Seeks to redress the ways that femme identites have been elided, idealized, or not fully historicized in a productive reconsideration of lesbian and butch-femme history, of feminism, and of queer thought. As femme sexual politics provide a liberatory model, the text, as a feminist project offers an alliance between many communities of women previously passed over by feminism. This collection argues that femmes have been causal to shifts within feminism, the creation of queer theory, and the shaping of butch-femme and lesbian history. The text is divided into three sections: histories; generations; and futures. Contributors write about femme in terms of: sexuality, gender, race and ethnic communities, class experience, national borders, bisexuality, body image, incest survival, aging, bar culture, heterosexuality, activism, transgender and transsexual desire, and feminism. The book portrays femmes as contestatory lesbian identities, radical feminist positions, and subversive queer models.