To say I loved Lynn Breedlove’s newest book “Lynnee Breedlove’s One Freak Show” would be a bit of an understatement, I had to read the thing twice before I could even decide how I wanted to review it! The first time was a quick read in less than 24 hours (I couldn’t put it down), and the second time somewhat slower. My copy of the book is now a mess underlines, and stars and margin notes, combined with my water bottle leaked into my purse and the whole thing got soaked. Which is sort of appropriate for a book that made me incredibly nostalgic for my boyhood- the years I spent shooting T, making zines, wearing carhartts and binders that were only washed every couple of months, and listening to music in punk house basement shows. Like ‘The Nearest Exit May Be Behind You” this wasn’t a book that spoke to me as a femme so much as it spoke to me as a trans person with a transmasculine adolescence. It made my past boyhood hard and at attention.
One of the strengths of this book is how it doesn’t take itself or any of us too seriously. One of my favorite sections “Alphabet City” offers us a condensed history of our growing acronym of identities is a fantastic example of Lynn’s talent of making us laugh at ourselves.
I really appreciated the honesty and complexity that Lynn brought to the dilemma of medical transition. As someone who has walked those contradictions, I loved the way that Lynn handled the experience of explaining who we are, regardless of how we do or don’t choose to physically modify our bodies. The aspect of this I was most drawn to was the way Lynn gave voice to the ways in which many of us actually sculpted our lives and bodies, making them an extension of our art. Furthermore, that this is not something new and that we’re part of a tradition of queers who build lives and bodies in order to live at peace in their skins, like the following excerpt that was written about Del Martin and Phyllis Lyon:
“It was dykes like Del who taught me how to charm the ladies and make a boy with whatever’s lying around the house. Duct tape and some Vaseline. And it was femmes like Phyllis who taught me how to tie a tie, hit the spot (no hands), and wear boxers. They taught me that we can either hang together or be hanged separately.”
One of the critiques I have for books and stories that could be categorized as trans memoir is the way that we can take ourselves too seriously (something I know I’m guilty of at times) but One Freak Show never fell into that trap- and unapologetically called trannies on our shit which made me love it even more, and consider this a definite must read!
“Dyke, fag, and queer are somewhat assimilated into popular queer jargon, but, because the trans community is the last in the long line of queers to win acceptance even from the LGBT community, if you say tranny, even if you are a tranny, you’ll still get glared at by middle class, educated transfeminist trannies on high alert. So label yourself at your own risk.”
Also, if you’re a femme author, artist or zinester I’d love to review your work for the site! If you’re interested, please shoot me an email at Sassafras@PoMoFreakshow.com
20FEMME is shaping up to be an incredible year, and I’m really excited for the Femme Conference. The first one totally changed my life. I did a whole podcast episode about it, if you want to hear all about the 2008 conference. Download Episode 5: Femme Sharks.
Also, you can follow the Femme Collective on Twitter, @femmecollective. I’m doing the tweets.
Here’s the call for proposals–I’m hoping that a lot of you can make it out, it’s going to be incredible!
Femme2010: No Restrictions
Oakland Marriott City Center
1001 Broadway
Oakland, California 94607
August 19th – 22nd, 2010
www.femmecollective.com
Femme2010: No Restrictions
is a multi-threaded conference and forum for those who think about,
talk about, and create Femme as a queer gender and identity.
Following
our Femme2006 & 2008 conferences in San Francisco & Chicago,
where hundreds of femmes and allies gathered for workshops, panels,
films, visual art galleries and performances, we again invite community
members, artists, academics, homemakers, geeks, techies, activists,
femmes of all kinds, and their allies to continue the conversation by
participating in Femme 2010 as presenters and participants.
We
are invested in having Femme2010 continue to reflect the diversity and
complexity of femme gender, identity and contributions. We hope for
this conference to be a community building event, as well as an exploration and celebration of what it means to build and live queer femme identities.
