In Stone Butch Blues, narrator Jess Goldberg must navigate her life while not fitting into the strict social expectations of gender presentation and behavior. Jess explains her dislike of traditionally feminine presentations and her parents's and broader community's rejection of her for her more masculine presentation. When Jess runs away from her unsupportive parents at the age of 16, she finds solace and community in the growing lesbian and gay scene of Buffalo, New York. However, even within the lesbian community, Jess, who is a very masculine presenting butch, is alienated by her lesbian peers when she begins taking testosterone in order to find more jobs as well as lessen the dysmorphia she feels in her body. While the heteronormativity of the straight world had always oppressed Jess, she finds that even in the lesbian and gay scene, gender fluidity and non-binaric gender expression is not very accepted. Jess finally finds camaraderie and friendship with a transgender neighbor, who accepts and supports Jess's dynamic and complicated relationship to gender.