Reactions to Embracing Your Femme(ness)

[girl_dee]

One of the things we work on, on a daily basis is my reminding myself that i am worthy and enough. i forget stuff easily. i am much better about that.

In the past whenever someone was not happy with me, i felt i was not enough.
Not sexy enough, not thin enough, not femme enough, not rich enough, not pretty enough, not good enough... i've cut, starved, beaten myself up over it my entire life, it feels good to say that i no longer feel like i am broken, or not enough.

Enough, we all are.

[The_Lady_Snow]

Proud cuss like a sailor, mistaken for a *lady*, can whoop your ass physically and cerebral kinda Femme...

[girl_dee]

hah, indeed! ...

[Syr]

Originally Posted by Cajun_dee

One of the things we work on, on a daily basis is my reminding myself that i am worthy and enough. i forget stuff easily. i am much better about that.

In the past whenever someone was not happy with me, i felt i was not enough.
Not sexy enough, not thin enough, not femme enough, not rich enough, not pretty enough, not good enough... i've cut, starved, beaten myself up over it my entire life, it feels good to say that i no longer feel like i am broken, or not enough.

Enough, we all are.

The U joints in the truck need to be changed. I love you exactly as you are. Wouldn't change a thing.....well....perhaps the volume on the snoring

[girl_dee]

Thank you!!

Heck i am in the mood to change the Ujoints and maybe pull the motor out of the farm truck, just so i can reinstall it!

[Bleu]

Originally Posted by spritzerJ

I am of the mindset that the struggle with worth is okay. I get to be gentle with myself when I struggle with it. My goal is to keep shrinking the interval between when I question my worth and when I remind myself that worth is the given until there is no interval.

You voicing your struggle with worth gives us the chance to challenge and hold a space of love for you. So thank you! Because it is beautiful to see you choose into your worth.

I thank you all for the wisdom and support that these posts have brought to me and to so many today. This has been so worth it. I know I feel more worth it than ever myself right now. I can't wait to meet everyone!!! I'm buzzing!
Thank you, thank you, thank you!
xo,
Bleu

[spritzerJ]

Whole Worthy Femme learning to claim her space... feeling much much more centered. Thank you for the space to share, be and converse.

Now about that pencil I was looking for... I really don't dare to write in my calendar in pen. I just can not do it. I bet The General has one... but the glitter in her room is so distracting.

[gaea]

would you know it by looking at me? the queer femme that i am the one that i see, would you recognize me? I do not stand out with painted nails and painted toes hair done up and make up applied, i often look straight am often times mistaken for such....would you know a sister if you saw her walking down the street?

my tattoo on my right arm a dead give away....often covered by work clothes etc....displayed only when amongst my people .....so would you know it would you know by looking at me how i id?

I love my heels and dresses too....so would you know? would you recognize?

Often times mistaken as straight and i have embraced my femme me who i am no matter what ....

the ever after invisible femme......embraced....

[NJFemmie]

I grew up in a household where my mother worked side by side with my father - and that meant whether it was painting the house, gardening, or putting up a fence. No one ever questioned my mother's femininity - and she proudly did all of this with her makeup on. I never grew up with ideals of what girls should do versus boys - and I was fortunate in that my mother didn't stress "gender-correctness" as I got older.

I played with boy toys. When I was given a doll, I was told I would rip the head off and use it like a ball. (Thank God I don't remember that...) I had nephews that were close in age to me, and they were more like my little brothers. I grew up with the freedom of my own expression - and it was never questioned.

I was STUNNED when I came out and eventually made my way toward the butch/femme dynamic. There is where I observed what and what not to do. (Supposedly) I was slammed with things like "that's not very lady like" or "that isn't very femme of you". How femme should I be, should I let that butch open the door for me?

PPfftt.

Okay, so I tried to roll with it. It got tired very quickly. I realized I was giving up myself to make someone else happy. Ultimately, this was going to make that person miserable, because hell hath no fury like a woman suppressed. I tried to avoid the stereotyped personalities.

Some thought I wasn't femme enough, others thought I was too femme. Some didn't know how to categorize me.

Well, I still don't know how to categorize me, but I'm okay with that. That's the beauty of discovery and expression - it's ever changing and ever evolving. I know who I am inside, and that is really all that matters in the end.

