i thought it was a given that we adopted this practice as most of out other ones from straight folks.

Not sure what you were exactly looking for, but for me, it was just a given.

Please don't stop. Your voice is needed. Your voice is appreciated. People are listening. We need femme voices that carry our butch/femme history. I have loved reading every one of your posts on this thread and I bet I am not alone.

Thank you for being here, Martina. We have lost voices here (and there), for a number of reasons. Let us keep you.

Keep talking. Keep educating. We need it. We appreciate it.

The youngins' are absorbing it. I promise.

Not trying to derail....just for clarity
 

I'm sorry but I feel like I'm missing a huge point here: how has the understanding of femme changed?

I, personally, can't deny my identity because of others assumptions.

I still view femmes as kick ass, brave women worthy of respect. I still see these women as liberating. I am still stepping outside of lesbian norms to be who we are.

I am asking out of clarity, because your post comes from Personal I space, but you say the word educating in there.

From my I space as a young femme, I prefer to share experiences rather than be educated. I love to learn about b/f history, but I do reject that somehow I've lost some original concept of femme.

Maybe this is for another thread?

I don’t think I said I had trouble identifying with the older butches I knew/saw growing up. I identified pretty strongly. And by the time I could get away with getting into bars I followed them around like a puppy dog. But there were other mitigating factors for me that caused me to question if this was a road I wanted to go down. One was my inability at that young and impressionable age to understand as you explained “material power differences are what maintain oppression, not ideology alone.” So what I saw from the butches at the bar looked to me like macho behavior and I translated that as a belief in their inherent superiority over their femmes and women in general. I have no doubt it wasn’t ‘exactly’ like that and there was much more going on, but I could not understand that yet.

Then I had this insane period where I married a man or should I say boy, because we were both still teenagers. I came to my senses rather quickly and realized there was never any doubt that I would partner with women. How this partnership would look was up for negotiation. I would always choose women to love, nurture and support. I had no interest in wasting energy on men. And the butch/femme dynamic, as I was wrongly interpreting it, looked like it had no place in my ideology. When I was wrestling with my identity and trying to decide if I was a butch or a lesbian it was the 1980’s and gender theory was still a thing of the future. I had no idea yet that being both a butch and feminist were not mutually exclusive. I became very interested in feminism and feminist theory. Looking back over butch femme history it is clear to me now that the butches and femmes of the 40’s and 50’s could easily be considered early feminists. They certainly took sex, a pretty much male focused act, and made it about women. All about women, but in a very hot queered version of opposites attract. Pretty cool that. However, I missed that point too as a young feminist lesbian.

One thing about the butches of my youth, they were all she’s. Nobody was male identified. In that time frame being butch was just that, being butch, it was about carrying female masculinity. It was liberating and uncomplicated, end of story. A much simpler time. There was never the question of an end game, of the possibility of transitioning. Fast forward twenty years and once again I find myself confronted with another challenging and very complicated twist. Big changes. I am still pulling apart and examining my place in the new butch femme world. I will say this much about butch femme culture, it is never boring.

And there have been times when I wondered if butch really fits me anymore. But I took such a long difficult road getting here, I fought my female masculinity so hard, I confused owning female masculinity with maleness. I had so many issues surrounding men/male to work through I didn't think i would ever be able to hold masculinity comfortably in my body. What I failed to realize is that it was there whether I chose to honor it or not. Masculinity is not owned by men or by patriarchy, femininity is not exclusively reserved for women. Femmes can hold femininity and masculinity, butches can hold masculinity and femininity and all the mixtures you can fathom. Now that i have worked that part out, at least most of the time, and made peace with it, I don't want to give up butch. It's a part of me and one I will fight for, just like I fought for woman as an identity that was mine, that no one could take. It was funny as soon as some family members adjusted to my butch identity they wanted to take away my female one. Like they can only handle one at a time, like identity is a singular sensation. Perhaps it's cognitive dissonance for them if I am a butch woman who holds female masculinity. They would be much happier if i picked a side. That's why I enjoy dressing in both men's and women's clothing. It's why I wear both men's and women's underwear. Not at the same time of course. I think I wandered way off the point of this thread. Sorry.

I'm not going to speak for Martina, because, well because I can't, not being her and all, but I just wanted to say that when I read her post I took it to mean that she did not want to educate people on what SHE means personally when she says she is a femme. And not on what femme in general needs to mean to everyone. She said "I am not the kind of person that people now think of when they hear the word femme. And I am way too old to be educating."

Maybe I took it wrong.

I said, "I know as many or more kick ass femmes, femmes to respect." I was referring to the present time.

I would refer you to HB's many good posts about what it is like to say you are femme and be met with stereotypes that are so off the mark that you have to address the issue.

