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BADA BING!!
Blue I would like to share with you that after I read your post I screamed out loud and said OMG ME TOO!! I want you to know I not only SEE YOU! I HEAR YOU!! I too am a Femme who oozes and presents with masculinity within my gender!!!
I am so glad you found this venue because there are OTHERS just like you and I, there are Femme's here who can fry your bacon, wear heels, have long nails on weekends and can rock a pair of timberlands and levi's and ooze masculinity like it was honey dripping off a honey comb!! I FEEL what you are saying about the deflection of insecurity coming off butches/transguys/femmes because you aren't a stereotypical version of Femme. I FEEL your frustration when someone dismisses your FEMME because of THEIR experience with a hetero tryst. I'm 100% Femme each and every day of my life, I am too not defined by butch/guy or another Femme's ideal of what Femme should be! I want to embrace you and welcome you to BFP because sister you are going to see that your Femme is our Femme and you are NOT invisible!!!!!! Welcome!!! PS spritzer be who you wanna be, let your Femme flag fly the way you want it too!!! |
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I was going to quote a small part of your post but just couldn't snip any of it. Thank you for sharing! When you talk about your father's role in your life I found myself shaking my head uh huh. My father was a controlling man who was also physically disabled. And the worse his disability became the more controlling he became. He taught me many things and I did to a degree adore him and paid a high price for such. The invisibility blows. It is incredibly sad and frustrating when I give the nod and get nothing back. You know when you give each other the head nod, smile of I see you. I used to be able to do that when I was more plain jane/andro dressing and before I had a kid. Now forget about it. And I miss it, very much so. Achingly so. We've been in NH for a year now. We are still working on fitting in and it is going to be a while until we have time to seek out the queer community with dogged determination. So ya, the random "I see you" moments would really help. I cuss like a sailor too. And it is a problem for some folks. They just don't expect it. I haven't had your butch rejection experiences. Yet right now I find folks really have rather tight cursing expectations but I attribute it to how "women" are supposed to sound and how people think elementary school teachers are supposed to talk all the time. Which is more rigid than I thought. I really just don't fit the mold there. And I am really happy I don't. I am working on it the confidence in my version of femme that is just me. And learning to let it go when others struggle to adjust to my presentation as femme. |
And another thing....
the early omg i skipped the training bra reign them in experience... talk about sudden immersion into the world of boys/men commenting on your body publicly... I was not ready for that. It is a shock. I remember thinking to myself, um I was playing wall ball and now your talking about my boobs? I don't get the connection. After 3 recesses in a row of boobs derail wall ball games I stopped playing. It wasn't fun and I had no idea what to say, that I could say shut the f@#* up. Must remember this lesson so I prep The General earlier. |
Explorations!
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Exactly, we get to learn from our experiences as young women who were not cookie cutter girls. We as parents (if you are a parent or a co parent) can prepare and tell our sons or daughters that they don't have to conform to gender assignments by other people and we can teach our sons that breasts are not just for manly/butch/guy entertainment nor should they deter women from physical activities!! My father said to me early, boys like to take up space, you should never let them even your brothers, I don't and I do it LOUD be it verbal or by extending my body and energy. I am now as a Femme so comfortable in my gender (regardless of garb) that if I want I will engulf the room and claim my space respectfully. My 30's were defining moments for me in my Gender journey, as a Femme I grew more into the masculinity, sexual, soft, power yealding creature I was meant to be. It's incredibly emotional to share with others like you (general) because it becomes this A-HA moment and so defining that there are Tops/Masters/Femmes/Women/Girls/Lesbians just like you! |
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Your post is not an easy one to clip, so I just took your last paragraph .... You aren't alone. I can relate to your post on so many levels. I was a tomboy when I was younger and when high school came around, I started feeling more comfortable in my femme skin. But my problem was that I couldn't be what most people categorize as "femme" because I love, adore and embrace the masculinity that exists within myself. It's what makes me who I am. In the past, I've tried to femme it up, only to find that I was being pretentious and ultimately miserable. I found myself censoring things I say and do because I was making someone (and it was usually a butch, maybe a handful of femmes) feel more comfortable in their skin at the risk of losing my own. I couldn't do that anymore. It got to a point where I let my heart rule and lead me to where I am today - and I am very happy to have done that for myself. I can be very femme, and at times, not so much. I am always presumed to be straight, and these days, even that doesn't bother me anymore. I don't let much define who I am let alone how femme I am or not in the world. |
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Mine grew overnight. I went from tee shirts to bra and was like, WTF?? So now the boys who considered me one of the boys is now looking at me like a girl. Ack. I was a boy with boobs, man. |
Here's a story I haven't shared too often ...