[NJFemmie]

Originally Posted by Cajun_dee

Thank you!!

Heck i am in the mood to change the Ujoints and maybe pull the motor out of the farm truck, just so i can reinstall it!

Woohoo! Can you fix my front floodlight while you're at it? We fixed the passenger side, but the driver's side is a bit tougher to get to ....

[girl_dee]

Originally Posted by NJFemmie

Woohoo! Can you fix my front floodlight while you're at it? We fixed the passenger side, but the driver's side is a bit tougher to get to ....

you need to crawl UNDER!!! sure i can do that!

[Leigh]

I've been wanting to write my story about embracing my femmeness for a few days now but partly I've been busy and partly I kind of chickened out ~ however seeing and reading so many remarkable stories got me to really thinking about how I too have embraced the femmeness that I have, and since this is the topic of the thread I will share my own story with everyone as well.

I was raised the first 14 years of my life by my mom and her parents; my grandfather and grandmother were huge influences on my life and they are still missed to this day. I truly believe that I had a fairly good upbringing; my dad didn't come back into my life until I was 14 and in many ways I'm glad he wasn't there earlier. Some of who I am today is because of my dad, and that's not necessarily a bad thing however I am glad that I haven't developed some of his traits like being condescending, calling people down, making everyone around him feel like he is the king and they are beneath him etc. As a child
I wore what I wanted to (including my uncle's football jersey and my grandfather's boots; he was a trucker most of his life). I played with anything from dolls, Barbie's and my little pony to Hot Wheels cars, collecting rocks and playing outside.

I never really saw myself as "femme" really, just a person. Being overweight in high school was a hard thing to deal with; having books knocked out of my hands, being called every hurtful name in the book you can imagine, being shoved into lockers or having them rattled everytime I walked by. I did wear feminine clothes, make-up etc but often I just tried to be invisible in general hoping that no one would tease me. I never truly had an identity in high school; I dated one guy in high school for a month or so and it just never felt right but I had begun to notice a crush on women (particularily my French teacher) on grade 7 so I tried coming out once in high school which never worked, once at age 18 and then again finally at age 20. I began to chat on another gay website (not dash) and discovered the whole butch-femme dynamic. I figured out that I identified more as a femme, but I think really as my early 20's went by I was truly trying to find my identity as a person.

By my mid 20's I had met an FTM in my own city that I fell for and was with for 5 years. I went with him to his doctor's appointments, helped him with his T shots and was just overall very supportive of his transition. At this time I identified alot with him and for awhile was butch; I truly felt that's who I was at the time and I don't regret that part of my journey ~ it taught me alot about truly coming into my own and being my own person. I used to go to local FTM meetings at the GLBT centre here in Winnipeg with him and as they talked about not being able to identify with their bodies I saw so much of myself in them. Looking back now on that time in my life, I think that I was just not associating myself with being overweight and had really just disassociated my soul with my body because of years of being teased about my weight as well as dealing with my father constantly putting me down about anything he could find at fault with me.

I made a decision to transition and began in October of 2010 to take testosterone, truly believing that I was meant to be a guy. It took me until January of this year, a year and three months to truly see that I actually wasn't meant to be a guy so I stopped taking the hormones and knew that I was meant to remain a female. I've had lots of time to reflect on that time in my life and I honestly believe that I learned more about myself in that year and three months than I had ever learned about myself before ~ I began to really love myself, and accepted myself for who I am. I don't regret a moment of it and I can definitely say that it gave me such a new found respect for all of my FTM brothers and what they go through on a daily basis. I still have a couple of the effects of the hormones around, some hair growth (especially on my face) and abit of a gruffer voice than before but I've gotten used to it and don't feel that it makes me any less of a femme.

The last 3-4 months of taking the hormones, I began to miss things like wearing girly clothes and wearing make-up. I made the decision to start growing my hair back and bought make-up ~ I gave some of my guy clothes that I had bought over that year to Value Village here in my city (which is like Goodwill) and bought clothes from them to start rebuilding my wardrobe. I'm very happy with the femme that I have become; I'm more outspoken, not quite as shy as I was before (though I still have a ways to go); I've begun to work on losing weight and just getting back to me. I've missed living alot of years because I did not feel I deserved to be loved and to be happy, but as I've grown into being a femme and a woman I've re-discovered those lost parts of myself and am proud to be the femme I am now. I would not change a single thing about my life's journey, its made me who I am today and looking back on everything I've dealt with personally I'm pretty proud of myself

I admire each and every femme on this site; thank you all for sharing your stories and for allowing me to share mine also!

