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What does Femme look like on me, and who inspires me? Well, the answer to the first one is way complicated, but the answer to the second is way simple: You inspire me. Every Femme in my community inspires me.

I learned to talk about being Femme in the Queer Female Community, online. I didn't have anything comparable where I was--mostly, I think, from lack of transportation, because certainly there was a Femme presence in Seattle when I was in the PNW!--and finding first the books in the bookstore (The Persistent Desire comes immediately to mind) and then a community online was mind-blowing and life-altering for me. At the point that I outgrew my first community, I was given a link to my second. In the meantime I moved from the PNW to the Midwest to the Southwest back to the Midwest, and the only stability I had through those years of unsettled relationships was my online community.

That's where I did my growing, and that's where I learned my language, and that's where I finally came into my understanding of the kind of Femme that I am.

I still remember my shocked relief when I first understood that it was okay to relax and just be who I always had been. It was so hard in the years when "being a girl" was not okay!! I think this makes me different in some ways from Femmes who have come out after it was okay to be Femme again... if you never feel rejected for your femininity or for your identity, if you never feel rejected for your energy or for your desires, then your experience of being a Femme is going to be more whole than mine has been; you will not have to spend time repairing the broken edges of so much of your inner being, and you will have a better understanding of yourself from the beginning.

Being Femme, for me, is not about what I look like. That's been a huge struggle for me. I have to work hard to quiet my inner fears, my legacy not just of the past when being Femme was not okay, but also my legacy of the years when being Femme was celebrated but ONLY if you matched the look of High Femme. Not only am I no glamor girl, I'm not particularly pretty AND I have to fight the masculinizing effects of PCOS. All of that does a real number on a person who wants to celebrate her femininity.

Before I go any further, I want to say that for me, Femme and femininity are NOT tied as tightly together as for some Femmes. For me, Femme is tied to "femaleness" in very strong ways--but there are lots of ways to be "female" and they are not all stereotypically feminine. I have found that when a Femme is strong and physically capable, willing and able to tackle "men's work," she is OFTEN told she is not Femme enough, or told she is really a Butch, when the truth is she is a most powerful female being and utterly Femme, both at once. The two are inseparable as far as I can see. I have not yet met a Femme who is NOT powerfully female.

I have met Femmes who are not powerfully feminine. They are no less Femmes for that.

I have met Femmes who are not glamor girls, nor not High Femmes. They also are not less Femme for that. Truth be told, I strongly suspect most of us are not into the glamor girl look in every day life, yanno?

And that is also me. Femme on me looks female, inescapably so, and I like to think that my energy comes across feminine--but on any given day, I look like a frump or like a country housewife, like a college student or like a harried mom, like a gardener, like an artist, like someone's grandma, like your neighbor down the street. On any given day I look like just another human being of the female variety.

How am I happiest expressing my Femme energy? With a Butch or Transman. I personally need that connection, not just from a partner but from friends. I feel whole as a Femme when there are Butches and Transmen I can connect with, so that the energy makes a complete circuit.

I also need Femme friends. One of the things I have learned over the years is that straight women will not fill this need. There is a bond between Femmes, a way the energy connects which is, for me, not sexual and yet is still vitally important. It takes both Butch/Trans and Femme energy in my life to give me the foundation I need, to be the community which sustains me. It takes my sister Femmes to make me whole as much as it takes my beloved Butches and Transmen.