Submissions
of all kinds are welcome, particularly submissions by femmes. We
encourage proposals by and for people of color, working-class people,
fat folks, elders, youth and people with disabilities. We encourage
submissions that work outside and alongside identity and gender, as
well as those reflecting directly upon identity and gender. Femme2010
will continue the community dialogue from Femme2006 & 08. In
particular, we hope that the intersections of femme with race, region,
class, access, ability, privilege, and marginalization will be talked
about, given space, meditated upon, constructed, and deconstructed.
Finally, we also encourage submissions based on this year’s theme: No
Restrictions.
We began this conference in 2006 out of a desire
to see femme explored and discussed from a variety of perspectives. We
wanted a conference that held the complexities of Queer Femme as its
central focus, while building community. We feel we accomplished that
in 2006 & 2008 and in 2010, we want to continue to build femme
community and bridges, supporting each other across borders and
differences.
We hope to draw participants from across
disciplinary, medium, and social boundaries. We encourage submissions
from anyone interested, regardless of gender or sexual identity. We do
ask that you read our mission statement before submitting.
We are soliciting contributions from anyone interested, including (but not limited to):
> workshops
> panel presentations
> performances
> research presentations
> skill shares
> activist & organizational topics
> visual art
> video or film
Submission deadline is April 15, 2010.
Please submit your proposal through the following links, located at www.femmecollective.com:
Program Submission click here
Performance Submission click here
Film Submission click here
**Please note that the more information we have on your submission,
the more likely we will be able to accept your submission and include
it in the conference schedule.
To learn more about us, our
mission and to contact us with any questions, comments or concerns,
please find us at our website: http://www.femmecollective.com
For those of you who have read my earlier posts griping about publishers who claim to publish LGBT and who do indeed provide their readers with the G … but rarely if ever any LBor T … I am finished complaining. At least for now.
Why?
Because I finally found a publisher willing to take a chance and I will have my first (L) being released in March…originally as an ebook but a few months later in print. My Femme character Simone Sinclair is finally going to have life breathed into her. Call me wickedly thrilled.
The publisher is Samhain Publishing and I am very excited by the publicity this up and coming publisher is getting, so cross your fingers that HEART OF CHANGE will do well and will open doors for me to get more of my lesbian work published.
So for today, my bitching and moaning is over and I am celebrating.
Here is the quick tag:
No yesterday’s Cinderella story here, Simone is a self-made woman who thought she needed a man to make her dreams come true and discovers no man is required especially when the woman chasing her heart is strapped on and knows how to use it!
And the longer blurb:
True love hides where you least suspect it.
After the truth comes out about her age, forty-something porn star Simone Sinclair is handed her walking papers, ending a career that has become more extreme sport than art form. The final straw is her long-time partner’s idea to start their own international studio with a marriage proposal tossed in to sweeten the deal. After two decades of waiting for him to deliver the white picket fence, it’s not exactly the offer she was expecting.
At least she doesn’t need a man to answer the alarm of her biological clock. And when she shares a dance with Geri, one of her lesbian gal pals, she discovers she doesn’t need a man to fulfill other fantasies, either. But Geri’s not interested in touch and tease—she wants more than Simone is ready to give.
Torn between three dreams—a post-retirement career, a family, or lasting love—Simone retreats to get her head on straight, coming to one conclusion. She can’t have everything. But two out of three is worse than nothing at all…
I hope you’re intrigued enough to support me in my effort to get lesbian erotica out in the mainstream world! Spread the word about HEART OF CHANGE because the more copies I sell, the more likely Samhain Publishing will be to represent the WIP I’m currently working on, tentatively titled Frankie’s Garage. A while back I posted a small snippet of Frankies character in this post.
