Open Letter: Dear Femme

[labete]

I just want to say thank you to every one of you amazing contributors to this thread. There's so much substance here to take in, process, respond to.

I, too, have felt that there was a femme hierarchy and that "high femmes" (I really don't like that expression. I have heard the "low femme" term, applied by others and as self-labeling, but never in a flattering way.) were on top and I was somewhere much closer to the bottom. My reinforcement for that idea has mostly been from butches, but I've moved on. I decided part of the point (for me) of having the "queer" be part of my identity was what it implied to me about getting to make my own rules. I may or may not be anyone else's idea of what femme ought to be, but I am damn good at being me.

For me, femme is my gender identity, although that is big enough to encompass "woman" and "girl" and "female" as well. You can't take my femme away from me, regardless of what I wear or what I'm doing at any given time. I've been known to wear skirts, dresses, heels, but it's a form of drag for me. I mostly live in jeans or other casual pants (not athletic gear outside unless I am engaging in athletic activity or my house is burning down) and low-heeled boots, mules, sandals. I find that I get more external reinforcement for wearing the feminine drag, from strangers as well as friends and lovers. I've witnessed straight women being rewarded or punished socially for the way they choose to perform femininity as well. I've never considered only dressing up to go to a bar if I was partnered, though, nor do I know that anyone has considered me competition since tenth grade or so.

It saddens me that so many of us have been the victims of vicious femme sisters insecure in themselves and needing to cut us down to make themselves feel superior. I only know of three times in my life that I've been specifically targeted for ugly gossip, once by my (family of origin) sister and twice by masculine queers, and those were rough enough and femmes did participate in the feeding frenzy. If anyone still believes that I hoard man-jocks or am a coke fiend, well, I don't know what to tell you. PM me the juicy bits. Seriously, though, I avoid those I find to be gossips (in offline life), because I don't like to be around that energy. I find it ugly and draining.

[blush]

Originally Posted by labete

It saddens me that so many of us have been the victims of vicious femme sisters insecure in themselves and needing to cut us down to make themselves feel superior. I only know of three times in my life that I've been specifically targeted for ugly gossip, once by my (family of origin) sister and twice by masculine queers, and those were rough enough and femmes did participate in the feeding frenzy. If anyone still believes that I hoard man-jocks or am a coke fiend, well, I don't know what to tell you. PM me the juicy bits. Seriously, though, I avoid those I find to be gossips (in offline life), because I don't like to be around that energy. I find it ugly and draining.

Well said, labete. I was thinking as I was reading your post that for every horror story (and I've got them too) about femme "friends," I have 10 kumbaya stories about femme friends.

Truth is, other femmes just "get it" in a way that no one else does. Other femmes get the fierceness, the invisibility, the "am I femme enough," and the endurance tests of our loves.

[Arwen]

Originally Posted by blush

Well said, labete. I was thinking as I was reading your post that for every horror story (and I've got them too) about femme "friends," I have 10 kumbaya stories about femme friends.

Truth is, other femmes just "get it" in a way that no one else does. Other femmes get the fierceness, the invisibility, the "am I femme enough," and the endurance tests of our loves.

Labete did make a good point and I think you have really done so as well, Blush.

One thing that stands out for me here is that I know I fixate on the bad examples. I lock them into my mind as mirrors for myself to avoid at all costs.

I won't be like X. I'll never treat my lover the way X treats her. Etc.

Wouldn't it be lovely if I could instead use the mirrors of those femmes that I admire?

Then I could look within and say that in this situation, I will be more like Pup. And in this other one, I will don my Blush armor. Or I will use the voice of Medusa and the passion of Gemme. Or that I will love my partner like e.

A much nicer way of living I think. It is better to have role models than avoidance techniques.

I think I will try ...no not try, right Yoda? I think I will take this on as part of my own interior landscaping. Thanks. You truly made a difference in my life.

And thank you to LaBete for waking this thread up. I learn something from every post here..

[Deborah]

[QUOTE=Arwen;30633][FONT=Georgia][SIZE=3][COLOR=Purple]

Then I could look within and say that in this situation, I will be more like Pup. And in this other one, I will don my Blush armor. Or I will use the voice of Medusa and the passion of Gemme. Or that I will love my partner like e.


DITTO... and smart like Arwen....

[labete]

Originally Posted by blush

Well said, labete. I was thinking as I was reading your post that for every horror story (and I've got them too) about femme "friends," I have 10 kumbaya stories about femme friends.

Truth is, other femmes just "get it" in a way that no one else does. Other femmes get the fierceness, the invisibility, the "am I femme enough," and the endurance tests of our loves.

Very good point, blush. I have to admit, though, that it took me a long time to get comfortable with femme friends, and a lot of what got me there was this community, these people, you. Y'all can be intimidating as hell for someone who's trying to stake out her space inside the femme identity, and the ones who aren't somewhat intimidating generally also aren't interesting (to me, in their online personas). I mean, yeah, I actually do have a drawer full of cute socks with stripes or spots or flowers or whatever on them, but I don't really want to discuss them. I want to talk about inhabiting femme and supporting butch and growing as a person and current events and queer parenting challenges and such and occasionally lolcats or shopping or work. So I had to get past these negative internal judgements telling me I wasn't "femme enough" or pretty enough or hadn't read enough gender theory or otherwise just wasn't up to snuff among all these intelligent, beautiful, fierce, wise femmes.

Originally Posted by Arwen

Labete did make a good point and I think you have really done so as well, Blush.

One thing that stands out for me here is that I know I fixate on the bad examples. I lock them into my mind as mirrors for myself to avoid at all costs.

I won't be like X. I'll never treat my lover the way X treats her. Etc.

Wouldn't it be lovely if I could instead use the mirrors of those femmes that I admire?

Then I could look within and say that in this situation, I will be more like Pup. And in this other one, I will don my Blush armor. Or I will use the voice of Medusa and the passion of Gemme. Or that I will love my partner like e.

A much nicer way of living I think. It is better to have role models than avoidance techniques.

I think I will try ...no not try, right Yoda? I think I will take this on as part of my own interior landscaping. Thanks. You truly made a difference in my life.

And thank you to LaBete for waking this thread up. I learn something from every post here..

Arwen, this makes me sad, and at the same time glad you are inspired to change your perspective. For the longest time, I really didn't have any wants or goals of my own, and was busy just trying to take care of the people I was responsible for (kids, husband/partner, mom, boss, clients) and do it all to standards I'd absorbed rather than built.

I was lacking internal guidance, and I had to get me some of that to save what sanity I had left. So I started thinking about what kind of person I wanted to be, and how that was different from what kind of person I was. That led me to ideas about things I needed to build in myself, and I looked around for examples of people who exhibited those and watched what and how they did them. Yes, I also looked at things I didn't want to be, but that turned out to be too broad for me. If I don't want to be someone who cheats on lovers, for example, that still leaves the questions of whether I want to have lovers at all, whether I want casual dating or relationship dating, whether I want monogamy or consensual polyamory -- it was just too broad for me and I needed to narrow it down.

One thing I want is to be good at standing up for myself, standing firm but being open to the possibility that I was wrong or misinformed or that another perspective would be more beneficial to me. I saw my beloved sister e doing this in a way that I found to be simultaneously strong and gentle, firm but open, and adopted her as a role model for that. I'm still very much working on this and other personal growth goals, but it's a lot easier for me personally to grow toward a positive than away from a negative.