So, I was this tomboy, right? As far as all the boys on my block were concerned - I was one of the boys until my boobs started to sprout. Wellll ..... I especially took notice to this the one day we all decided to play football, and the guys wanted me to be center. (You know, the person who is bent over ass high snapping the ball to the quarterback, just in case you weren't sure....) And guess what I feel? :/ Ugh. The next time we decided to play, I decided to shove something down the front of my pants and insisted that *I* be the quarterback (because truth be known, I had a killer arm and my accuracy was far better...). BOINK. How does it feel motherfucker?? Needless to say, I was not asked to be center anymore. Looking back, i realize that day explains so many things. LOL |
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Thank you for sharing your defining moments so freely. They help me understand and begin to imagine what it looks like for me and how I can bring my self into space. |
i'm so grateful for all the posts here, especially bleu's post and the responses to it. thanks medusa for starting this thread.
i grew up around a lot of really strong women. i was shamed for not being extremely assertive, and that sucked, but it also made me grateful for when i did begin to become more assertive and it made me recognize and appreciate the fact that i needed to learn that skill. i also had the benefit of the fact that my mother and older sister, though our relationships were/are not always perfect, were great role models for me as women (though they were/are both straight). i came out as bisexual/queer pretty early on in high school and always felt silenced about that, like no one took me seriously, at least until i got to college. i mostly had relationships with straight men, sometimes queer men, and other feminine women. i was always attracted to butches and folks with other gender ids but never seemed to move past the friend zone. (i also didn't date much at all and tended to have serious relationships with people i was friends with first, though, which could be part of why.) i never felt comfortable in my body, identifying as a woman, in relationships with straight men. it's hard to explain why. i think part of it is just from the sort of awkwardness of being queer in a relationship with a straight cisman. but part of it for me was not feeling like what i'd always known/been told about womanhood and femininity were really me. meeting other femmes and coming to learn the meaning of "femme" in disabled, poor and working class, and indigenous community/ies really helped me to come home to myself and to see my gender identity and expression in a more complex and true (for me) way. i think that's a huge part of why i consider femme to be my core gender identity rather than something that's tied up in how i look/act/dress/whatever. (i mean, i guess it is a bit of both, but i tend to speak of it as my gender identity rather than my gender expression because it's such a core part of how i understand myself in the world.) on the other hand, i do still feel some awkwardness sometimes. even in the most accepting and down groups of femmes i've been a part of, there's still an aesthetic of how one is supposed to look/dress/wear make-up, etc. that i definitely don't feel i fit into most of the time. looking at pictures my friends have posted from femmecon, part of me wonders if i'm really "femme enough" to be at home in a space like that, and i do even feel a little bit of anxiety about the planet meetup. the "not fitting in" or the reason i don't express my femme-ness in that way is because of a few different things...financial limitations, comfort/access/mobility reasons, and just generally how i like to dress and be...i don't like to wear makeup, i wear jeans and t-shirts a lot, i physically can't wear heels on a regular basis, i'm not super glam. i think maybe a lot of it is stuff i've internalized and just overthink myself when i look around and see all these gorgeous femmes and feel a bit like an ugly duckling. there are other things besides dress and presentation, though. i like to top and bottom. i am attracted to both butches and other femmes (and people of all other kinds of gender identities/expressions). i definitely have both dominant and submissive qualities. i still don't really feel "seen" by butches i meet on the street or other femmes, lesbians, and queer women. femme invisibility sucks. i wear queer jewelry because i love it, but also because i like not being invisible ;) one of the blessings i feel is that even though i may not look like a lot of other femmes in the group, i have felt pretty accepted by the femme (and more generally the queer) communities i've been a part of once people get to know me. and my partner now definitely sees me for who i am, and has since we first met. |
i'd like to say i am completely enjoying this dialogue. THANK YOU!
