Thoughts
 

I wasn't intentionally starting a conversation on Feminism, I knew it would come up because a lot of us are Feminists and we come here because this place was built on Feminist values. Also there was no intent on redefining Femme. I believe Femme's get to do that for themselves because of how Femme is so vast.


The intent I had when it came to this particular thread is and will be to dissect, discuss, tear apart the continuous subject of "The Cleavers" and the comparison of the correct way to be Femme via June Cleaver.

This particular comparison gets brought up over and over in threads and I keep wondering why so therefore the question to all Femme's and how they feel about being compared to "June Cleaver" a straight woman who is being put in a Femme Icon place.


That shit right there drives me fucking bonkers to the point I was be like

$$#@!! because if I compared a butch to some hunky straight guy we all know there would be hell.

I can't say I blame them because butches aren't straight guys, unless they are and like our Gender/Identity/Label it's variant and all over the gender marker spectrum that it's almost ludicrous to compare anything QUEER to anything *straight* (hetero).

Then I go OMGay I am a Latina, so therefore once again my Femme/Gender is disregarded via I can't identify culturally to "The Cleavers"

*deep breath*


ETA

I also spoke and am speaking about Femme from my personal experiences and view, they do not define others and how they are Femme just me:)

I agree Belle but it does bug me when straight people say they are femme or queer. I guess I feel that way because my road to claiming queer and femme came with a lot of loss and grief and I feel like I fought to be seen as who and what I am today. I don't quite understand why a straight person would identify tha way except to be even more than an ally? It does make me cranky though!

Thoughts
 

Know what pisses me off even more.

When I log in here and I see the Femme, Butch, Trans, Zie's, post a picture of a feminine woman and refer to her as Femme or when describing a straight (hetero) woman they see on the street and have a boner for as Femme.

It's a mixture of anger, hurst, angst, and seperation. It's nothing to do with insecurity, jealousy it's all to do with stop giving other's what is MINE and I've worked hard for!

It bothers me if I hear a straight woman refer to herself as Femme. For me, Femme is part of my queer identity. There is no place in the world for me, for a straight woman while living her visible life filled with privilege to refer to herself as Femme.

Julie

Well we live in groovy land so young people here seem to push the boundaries of definitions on any number of things. In some ways I guess it means that the othering of queers is less with young people. But to me it is even more othering to say that there is no distinction between us. I don't feel accepted by that. I feel discounted.

As a person who spent a long time in contemplation before any action was taken outside of "straight" behavior - never having kissed another woman before the age of 27 - I didn't feel the right to identify as anything other than possibly bisexual until I had moved beyond crushes and imaginings and dreams and contemplations and into the "reality" of physicality.

Now I look back at all that time I denied myself to myself not simply because I was ashamed but because I didn't let myself identify more accurately without the *proof* I felt the physical/sexual would have given (and eventually did give) me.

Because I lived in a "straight" marriage, I felt voiceless when talking about my own sexuality/orientation. A girl or woman who has only been with men talking about not knowing if she's a lesbian - who listens to her or respects what identity she forms? I shut myself up.

And though I do get tired of women I perceive as straight talking to me about how they might be lesbian or wish they were lesbian or hate men or blah blah blah, I don't want to deny anybody the right to identify as queer no matter what state their lives are in.

I'd rather I hadn't silenced myself - feeling the need to manifest sexually my desires before allowing myself a claim to any real queer identity.

I have never been a thing like June Cleaver. She represents much of what I see as society's expectations of me as a female person.

I could totally get into some Lucy/Ethel slash though.

piggybacking off of the processing about straight women using the word "femme" as part of their identity --- i've heard other people use this word to describe themselves too. can a particular word actually "belong to" (for lack of a better descriptor) a particular group of people? i dont think it can in 95% of the cases. i know a solid handful of gay men who use the word "femme" to describe themselves. i know a straight man who uses the word to describe himself. i knew a transguy in Seattle that used the word "femme" to describe himself.

can we be perschnickity about this sort of thing? arent people's ID words theirs to choose? i bring it up, despite not knowing exactly where i stand on the idea because i'm still shuffling the info, because recently someone told me that i wasnt who i described myself to be. i called myself something, i cant remember what, something like blah blah blah stonefemme blah blah blah and the person i was talking to sort of laughed and said "oh Nomad, you're not a stone femme." (as if SHE would know!) i felt like she was negating my definition of myself and i dont know anyone who has the right to do that. so maybe that's where my curiosity-questioning-processing comes from, even though the two arent necessarily related.

and i hope this isnt derailing the thread because i dont want to do that.

