Changing last names

[Martina]

Originally Posted by Miss Tick

It was a long road home. And I’m happy to have arrived a proud butch woman married to a proud femme woman. It’s our dance and sometimes I lead and sometimes I follow. And I’m happy either way. I do not live the butch femme relationships I grew up seeing, I don’t share the ideals of the butches I knew and listened to as a kid.

I was thinking about your arc and how mine is kind of the opposite. Less intense, I think, but kind of sad.

I had no problem identifying with older femmes. They kicked ass. I did not myself ID as femme for a while after I came out. But the femmes I had met impressed me. When I came to ID as femme, it was uncomplicated and somewhat liberating. Now, I do not like what it conjures in others when I say I ID as femme. I do not like the assumptions they make. I know as many or more kick ass femmes, femmes to respect. But the identity seems less liberating. On the contrary. And as a result, over the last five years or so, I have felt myself become less attached to it.

I liked when HB said in one of her posts something like yes, she is femme and beyond that "meh." 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. I am still quite happy with lesbian and dyke. It's nothing that I have done to change. It's more that the world has changed and the understanding of the ID has changed. It really no longer fits me.