For me i was always confused about who i am. i never liked so called girly things, well some. i would steal my brothers toys so i could play with fun trucks, race cars, erector sets and hammering things. When my father was building anything usually boats, i helped. i hated the man but wanted to do things like that so i learned early on what tools were what and how to change a carburetor. i love motors and machines, fishing and running the boat myself. i love power tools, my father actually gave me a ton of power tools when i got older. None of these traits are typical *girl* traits. i did do stuff with girls, like bake and play dolls but that was not nearly as much fun as riding on the mini bike with my brother. i climbed trees for crying out loud... most girls my age were in frilly dresses and mortified by my playing in the dirt. i liked other girls like me! i still loved being a girl, but i didn't feel like my friends. My sister would think i was gross because i was so unlike most girls. i always felt like a tug of war going on inside. When i grew older boys they found my behavior a challenge. Soooo i toned it down, i felt there was something wrong with me. i had to become more of a "girl". BUT i actually started to enjoy wearing frocks and make up. I still played and coached softball, went fishing, took things apart and played in the dirt but could easily take a shower and slip on a sundress and heels and be just as comfortable. Just like when i was a kid i embraced both *worlds* When i was in my 30s and disconnected with my father, who i felt was a major reason i didn't come out when i knew i was *different* at an early age, like 3.. i fell in love with my femme side, and who i AM. Finding someone who embraced me that same way has been a challenge. Since my 30's i've been in the kink world too, so finding someone who embraces all that i am and my kink side too has been a challenge. i am convinced i have found the one and only person on the planet who loves me like i am, doesn't want to change me or be more or less of this or that. She is not challenged because she knows who SHE is. It works. i've known butches who have felt challenged by my ways. One told me i took "her butch pride" away by my hooking up my bilge pump to my boat when it was storming. Well she didn't know how to and i certainly wasn't gonna let my boat sink. i was expecting a *way to go you saved the day* instead i got a scolding. Previous to that she told me she fell in love with me when i took her fishing for the first time, loved that i was independent and able minded. It's like "OMG I LOVE YOU!!! YOU ARE SO PERFECT FOR ME" ... then *ok change for me now*. Another told me she was disgusted with me as a femme because i gut fish. They think it's cute that i like *tomboy* stuff, UNTIL they feel challenged. i learned that's not my problem, it's theirs. it took me about 40 years to learn that. |
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BFP
Aisha that's one reason I like going to BFP gatherings, it's a time for me as a Fierce Femme creature to display my plumage (hair, clothes,make up,shoes) it's my choice how much color, boldness, sexuality I'm going to display. If I go down to the coffee room hair nappy, looking like I just rolled out of a good fuck then I can because no one cares or they lookin' the same. I feel the same way in the forums the Femme I am isn't nor will it ever be defined by others comfort levels or lack there of!
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Femme enough? Butch enough?
Being enough is THE given in the equation, the provision we all have on our journey. I've struggled with "the enough" and worth. Oh I have and do. If I know one thing when I feel like I know nothing it is that worth and being enough is the pivot point. |
Enough!