And, yes, I meant educating about me. Thanks, Tick. Educating in the sense of helping someone realize that femme isn't only . . . whatever they were thinking. When that stuff comes up alot, it makes you think. Plus I look around and in a way, it isn't me anymore. It could be generational. If so, I am not saying femme has lost anything. Just that it may no longer fit me well enough to claim it.

That totally answered my misunderstanding. Thanks

to be honest Martina I I'm.starting to feel to tired to claim it since I came home. it feels more like a constant frustrating argument here than it did in London..

I may decided to ID as it as I have dome the past 10 years: mostly privately. then I can avoid all of the boo hah I can deal with anymore.

I used to be big into the hoo ha. but I can't be arsed with the assumptions nor the tiring "no I'm not a femme like that" or "no I'm not looking for a butch like that" assumptions.

I dont happen to think the butch femme way of being in a relationship is anything more special than the other ways my friends are in relationships. I hear from all kinds of groups ive joined (then quit), how extra queer we are, how special we are, Ive recently heard of butches being "basically like men - feed em and fuck em" in one if these groups, another trotteted out the a tired old Bullshit of "the femme rules" ( that used to be men-women written but over a decade ago someone changed the word "woman",to femme and its still going around) and I I try to date butches from Seattle but all I hear is "my butch this" or "cause you are a femme" that.

and after having been relatively free of that for 10 years it feels really suffocating and tiring to come back to.

I think maybe I'm just done with it.

thanks Martina xx

I remember crap like femme rules on email lists waaaay back when. And on the dash site stuff from that kind of mind set often found its way on a thread. On the lists I never heard much push back but there were voices on the dash site that spoke out. I notice we don't get too much femme rules/feed and fuck your butch kind of crap here. We don't get a lot of stuff here that we used to see on other sites and probably still do see on other sites. Well, obviously, since HB mentioned seeing it, often. I think we can credit Admin and the Mods for that. Of course you can't stop it all. People are allowed their opinions and as long as it isn't against the TOS they can post this stuff. But people are allowed to voice dissenting opinions here without fear of being attacked in ways that are against the TOS, which is what often happened on other sites. I remember having conversations with long time members of b/f forums back when the dash site was still in it's spider web like configuration(or whatever they call it, i'm no techie) about all the misogyny and sexism we were seeing but we didn't feel we had any recourse really. It was so prevalent it didn't feel safe to speak out. It wasn't very welcoming for those kinds of conversations. Or maybe we weren't bold enough yet and not aware that there were plenty of people who didn't view butch as hetero man and femme as hetero woman. I had some deep and meaningful conversations concerning misogyny, sexism, gender and all sorts of stuff on the dash site. But there was always this uncomfortable feeling for me of knowing that people were pretty much charged with policing themselves and if things got ugly somebody was going to bleed. I, personally, speaking from my ME place, noticed a real difference when I first came to this site as darkgazer and felt more comfortable talking about misogyny and sexism than I ever have before. It might be a mixture of having grown more open to examining stuff as a community over the years and being on a site with mods and admin who are very invested in keeping this place as cushioned from personal attacks and as civil as possible.

Over the years I have been told more than a few times to get a sense of humor when responding to one of those butch/man femme/het woman type of jokes. I don’t even find them funny before you change it to butch. I can’t believe that if I was a man I would only want to be fed and fucked. And as a butch I certainly would like a little more in my life. If you believe masculine beings are empty shells that only need to be filled with food and sex I can’t imagine how you will raise your man children. Or how you would explain to your girl child that she should be content partnering with someone whose needs run no deeper than eating and fucking. Or how you think it’s funny that you chose that kind of person for your life partner. There will be no end to this if you perpetuate it and pass it down to your offspring who in turn do the same. There are things like self fulfilling prophesies and if this is all you expect from men that’s probably all you will ever get. It is difficult to break the cycle. We as women have all been taught to participate whole heartedly in our own oppression. And many of us do, whether straight or gay. Expect more. Don't settle. Strong and silent doesn’t mean deep and mysterious, it usually means dumb and closed off with a pinch of bully thrown in. And if your man or your woman only wants to eat and fuck stop laughing and find another partner.

We changed ours
 

My wife and I changed our last names by way of hyphening them together. It gave us the feeling of formally coming together, as part of being married. My last name went first and hyphened my wife’s last name. There was a lot work involved in formally changing our names everywhere and on everything. It is worth it in the long run. We have only been married 2 years, as it only became legal in Australia in 2018. I’m still having to change my name, like when I had to do a COVID-19 test at our base hospital; they still had my old name on file. I keep a copy of our marriage certificate in my handbag just in case I need it.