[NJFemmie]

Originally Posted by Cajun_dee

you need to crawl UNDER!!! sure i can do that!

Not according to my car, we're going to have to pull out the battery, etc...
tougher to get to from under on that side. (We tried).

[girl_dee]

Originally Posted by NJFemmie

Not according to my car, we're going to have to pull out the battery, etc...
tougher to get to from under on that side. (We tried).

oh dear. good luck!

[NJFemmie]

Originally Posted by Cajun_dee

oh dear. good luck!

Giving up on me already?!?! :/

lol ....

[girl_dee]

Originally Posted by NJFemmie

Giving up on me already?!?! :/

lol ....

LOL Nope, i love figuring things out, i need a nail file, pruning shears and some duct tape.

We'll fix that rascal!

[girl_dee]

Leigh,

Thank you SOOOOOOO Much for sharing your story.

We have all had growing pains i am sure of that, sharing them is a wonderful thing!

dee

[mariamma]

Originally Posted by spritzerJ

Assumptions that irritate me:
1. that I am straight. travel with a child and good luck ever being seen when standing without at another queer person around you to stimulate the question of is she?

That one really bugs me too. Mostly because it comes from LGBTQI people the most. I understand about being 'blah' and kind of inconspicuous. In my experience, it's more about not being seen by potential attackers or competitors (women and men).

Again, this is a great thread and I love the perspective y'all share here. Thanks!

[Leigh]

Originally Posted by Cajun_dee

Leigh,

Thank you SOOOOOOO Much for sharing your story.

We have all had growing pains i am sure of that, sharing them is a wonderful thing!

dee

I'm glad I shared it, and its so nice to be able to share with others who understand and who have been brave enough to share their own stories with the rest of us. We have all gone through alot in our lives, and I definitely appreciate everyone for being able to tell their stories here

[MissItalianDiva]

Well for me personally I do not associate my femmeness with my sexualty. I just have never connected the two. Perhaps it is because even as a child I was ultra femme. I remember throwing fits if my mother or father told me I could not wear a dress. Everything I did was feminine.

I got a box full of pictures last night of my amazing father and me. There is one particular picture that made me laugh. I was 4 and sitting in a chair next to my dad at his work and my legs were crossed. Then as I flipped through every picture where I happened to be sitting...my legs were cross. Also there just are not very many pictures where I am in anything but a skirt and dress. I realize clothing does not distinct a femme from non femme or what not but I did think it was interesting.

As I grew into my preteens and realized I was not attracted to men I was open about it. So by the time it came out my family didn't even do a double take. I think everyone just knew. Now with that being said outside of my family was a completely different story and one I still deal with today. Such comments are and have been made that I am too pretty or too femme and even too girly to be gay.

My response to that is to always calmly question their comment. How am I too femme to be gay what does that mean. Usually they call their own bs when they open their mouth to say well most gay/lesbian women are masculine looking or tomboys. It always seems in my experience that once they verbalize their closed minded theory that an aha moment comes and they realize they have unfairly boxed a portion of society. One of my biggest new peeves is the assumption that I am not a femme lesbian because I have two children. Makes me just want to take them to the library and make them read books on alternative methods of conceiving. I guess my hope for society would have been that by now they realize that even in the LGBTQI community we do have children and come in all sorts of different styles just like the heterosexual community.

Being ultra femme is not always easy just like some of the other classifications within our community. I have dated butches and transmen who have blatantly told me they feel I might be bi because I am so feminine and even have said well you "look straight" that is the one that ticks me off. How the heck does one look straight. It can be hard to date because being ultra femme apparently does not give of the same signals as let's say a butch. It is irritating at times especially considering I am a bit old fashioned when it comes to dating. I feel out of place approaching someone I am interested in. So I have learned to find tactful and creative ways of flirting.

I am going to stop rambling now and just end by saying I love all my ultra femmeness and even though it comes with issues here and there...so does everything else in life. I love being a heel wearing,makeup loving,dress wearing femme. That is me and I don't really give two hoots at this point in my life about anyone not accepting my femmeness or thinking that I am too femme to be gay.