Joan Nestle has led a passionate life of resistance. We talk about her formative years in the criminalised butch-femme bar scene of New York in the 1950s. There she discovered that desire could not be contained. A working class, Jewish lesbian, Nestle celebrated her marginalisation, and her community carved out a space of their own. From there she became involved in political campaigns including civil rights, gay liberation and feminism. Nestle went on to establish the lesbian herstory archives in New York, and now lives in Melbourne with her partner. Joan Nestle is the author of many books, including A Restricted Country, The Persistent Desire: A Femme-Butch Reader, and GenderQueer: Voices from beyond the Sexual Binary.