Butch is a term that changes shape, depending on the mouth that utters it. Soft, supple lips shaping the syllables can make it feel like a caress. Other mouths may make the word seem undesirable. If you do not believe that the word could ever be a characteristic to be proud of, this book is meant for you.

Masculine presenting lesbians can be referred to as butch or stud and their feminine counterparts as femme. But what about those who embody something outside of butch; are primarily male-identified but do not identify as trans? What about femmes who partner exclusively with these handsome folk?

These are the Stones. Stonebutches (often called stone studs or touch-me-not studs) and stonefemmes are organized similarly to the traditional butch-femme relationships, that you may be familiar with. One important and singular difference is how they fall outside of the typical celebration of female to female sex. Stone sexuality presents a queer and hetero-erotic/non-heterosexual binary that develops between two female-bodied people who typically identify on the opposite ends of the gender spectrum, though not exclusively.

Leslie Feinberg's 1993 groundbreaking and acclaimed Stone Butch Blues tackles the intersectionalities of male transgenderism, androgyny, butch lesbians, and third gender identities. Feinberg's success was in their ability to share the struggles and merest joys of this developing group, which made way for important conversations that have led to the development of today's language for owning and validating the Butch, Femme, and Stone sub-culture of the gay community.

In A Stone's Throw: Inside the Stonebutch and Stonefemme Life, Victoria Darling invites you into her inner experiences of coming to terms with and making space for her stonefemme identity and self-expression. She weaves together nonfiction essays, short shorts, poetry, and tasteful erotic content to sculpt a window into this libertine world where gender and sexuality are defined by sexual attraction and sexual limitation. Victoria lays bare what it means to love a touch-me-not butch; how it strengthens and empowers women like her, as well as the stonebutches they love. Victoria delights us with situational humor ("Lucy Goes Camping"), rails against oppressors ("Greedy and Selfish"), grieves a lover ("Melted Stone"), sifts through the difficulties of social erasure ("Femme Invisibility"), and brings the sexy 2008 Vanity Fair cover photo with KD Lang and Cindy Crawford's barber-chair scene to life ("A Close Shave").

Grab a copy today. You'll be delighted and surprised.