(just trying to sort it all out)

thinking out loud
 

I have straight girlfriends, who are female bodied we are worlds apart when it comes to how we live our lives. Kelly doesn't have to endure the questioning I do if I do come out as Femme at work. Kelly doesn't feel out of place at the Buffalo Wings during a game. Kelly and her whomever she dates can hold hands and kiss (peck) on the lips and people aren't going to be like WHAT!


As soon as I open my mouth and speak my queer identity is known because of the way I speak on certain subject manners and how I address them.

:cracked:

i am soooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooo Lucy (with some Elyse Keaton and some Florida Evans thrown in)

This is the best conversation I have had in a long time! Thank you all so much.

I am young in lesbian years having only come out 5 years ago. That could be why I bristle at others using femme. I don't have a problem with a gay man or a Transman or even a butch bringing femme into their identity. Maybe that is because they are still queer. I feel sometimes that straight people use queer or femme because it is "cool" and they want to have some of that coolness. They want to say "hey I'm like you too!"

I totally agree with you Nat about not wanting to put a questioning person on the outside or negating their process. My experience was very similar to yours. But I did not know the first thing about being queer, femme or lesbian when I was in that questioning phase. I had to experience it first hand before I felt I could speak to it or identify myself as any of those things. It goes a lot deeper to me than just using the words.

I know this is meandering off the subject of June Cleaver, but I see this as a way in which femmes do not have privilege - if a butch were with a man and claimed to be queer nobody would resent it.

It's just not June Cleaver
 

Thoughts
 

I don't deny who she is, the likely hood of a heteronormative Femme and I kickin it won't happen, sure we'll hang out once in awhile but it's not the same it truly isn't and I love love my hetero friends but it's not the same... I am coming from a Gender perspective and no hetero woman is going to view her gender as I do


We'll have a very different kind of relationship than I do with Julie (of the New York Julies)

thinking out loud
 

It's like the Femme Swap, my friend Kelly doesn't get it why it's so defining.


Erika does.....

Yes I agree so much with this. The relationships I have with femmes are very different than the relationships I have with straight women. That was quite a revelation to me!

Femme is an identifying descriptor in our queer community.
Femme is part of our history. It dates back in time and it is how we connected.
If you hand over Femme and say it's okay/accept for anybody to use this.
Then in reality you are erasing our history.
Without our history and the Femme's and Butches who have come before us - then you are erasing me, as I am Femme, it is who I am and it is my identity. It has no place in the straight community.

Julie

EDITED TO SAY: You can say to the straight woman who identifies as straight - Our history. Tell her. Be honest. If you do not know our history, then please read as much as you can about it, and perhaps you will not see it as being placed in a box - but an honor to be surrounded and loved as a Femme by and for your Femme sisters.

50 years from now
 

Claire Huxtable

Murphy Brown

Roseanne

Anne Romano

Kate & Allie

Cate Hennessey

Ellen Degeneres

Oprah Winfrey



We still do not see any of these women being upheld and used as comparisons when it comes to Femme.

On straight women claiming Femme...

Like julieisafemme, I was very late coming out....as in a handful of years ago...and I spent a long time squashing down any self-knowledge about myself and my sexuality, refusing to look at what was missing. Once I finally figured it out, it was an incredibly freeing feeling....to be able to have a word for that part of who I am.

So...I don't want to share "femme" with straight women. I feel like they have plenty of other words they can use to describe themselves without co-opting ours.

That's really the only limit for me. I don't think femmes need to partner with butches, or anyone, to be femme. I have no problem with gay men claiming femme. For me, femme is a queer thing.

