The Purse: Unpacking Femme Privilege

[CherylNYC]

Originally Posted by princessbelle

Yes!!!

I have a hope as well. I sincerely hope that the young femmes do have more privilege than i had.

My hope is that *our* existance in this world is way more than self appropriating. I hope that we have, even in some small way, smoothed the path, added an additional stone on the yellow brick road, attended a gathering standing proud to be a femme, forged an accepting thought from others, signed at least one petition for human/femme/any ID's rights that actually helped broaden the world's acceptance. I hope that we have some how made the journey a tiny bit easier, a little more obvious that we exist, and have shined a little light toward the beautiful ID of femmes for the younger generation.

For all of the hard times *we* have shared, the fights for identifications and self-recognition, standing proud with our brothers/sisters and being heard, it was worth it for ourselves as well as providing a beacon for the young, ever evolving femmes.

Just as the ones before us have done and just as these femmes will do for the next generation.

That is my hope.

I was thinking about this very thing just the other day after shopping in a vintage clothing store with a femme friend. We found a fluttery pink chiffon skirt with pink spangles, and it was her size. She really wanted to buy it, and we had a fascinating discussion about how very transgressive it would be for her to wear it. We called it 'the skirt one must not wear'. This skirt would have been sooooo off limits to any lesbian when I was in my twenties. Had I shown up to any of our events in such a thing I would have been the object of derision, and I probably wouldn't have gotten laid for the rest of the decade. Even though my friend is 10 years younger than I, she's certainly felt the judgement of many a lesbian for her interest in all things girlie. Not to the extent I would have of course, but enough. She ended up not buying the skirt, but only because she couldn't find a blouse that would match. When she put it back on the rack she commented that a 20 something femme with no idea that the skirt represented anything or was in any way transgressive would happily buy it and wear it for her Daddy, conflict-free.

It took me a day or two to realize that this reality for many young femmes, that they can express themselves without the judgement and conflict those of my generation experienced, is an awesome gift that we've given to them. I don't personally care whether or not any one of them recognises it as such. I'm quite certain that I took many things for granted when I was in my 20s, and those advances had been purchased in blood by my forebears.

I'm not sure what this has to do with femme privilege. Probably not much at all. My point is that whether or not we're privileged over butches, or any other stripe of our communities, we still face and fight our own battles. This is one battle that seems to have had a wonderful outcome.