Aw. Snows. You really are a perfect sweetheart. I'd so shag you. Or be shagged or however that would work for you. Hahaha. I'd give you the warmest hug ever if you were in the room.
I think for now with my level of fed up ness I'm just going to pass on the ID just for now and stick with Dolly Dyke. My lack of seeing people like me, which wasn't the case in the UK, sort of has me at the end of my previously femme rope. I get tired of "you're femme? Where's your handbag hahaha" by butches and having to say things like "up your ass. With your head."
I understand femme as gender. Completely. It's pretty much the way I see it which makes me rip my eye balls out when people start talking about femmes as being ladies. Not ladies = disgusting and improper and not femme
If we take that logic and apply it to another gender, let's say butch... Because they aren't feminine, butches aren't women. And we all know that's not true. Look at butches. There's a fucktruck full of women butches around.
So I hear you. And I'll fight your femme corner. But presently, I just don't have the energy for explaining to hurt egos:
why femme doesn't mean all the prescribed behaviour stuff to someone who keeps moving to the outside of the pavement when I'm trying to look at stuff,
thinking that I should be wrapped in cotton and saved
is horrified when I'm "vulgar"
thinks glancing noticeably at my tits during a date is horrid and disrespectful to my delicate femininity
that if I should be the princess of centre of the universe while around (instead of an equal and a friend)
kissed chastely on the cheek on the second date. Maybe (another reason why I don't date...)
When I explain to them how much I find that stuff really not me, it upsets me and I feel "othered" by it (distanced form them, made to feel different, like I'm being treated like a romantic unit by prescribed rules instead of recognized as the individual I am, with individual wants and likes) then I'm:
hurting their ego
not a lady because that is how you treat ladies
if she doesn't like it that way then she is not really very femme
she's cruel
she's a big meanie
I was only trying to show her I think she's a special jewel to be worshiped [again, still not getting it....]
she just wants to use me like a dildo if she wants sex
she's indiscriminate and has a dirty vagina (I've actually HEARD these things said to me, and many more, in the year I've been home.... )
All these rules make me dispair. I'm also not used to them anymore. They weren't there for 10 years. I find them restrictive and chafing. It's like putting a bra on that you didn't have for 10 years and find it really doesn't fit.
And everyone around is talks like it's the best fitting bra in the world and you wonder if your tits are freaky or what.
I'll keep the femme one that fit in the UK. I think too many people in the community on this side of the Atlantic, especially south of the boarder, have a different understanding of the word for it to not be a royal pain in the fucking arse to say I'm femme and not have it mean all these things I find torturous. I get that many girls love to be treated that way. Bravo. Fine. I'm just not one of you. And they out number me by far, it appears, or people wouldn't be trying to hard to shove me into that mode of behaviour.
I have to constantly disclaimer "femme" to others. IN my community. I actually have to do more now to those IN rather than out. I think that's sort of telling to me, for my comfort levels. So I think, for now, when I talk to anyone from North America, I'll just use another word. It saves me a lot of grief of explanation.
But to those that get me? Yeah