I get that maybe straight women admire something that we have or are, and want to claim femme...but that would be like me saying I admire Lady Snow and want to be like her...and claim Latina. It just doesn't work like that in my head.

Loving this conversation :rrose:

And on a personal note to you Princess... You are my Femme Sister and I care deeply for you on a vast spectrum. I will NEVER view a straight woman the same way I view you... She will never be my Femme Sister - She might be might be my sister... But never my Femme Sister. The same goes for a few other beautiful Femmes here who have gotten inside of this hard exterior of mine. They will never share the same place at my table, as my straight female friends. We are Kin.

And I hope you don't feel beaten up (by me) for your views - they are yours and you are entitled to your opinion... I will not think less of you. I think there is a bit of learning for all of us and it is a continuum and I hope I continue to learn.

♥ Julie

yep
 

Right and that right there drives me batty when we get broad stroked into that kind of thinking....

There is no all powerful grand poobah of Femme.... We all do Femme different.

This is an awesome thread. It is an entire series of consciousness raising groups in one reading of the thread.

It reminds me of the "old days" when I was in NOW (Betty Friedan called us lesbians the "lavender menace") and we used to hash these ideas, concepts and theories out constantly.

Sometimes, I get discouraged that feminism has receded into the background for women but reading everyone's posts, I see that a feminist consciousness, is alive and well.

I am so happy to know this.

thinking out loud
 

I went through this very same thought when I was married, I was a dyke, married to a bio man. I never thought that when I sat down and picked myself apart that a word could change me so much like Femme did. It made sense to me and I kept it a secret between me and those I was involved with at the time. I often questioned my gender because of the social markers that get imposed on Femme. I wasn't fitting them and I certainly couldn't fully live as Femme while in my marriage. Queer, Dyke, Poly, Gay fit well and I didn't feel I had to not claim them.

It was like my Femme was in the closet and well this closet burst. Then I met more women like me and then more and more. I knew a few Femme's but the online communities I belonged to started too bursting at the seams with Femme. I found myself wading and sorting through all things that people were assigning Femme and slipped comfortably into my Gender.

It's not easy when one as a Femme has to almost plan when it is ok to be you, it's oppressive and us being women it's a rough time self examining one's needs because we are brow beaten into x, y, z. For me if a woman, man, is having and experiencing queer feelings, queer thoughts, queer desires more likely than you will fit one of the many labels that we use.


Straight girls don't struggle with that. I asked and ask my friends and they are like um NO. Their choices in sex, love, politics, critical thinking is over ------------------------------------------------>

while mine is over there
<----------------------------------------------------------------------------

Opposite, maybe some similarities but not to many.

Hmmm...
 

It was only hard when I stepped out of my leather, that's been the only place as a Femme where my gender, my cock, my presentation, my dress has never been questioned.

Yet

some scattered thoughts about the items highlighted above:


i'm one of the choosers. i choose to live a "lifestyle" (hate that word) that is focused on domesticity and on my own pursuits. i'm single now, and no different than i would be if i were partnered, except that now i trade my skills for room & board. if i lived alone i'd do all of these things for myself. and when partnered, i do them for my One. but i do them as part of a dynamic that suits me. i prefer service oriented submission. it makes me happy. i've partnered with people who understand that and reciprocate and people who said they understood at the beginning and discovered later that perhaps they didnt understand at all. one thing i can always tell, the relationship is over when i go from service oriented submissive to "mule". (my term for work w/no reciprocity).

when i'm doing the domestic part of my thing in a loving, reciprocity based relationship i find that i am very happy, very sexually engaged, very devoted to working on my relationship AND very respected for what i offer. i've wanted that particular "lifestyle" since i was a kid, despite my very feminist mother's incessant objection and abhorrence of the idea. and if i have unconsciously or inadvertently called it a 50s thing, it's not with oppressive nature of those times in mind. it was with no particular thought in mind at all, frankly. not because i'm incapable but because i never thought i'd be called upon to defend it. (i am NOT saying that i'm being called upon to do that now. i do not feel anyone is attacking anyone else or being unfair. i am enjoying reading the discussion.) i never honestly thought past my own understanding of what was going on in my life, between me and a partner. if someone else sees the dynamic i have with a partner it's rare.

