el género, la violencia, la experiencia trans. Es un libro de momentos y de imágenes que conmueven por su sinceridad. Ha sido una maravillosa experiencia el leerlo.
"...I tell you something of what I am writing now, vignettes of daily life, the delicate twining of forbidden words, the way sex and gender and sexuality spread their tendrils through our lives and wrench us open, [...] You say, I'm telling you now: Whatever you write of me, or of us together, you will never have to ask if I approve. The only place I want to live with you is in the palace of truth" - Minnie Bruce Pratt

[hunter · Rating 4 out of 5]

i feel so seen as a femme who feels “other” when around other lesbians. being a femme with a butch who also messes around with gender is so validating. and being stone on top of everything, this book helped me verbalize my desire and think about what i want with a future partner. rest in peace minnie i wish i could have met u.

[Bridget]

LOVED this, I can’t believe it’s been sitting on my bookshelf since I was 17 and I’ve never actually picked it up and read it before.

[Courtney Bates-Hardy · Rating 5 out of 5]

This book changed me. It is an absolute shame that it is out of print right now. I managed to find a used copy and I wanted to highlight and memorize every line. Young queers need to read this, need to know their history, need to know they are not alone. Femmes and partners of trans people will find this is written especially for them. I am heartbroken that the author is gone now but I am so glad that I found her work because of the many people who were memorializing her. Thank you, Minnie Bruce for writing this. I feel less alone because of you.

[sam · Rating 5 out of 5]

I don’t rate memoirs but this was so beautiful I had to.

“I don’t want ‘woman’ to be a fortress that has to be defended. I want it to be a life we constantly braid together from the threads of our existence, a rope we make, a flexible weapon stronger than steel, that we use to pull down the walls that imprison us at the borders.”

[clara · Rating 5 out of 5]

so incredibly fucking good i love minnie bruce pratt and leslie feinberg and this helped me understand who i am a whole lot more … thank you hanita this is one of my absolute favorites it’s so beautifully written . butchfemme forever

[Hélène · Rating 4 out of 5]

J'ai mis beaucoup de temps à finir ce livre, la faute à trop de textes parlant de sexualité que je trouvais répétitifs... Sinon j'ai vraiment aimé suivre la vie de l'autrice, ses réflexions sur la fluidité du genre ainsi que sur les relations butch/fem, notamment à travers sa relation amoureuse avec Leslie Feinberg

[Elena · Rating 5 out of 5]

duurde een eeuwigheid om in het frans uit te lezen maar was zo goed zo mooi

[Amelia · Rating 2 out of 5]

I appreciated the premise of this book: lived experiences to prove a theory, or theories.

But I don't think it was executed the way I expected it would be. That's not to say that it was a bad book. It's just that honestly, 1) It struck me as erotica until like, the very end of the book where she starts critiquing the Michigan Women's Music Festival for discriminating against transgendered women. If there had been more of that-- anecdotes that didn't constantly involve her having epic sex with another woman, I would have been fine with it. I'm not a prude. I think sex is great, not gross. But for the first 75% of this book I was like, "All she is doing is bragging about how much sex she has, and if she doesn't stop using the word 'cock' I am going to lose my shit." And 2) This book was quaint as hell. It was published in 1995, and she was reflecting on a lot of her experiences, circa the '70s, where she leaves her husband and starts living as a femme(?) lesbian. I lost track of how many times she said "butch" and "femme" in this book. Like, you're trying to get yourself out of these gender boxes and yet you're just putting yourself in a totally different box.

It rubbed me the wrong way.

So, I don't know. I finished this book because I just sort of decided to read it as a historical document. And by the time I got to the end, where she actually starts to discuss the reality of living in a world that discriminates against her and the people she cares about, I was glad for deciding to finish it. But holy shit dude, if you're going to write an erotica book about quaint lesbian sex, market it as such.

[Kathleen · Rating 3 out of 5]

This book was not what I thought that it was going to be. I thought that it was going to be much more focused on explaining Pratt's mental and emotional transition from someone who identified as a lesbian to someone who loves a transman. Instead, it's a lot of description of Pratt and Les Feinberg's sex life. It's well written--broken into short vignettes that aren't presented in chronological order.
I didn't find it particularly useful, but I can imagine it would be pretty eye-opening for some, a turn-on for others.

[Jas · Rating 4 out of 5]

I'm not usually a fan of memoirs or non-fiction generally but I loved Pratt's poetic retellings of her life loving women and her trans husband. I found her musings on gender, sex, and maleness vs femaleness to be refreshingly understandable, as a gender-conforming person who struggles with thinking outside the binary myself. The short chapters and intimate scenes between lovers also made this a super enjoyable read!