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I feel when "the enough" is over looked and we don't claim our space the hierarchy of what is butch/woman/Femme/guy enough crappy stereotypical expectation blots our gender/presentation/label/person canvas! It leads to a dangerous concept of competition mentality. Dislike! |
Yaknow that makes me want to jump on top of this table and say *YES!!!*
i've had enough of the enough word too. i'm enough for ME. i don't have to validate myself, my partner, my past, my anything. i'm SO over it, SO over it. i can't change, i've tried, and for the first time ever, i don't fucking want to! AND i am with someone who does not want me to change and stop being this way or that way, thank GODDESS because i would rather be alone that to keep hearing that i need to change to suit someone else's idea of what THEY want to be. |
I appreciate CajunDee's statement that in relationship now it works because she knows who she is (both she's :) ).
When you know who you are you share who you are. A person has a chance and choice to love and honor who you are. That is an amazing feat, a miracle. And it happens in relationships to of many types. So this reminds me that my femme angst and my earlier problems with assumptions is my responsibility. To connect to myself and communicate who I am clearly. |
am so grateful for the wisdom that's being shared about accepting/communicating who we are and recognizing that we are enough and that that validation can't/shouldn't come from outside.
i struggle with that a lot, and it's gotten a lot better as i've grown up, and i'm sure i'll continue to come to terms with it more. i think for me it's felt like a slow process (but really looking at it in reality it hasn't been all THAT slow). i'm just of the serenity NOW! mindset ;) i definitely agree that for me experiencing that validation with my partner in a relationship has been incredibly affirming and helpful along the journey. |
Femmes
Amen!! Cause the Femme spectrum goes wayyyy beyond who we fuck.love.date to as simple as who we fuck.love.date. We aré entities defined by such a vast number of things from the most complex to the simplest of tastes:).
I love love love being Femme, I take great pride in that! |
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You voicing your struggle with worth gives us the chance to challenge and hold a space of love for you. So thank you! Because it is beautiful to see you choose into your worth. |
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I adore the simple complex spectrum of myself and who we are all together. I'm a sucker for a good dichotomy. |
One of the things we work on, on a daily basis is my reminding myself that i am worthy and enough. i forget stuff easily. i am much better about that.
In the past whenever someone was not happy with me, i felt i was not enough. Not sexy enough, not thin enough, not femme enough, not rich enough, not pretty enough, not good enough... i've cut, starved, beaten myself up over it my entire life, it feels good to say that i no longer feel like i am broken, or not enough. Enough, we all are. |
Because it's perfect for this thread!
Proud cuss like a sailor, mistaken for a *lady*, can whoop your ass physically and cerebral kinda Femme... |
hah, indeed! ...
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Thank you!!
Heck i am in the mood to change the Ujoints and maybe pull the motor out of the farm truck, just so i can reinstall it! |
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Thank you, thank you, thank you! xo, Bleu |
Whole Worthy Femme learning to claim her space... feeling much much more centered. Thank you for the space to share, be and converse.
Now about that pencil I was looking for... I really don't dare to write in my calendar in pen. I just can not do it. I bet The General has one... but the glitter in her room is so distracting. |
would you know it by looking at me? the queer femme that i am the one that i see, would you recognize me? I do not stand out with painted nails and painted toes hair done up and make up applied, i often look straight am often times mistaken for such....would you know a sister if you saw her walking down the street?
my tattoo on my right arm a dead give away....often covered by work clothes etc....displayed only when amongst my people .....so would you know it would you know by looking at me how i id? I love my heels and dresses too....so would you know? would you recognize? Often times mistaken as straight and i have embraced my femme me who i am no matter what .... the ever after invisible femme......embraced.... |
I grew up in a household where my mother worked side by side with my father - and that meant whether it was painting the house, gardening, or putting up a fence. No one ever questioned my mother's femininity - and she proudly did all of this with her makeup on. I never grew up with ideals of what girls should do versus boys - and I was fortunate in that my mother didn't stress "gender-correctness" as I got older.