there definitely ARE feminists (of every variety) who are vocally and vehemently critical of my choice to be faithful to my feelings about myself and the way i interact within the self-chosen parameters of my relationships. i live with one of them now. i've encountered at least 3 or 4 dozen of like-minded people since arriving on the east coast a few months ago and i am routinely criticized on a weekly (at least) basis by a friend of my landlord for being "too fucking muck like June Cleaver". i've been told that my "lifestyle is a betrayal of feminism" or of "queer progress", i've been told i'm an "insult" to feminism, a "slap in the face to women's rights", a "traitor to women", a "lesbian poser" and a couple of worse things, including that i'm "sick". painful stuff. i usually just walk away but the few times i've engaged in conversation i've met brick wall resistance. oddly, i spend more time actively fighting for abortion rights, birth control access, homeless services and so on. most of the feminists i've met and known are content to rest on that label of honor.

as for Martha, she's impossible to achieve and i dont want to. but i'm a redesign mavin who never buys new, always makes something out of nothing, and refuses to contribute to hyper-consumerism or send more to the landfill than is necessary. i like some of her ideas but i'm more of a Maria Brito fan, but then again Brito isnt being force fed to me at every grocery check out line either. do i dig some of Martha's stuff? you bet. am i lining up for her autograph? no. MS is a brand, not a person. i like her as an idea producer. i also think she's ridiculous. she has a schedule for oiling her saddles. who the f*ck has a saddle schedule? i dont even know the bus schedule! my Stewart/Brito tendencies come from having wanted to be a designer at a very young age. i have a Masters Degree now, in something much less marketable than Interior Design and i have always regretted it. to me such things arent the consumerist facade they've become. they're about making beauty or fun or tranquility as you define it; about creating a haven away from the busy-ness of the world where you can recuperate and laugh and cry and f*ck and eat and drink and play and fight and love and relax and discover community and family and long term connection.

as for you and June, i think you should invite Martha too. she always strikes me as easily underestimated.

As a friend, I can be as close to a straight woman, andro dyke, butch, trans person, or cis-man as I can be to a femme. Gender makes no difference to me where friendship is concerned.

And one of my very closest friends is femme, so I do know what it's like to have a femme friend.

Thinking . . . I don't know that our both being femme is even a major part of our bond. I am sorta geeky, and she is very geeky. That's a lot of it. We're both kinky. We both teach. That's huge. We both came from the midwest though from very different backgrounds -- especially in terms of religion. We can talk about anything. We are comfortable around each other. We don't get bored with one another. We got each other's backs.

How many of us have them?
 

I too have close friends in the gender spectrum besides Femme. I'm not mentioning them here because they do differ than some of my Femme relationships.

I, Snow didn't choose to talk about other genders because I've so many compartments it would be confusing and not important to the conversation:)

In fifties films, being a housewife wasn't just about housework and being limited to the private sphere. She was also supposed to help create a suburban man, who would make money so the family could consume more and who be committed to the family and the community. She brought the husband into the private sphere and changed him, domesticated him, rather than stepping out into the work world. It's kind of nauseating, but it was presented as a form of power.

I am not sure how it relates, but every time people talk about the housewife stereotype or list some of the characters, I am reminded of this. Think of Giant. Elizabeth Taylor actually causes her husband to reconsider his racism. She's not depicted as weak. In fact, Bick loses power in the family and in the world over time. But he's happy because he's got the love of a good woman and loving, if not entirely obedient, children.

There were some really subversive films -- not Giant. Ones where you really saw how restrictive suburban life and gender roles were. They weren't uncommon. Melodramas mostly.

Clearly Mrs. Cleaver isn't representative. But it's not all of one piece. There were other messages floating around. There was a struggle going on in real life that you could see in films. The 60's didn't just come out of nowhere.

Just wanted to stop by in here and thank you ALL for your words. reading the posts have brought tears to my eyes, and caused my breath to catch in my throat more times than I can count. To be able to hear all the ideas, FEEL the strength behind them, the pain, the power, the celebration, means more than I can ever say.

