“I saw a devilish thing,” Spanish colonialist Alvar Nuñez Cabeza de Vaca wrote in the sixteenth century: “Sinful, heinous, perverted, nefarious, abom… - Leslie Feinberg

I was real proud that in all those years I never hit another butch woman. See, I loved them too, and I understood their pain and their shame because I was so much like them. I loved the lines etched in their faces and hands and the curves of their work-weary shoulders. Sometimes I looked in the mirror and wondered what I would look like when I was their age. Now I know! In their own way, they loved me too. They protected me because they knew I wasn’t a “Saturday-night butch.” The weekend butches were scared of me because I was a stone he-she. If only they had known how powerless I really felt inside! But the older butches, they knew the whole road that lay ahead of me and they wished I didn’t have to go down it because it hurt so much. When I came into the bar in drag, kind of hunched over, they told me, “Be proud of what you are,” and then they adjusted my tie sort of like you did. I was like them; they knew I didn’t have a choice. So I never fought them with my fists. We clapped each other on the back in the bars and watched each other’s backs at the factory.

What was responsible for the imposition of the present-day rigid sex/gender system in North America? It is not correct to simply blame patriarchy, Chrystos stressed to me. "The real word is 'colonization' and what it has done to the world. Patriarchy is a tool of colonization and exploitation of people and their lands."

If the music stopped and it was the cops at the door, someone plugged the music back in and we switched dance partners. Us in our suits and ties paired off with our drag queen sisters in their dresses and pumps. Hard to remember that it was illegal then for two women or two men to sway to music together. When the music ended, the butches bowed, our femme partners curtsied, and we returned to our seats, our lovers, and our drinks to await our fates.