I played with boy toys. When I was given a doll, I was told I would rip the head off and use it like a ball. :| (Thank God I don't remember that...) I had nephews that were close in age to me, and they were more like my little brothers. I grew up with the freedom of my own expression - and it was never questioned. I was STUNNED when I came out and eventually made my way toward the butch/femme dynamic. There is where I observed what and what not to do. (Supposedly) I was slammed with things like "that's not very lady like" or "that isn't very femme of you". How femme should I be, should I let that butch open the door for me? PPfftt. Okay, so I tried to roll with it. It got tired very quickly. I realized I was giving up myself to make someone else happy. Ultimately, this was going to make that person miserable, because hell hath no fury like a woman suppressed. I tried to avoid the stereotyped personalities. Some thought I wasn't femme enough, others thought I was too femme. Some didn't know how to categorize me. Well, I still don't know how to categorize me, but I'm okay with that. That's the beauty of discovery and expression - it's ever changing and ever evolving. I know who I am inside, and that is really all that matters in the end. |
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Woohoo! Can you fix my front floodlight while you're at it? We fixed the passenger side, but the driver's side is a bit tougher to get to .... |
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I've been wanting to write my story about embracing my femmeness for a few days now but partly I've been busy and partly I kind of chickened out ~ however seeing and reading so many remarkable stories got me to really thinking about how I too have embraced the femmeness that I have, and since this is the topic of the thread I will share my own story with everyone as well.
I was raised the first 14 years of my life by my mom and her parents; my grandfather and grandmother were huge influences on my life and they are still missed to this day. I truly believe that I had a fairly good upbringing; my dad didn't come back into my life until I was 14 and in many ways I'm glad he wasn't there earlier. Some of who I am today is because of my dad, and that's not necessarily a bad thing however I am glad that I haven't developed some of his traits like being condescending, calling people down, making everyone around him feel like he is the king and they are beneath him etc. As a child I wore what I wanted to (including my uncle's football jersey and my grandfather's boots; he was a trucker most of his life). I played with anything from dolls, Barbie's and my little pony to Hot Wheels cars, collecting rocks and playing outside. I never really saw myself as "femme" really, just a person. Being overweight in high school was a hard thing to deal with; having books knocked out of my hands, being called every hurtful name in the book you can imagine, being shoved into lockers or having them rattled everytime I walked by. I did wear feminine clothes, make-up etc but often I just tried to be invisible in general hoping that no one would tease me. I never truly had an identity in high school; I dated one guy in high school for a month or so and it just never felt right but I had begun to notice a crush on women (particularily my French teacher) on grade 7 so I tried coming out once in high school which never worked, once at age 18 and then again finally at age 20. I began to chat on another gay website (not dash) and discovered the whole butch-femme dynamic. I figured out that I identified more as a femme, but I think really as my early 20's went by I was truly trying to find my identity as a person. By my mid 20's I had met an FTM in my own city that I fell for and was with for 5 years. I went with him to his doctor's appointments, helped him with his T shots and was just overall very supportive of his transition. At this time I identified alot with him and for awhile was butch; I truly felt that's who I was at the time and I don't regret that part of my journey ~ it taught me alot about truly coming into my own and being my own person. I used to go to local FTM meetings at the GLBT centre here in Winnipeg with him and as they talked about not being able to identify with their bodies I saw so much of myself in them. Looking back now on that time in my life, I think that I was just not associating myself with being overweight and had really just disassociated my soul with my body because of years of being teased about my weight as well as dealing with my father constantly putting me down about anything he could find at fault with me. I made a decision to transition and began in October of 2010 to take testosterone, truly believing that I was meant to be a guy. It took me until January of this year, a year and three months to truly see that I actually wasn't meant to be a guy so I stopped taking the hormones and knew that I was meant to remain a female. I've had lots of time to reflect on that time in my life and I honestly believe that I learned more about myself in that year and three months than I had ever learned about myself before ~ I began to really love myself, and