I am so very blessed to be a part of this community, and you all are my heroes!


APG

i pretty much agree with this. but i tend to defer to people's self-identifications, so i don't think i'd ever say to someone YOU cannot claim femme...but if somebody asks me, that's my view on it. to me, femme is by definition queer (whether it's a queer man or woman claiming that id). and to me it is my gender. and i do believe one can be femme and in a relationship that looks straight. or in a relationship with a straight man. that doesn't necessarily make a femme less queer.

the thing that REALLY bothers me, way more than straight women claiming femme, is when other queer people (especially butches and transguys) identify straight women as femmes. my partner and i had a conversation about this because his roommate is a straight woman and she's sweet and we get along well but he's like "y'all femmes like to talk so much" and i'm like she is NOT a femme. she doesn't id as femme. she's a feminine straight (very heteronormative) woman. to me there is a world of difference. same for feminine lesbians who don't id as femme. one of the things that came up with me and my partner is his ex is a feminine lesbian who is adamantly NOT femme...and he definitely has pointed that out...and i am like, well, how can you turn around and start labeling all these straight women who definitely don't id as femme, as femme?

i can't explain why that bugs me so much, but it does. maybe it's the way it feels like it contributes to further making us invisible and erasing us. maybe it's just that i like being a special snowflake.

June Cleaver Strapping
 

I went to bed tired last night because I have spent 2 days discussing, dissecting, analyzing, and most of all examining myself and how June Cleaver and I had in common. Then my cock had a spot light shown on it and I was like

*CLARITY*

Not only will I never be her because I am Latina, not in the same economic level as her but I have a cock.


Mrs Cleaver would of been institutionalized for even attempting to suggest to Ward that she wanted to insert her cock into him. It wouldn't of mattered of the desire, need, want was there. Her womanly cock would of been rejected, she would of lost her boys, her life, her marriage everything.


I am glad we are examining this together, as Femme's and even though we may don the pearls, heels, and apron for some fucky/kinky/power dynamic time. We should not allow or stand by and continue to have someone who isn't Femme, who isn't Queer be held up as a role model for Femme. There are plenty of powerful, beautiful, not white, white, sexy women/Femme's out choose as role models.

June Cleaver just isn't it.

a-f*cking-men

i might have had an epiphany of my own. i think that June Cleaver is the inspiration for feminism

i dont want to be June Cleaver and i never have. she's not my icon. and i dont think that June Cleaver wants me to be June Cleaver either.

i think, as time went on, June Cleaver would have looked at anyone holding her up as an icon and said, "oh HELL no! i was doing what i needed to do, with the resources i felt were available to me, in order to safeguard my children and THAT is all."

June watched real icons like Shirley Chisolm graduate from Columbia and go on to be elected to Congress and run for president. She read Gloria Steinum's articles about women being forced to choose between home and career. she had a copy of The Feminine Mystique under her pillow and read it 4 pages at a time while Ward was sawing logs or between vacuuming and folding the laundry and at some point the laundry was left unfolded because she couldnt put the damn book down.

i like to pretend that June raised sons that werent assheads. i like to imagine June raising daughters because those women raised the people who changed that world into our world. there may not be much to admire about her era but there was something to learn from it and the women who came from there are the women who created and/or educated us, for better or worse, to separate ourselves from the trap they lived in. we have a lot to acknowledge them for, even if it was just because they provided an example of what we didnt want. people dont always know what they want but they usually know what they dont want and we know some of what we dont want because of June Cleaver and women like her. i dont think June wanted it either. i think it was what she had and she decided to rock it with some heels and some pearls.

it's a mistake to think that the Junes didnt want something different, that they didnt work toward something different, or that they have nothing to do with the something different that was created in the 60s. it's also a mistake to pretend that these arent the same women who envisioned, outlined, and took the some of first steps toward undermining a corner of patriarchy from the inside.

after a few years of saying "Ward, dear....." i think June got tired. i dont see the June Cleavers of the world as continuing to consent to oppression. i see them as the founders of a part of feminism's underground