[taylor hagen · Rating 5 out of 5]

a brilliant collection of chapters about gender, the binary of butch and femme, and lesbian culture that had me bookmarking, highlighting, and dog-earring (it’s that serious) throughout the entire book. there are sentences that spoke to my soul, paragraphs that had me rereading chapters. uplifting.

thank you Sinister Wisdom for reprinting and keeping this book alive

[Anna · Rating 5 out of 5]

Each story was like poetry, explaining the complexity and gray area of gender, queerness, and sexuality. A beautiful love story to the author's partner and to herself about what it means to find your identity

[Devin · Rating 5 out of 5]

How grateful i am to have had Minnie-Bruce as a friend and a mentor. Here is the anatomy of one of the most beautiful, sexy, and important relationships in recent queer/trans culture: Minnie-Bruce Pratt, the Alabama Communist, lesbian, mother, poet, anti-imperialist, femme, and Leslie Feinberg, the Jewish, transgender, butch, lesbian Communist writer who completely shifted the lens of transgender struggle to one of historical materialism.

When Minnie-Bruce was alive, she never said once i couldn't ask her about Leslie Feinberg, but, unless the conversation specifically veered into their relationship, and specifically initiated by her, I didn't ask many questions and I certainly didn't pry. Minnie-Bruce, I believe, loved talking about Leslie, but it also made her sad. Sometimes she would tell me a funny story or anecdote, and at the end, her voice would trail off and there would be a long pause before she spoke again. I could tell she was emotional. I knew how deeply she loved Leslie, but it seemed to be a topic only for a time before Leslie died. I respected that [although, MB did tell me some *hilarious* stories about her and Leslie's life together].

Reading 'S/He' for the first time, 1 of 2 of Minnie-Bruce's books that aren't poetry [in the traditional stanza-based sense], I finally read clearly how deep this love was. I read this at work so I couldn't burst into tears like I wanted to, but this queer, lesbian love is so potent and emotional. The whole book isn't about her relationship with Leslie, but I can absolutely tell when it becomes about Leslie. It makes me sad to know I can never tell Minnie-Bruce not only how much I love this, but to hear her cackle when I tell her that some of the erotic prose here is so......well, erotic, that even I blushed several times. And I'm not one to shy away from talking sex. I know she would laugh her ass off if I told her "I can't believe the thoughtful, soft spoken woman I shared a dinner of fried chicken with at a blues Cafe, could make me blush like this." And she would undoubtedly laugh and say "the OLD woman. Don't forget that." I miss her.

Excerpts:

*her recounting a drunk lesbian at a lesbian dance poking fun at MB and Leslie only slow dancing all night*
"A femme friend comes over to laugh and joke. When you fast-dance with her, the same drunk woman says 'you can do that?? Why didn't you? And you reply, 'but this friend isn't the woman I love.' I move with you and against you, slipping back and forth, shifting the earth under our feet."

"The last woman I danced with wanted me to follow, but her hands weren't strong enough to hold me. You know that when you hold me, I will follow."

"Later, over the phone, back in your city far away, you tell me 'When I first kissed you, I felt how you protected your heart.' You say, 'I'm coming back to kiss you again. You will open your mouth to me and I will touch your heart with my tongue.' The invisible mark your lips, teeth, tongue will leave on me. By the time we have this conversation, the marks on my neck, the bruises, are fading. I have called my other lover to tell her I am never coming to bed again."

"Surely I can't be the only one who fears a sisterhood based on biological definitions, the kind that have been used in the larger world to justify everything from job discrimination [because women have smaller brains and aren't as smart] to hysterectomies [because women's wombs make us hysterical]. And I can't be the only one who grew up trained into the cult of pure white womanhood and heard biological reasons given to explain actions against people of color, everything from segregation of water fountains, to lynching. If this gathering of women in the dusty fields beyond the gate is a community based on biological purity, then it offers me, a "real woman", no real safety."

[Ellipopelli · Rating 5 out of 5]

4.5
The first chapter is phenomenal, 10/10. I'm not sure if I like all the other chapters, some of them were a bit too erotic or ... crude (?) for me, but that's okay (Admittedly, sometimes I skipped over a few words due to the sexual language (i'm used to a different vocabulary... it's also a bit graphic sometimes... and idk why she mentioned her breasts so much /neutral). It felt very vulnerable and intimate, as Pratt talks about thoughts many people might never speak out loud, and shares moments from her life with her partner, Leslie Feinberg. The 2nd part (it's divided into multiple sections) felt very much like a love poem to hir. Very good read. Deals with gender & sexuality & oppression (including race and class!!), and lesbian (specifically butchfemme) sex. You can also clearly witness Pratt's growth throughout the book. Big rec if you're interested in lesbian history (in the US).

[Loïs · Rating 5 out of 5]

Impossible de faire une review à la hauteur de cette lecture 😵‍💫 Unique en son genre mais très prenant et marquant, c'est une très belle découverte qui pousse à lire d'autres œuvres similaires pour approfondir la thématique. Minnie Bruce Pratt met des mots sur des choses jamais traitées, jamais lues, jamais vues avec un regard rempli d'amour, de douceur et de tendresse faisant de cette lecture une des plus importantes et intéressantes que j'ai pu lire.
+ on salue l'hommage et le courage qui émanent de chaque chapitre