accepted myself for who I am. I don't regret a moment of it and I can definitely say that it gave me such a new found respect for all of my FTM brothers and what they go through on a daily basis. I still have a couple of the effects of the hormones around, some hair growth (especially on my face) and abit of a gruffer voice than before but I've gotten used to it and don't feel that it makes me any less of a femme. The last 3-4 months of taking the hormones, I began to miss things like wearing girly clothes and wearing make-up. I made the decision to start growing my hair back and bought make-up ~ I gave some of my guy clothes that I had bought over that year to Value Village here in my city (which is like Goodwill) and bought clothes from them to start rebuilding my wardrobe. I'm very happy with the femme that I have become; I'm more outspoken, not quite as shy as I was before (though I still have a ways to go); I've begun to work on losing weight and just getting back to me. I've missed living alot of years because I did not feel I deserved to be loved and to be happy, but as I've grown into being a femme and a woman I've re-discovered those lost parts of myself and am proud to be the femme I am now. I would not change a single thing about my life's journey, its made me who I am today and looking back on everything I've dealt with personally I'm pretty proud of myself :) I admire each and every femme on this site; thank you all for sharing your stories and for allowing me to share mine also! |
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tougher to get to from under on that side. (We tried). |
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lol .... |
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We'll fix that rascal! |
Leigh,
Thank you SOOOOOOO Much for sharing your story. We have all had growing pains i am sure of that, sharing them is a wonderful thing! dee |
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Again, this is a great thread and I love the perspective y'all share here. Thanks! :poc-love: |
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Well for me personally I do not associate my femmeness with my sexualty. I just have never connected the two. Perhaps it is because even as a child I was ultra femme. I remember throwing fits if my mother or father told me I could not wear a dress. Everything I did was feminine.
I got a box full of pictures last night of my amazing father and me. There is one particular picture that made me laugh. I was 4 and sitting in a chair next to my dad at his work and my legs were crossed. Then as I flipped through every picture where I happened to be sitting...my legs were cross. Also there just are not very many pictures where I am in anything but a skirt and dress. I realize clothing does not distinct a femme from non femme or what not but I did think it was interesting. As I grew into my preteens and realized I was not attracted to men I was open about it. So by the time it came out my family didn't even do a double take. I think everyone just knew. Now with that being said outside of my family was a completely different story and one I still deal with today. Such comments are and have been made that I am too pretty or too femme and even too girly to be gay. My response to that is to always calmly question their comment. How am I too femme to be gay what does that mean. Usually they call their own bs when they open their mouth to say well most gay/lesbian women are masculine looking or tomboys. It always seems in my experience that once they verbalize their closed minded theory that an aha moment comes and they realize they have unfairly boxed a portion of society. One of my biggest new peeves is the assumption that I am not a femme lesbian because I have two children. Makes me just want to take them to the library and make them read books on alternative methods of conceiving. I guess my hope for society would have been that by now they realize that even in the LGBTQI community we do have children and come in all sorts of different styles just like the heterosexual community. Being ultra femme is not always easy just like some of the other classifications within our community. I have dated butches and transmen who have blatantly told me they feel I might be bi because I am so feminine and even have said well you "look straight" that is the one that ticks me off. How the heck does one look straight. It can be hard to date because being ultra femme apparently does not give of the same signals as let's say a butch. It is irritating at times especially considering I am a bit old fashioned when it comes to dating. I feel out of place approaching someone I am interested in. So I have learned to find tactful and creative ways of flirting. I am going to stop rambling now and just end by saying I love all my ultra femmeness and even though it comes with issues here and there...so does everything else in life. I love being a heel wearing,makeup loving,dress wearing femme. That is me and I don't really give two hoots at this point in my life about anyone not accepting my femmeness or thinking that I am too femme to be gay. |
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