I love my character Frankie Marlow, a hot butch with a New York attitude who takes her small hometown by storm when she return’s to run her daddy’s garage…
I’ll let you know how my efforts pan out… in the meantime, keep your eyes open for HEART OF CHANGE:)
my adopted butch moms who took my baby queer self in when I was 17 homeless and in need of family raised me well. Among other things, they taught me to not take shit from wannabe butches, they taught me to trust, and they taught me to adore K.D Lang. Now I’m not as big a fan of K.D as they are (I’m not sure anyone is) which is clearly why I had no idea that K.D was going to be part of the opening ceremonies for the Olympics last night until I heard the buzz about it today and had to go find a video
OMG. talk about breathtaking. Usually when I open videos of music performances I end up surfing the web and listening, not with this one. I sat in my livingroom transfixed because it for the most part wasn’t full of flashy sets, or special effects it was just a powerful song sung by a butch in a suit with a killer voice. I don’t know of any butch loving femme who isn’t swooning by the end of that performance. I already posted a review today, so this is just a quick post to direct any butch loving femmes who like me were clearly living under a rock to go and watch this video!
“Leather becomes a metaphor for the spirit, that an individual is more
durable yet flexible, is beautiful and resilient. In learning to polish boots, you
are learning how to polish your spirit.”
-Lee Harrington Sacred Kink
Normally when I get a book to review, I devour it quickly. I expected this would be the same with Femme’s Guide blogger Lee Harrington’s latest treasure Sacred Kink, but the experience of reading it couldn’t have been more different, to the point where I took so much time, I kept expecting Lee to email me asking if I really was going to review this book!
Sacred Kink was something that I needed to savor. There is so much information, so many ideas, thoughts and experiences taking place within it I was unable to read it for long stretches at a time. Instead I found myself returning multiple, multiple times, sometimes with days in-between in order to let what I was reading digest. As a not particularly spiritual person, but as someone who’s found glimpses of spirituality as their soul has been transformed by leather, this book really spoke to me in ways I hadn’t completely expected.
Lee describes his book as text that dives “into the ways that erotic explorers are tapping into altered states of consciousness, and how to do so with a wide variety of approaches. From negotiation to aftercare, top trances to ordeals, sex magic to pain processing, erotic shape shifting to the spiritual calling of Mastery and Slavery” Which I think is a more accurate summary than I could come up with.
“Sacred Kink” was a book that very much kept me coming back for more, and my physical and very personal journal I write in several times a day, is littered with influential quotes that spoke to me and my life over my weeks of reading the book.
There is certain levity to Lee’s writing that I really appreciated. This is a book that could easily have run the risk of taking itself too seriously for my liking and it didn’t. As many times as I felt my breath catch in my throat with a recognition of the power of how we live and what we do, I found myself touched through laughter at the ways in which awakening can take many different forms “Sometimes it’s just about putting on the Godzilla costume, painting our lover up like the city of Tokyo, and having at it.”
I don’t want to be cliché and say that Sacred Kink has something for everyone, I’m sure it doesn’t. But, if you are someone whose life has been touched by leather, or if you’re kinky and looking to take that a step further, or if your just interested in these topics, I can’t recommend this book enough.
if you’re a femme author, artist or zinester I’d love to review your work for the site! If you’re interested, please shoot me an email at Sassafras@PoMoFreakshow.com
A not so secret fact is that in college I sold dildos and floggers, and helped people find good lube. For retail it was just about the best job that a bearded lady, genderqueer femme, with foot long hot pink and black pigtail hair extensions, piercings, and tattoos could hope for. It was also a blast because like many people queer or otherwise I love sex toys! I’m one of those people that not only enjoys playing with them, but also knowing more about them, and for that reason I jumped at the chance to review fellow femme Tristan Taormino’s new book “The Big Book Of Sex Toys.”
This book is visually stunning with up close and personal color photography of nearly every sex toy that you can imagine, but this book goes beyond pretty pictures! It features smart and easily digestible information to aid with picking just the right toys to broaden your sex life alone or with partners. This book is definitely something I wish I’d had available to hand to customers!
I have a lot of personal and professional experience with sex toys so I can’t say that I learned a lot of new things here, but the book did offer me a wonderful refresher course, and something I’m happy to have on my bookshelf for reference. ‘The Big Book of Sex Toys’ is a straightforward non-intimidating book that I would without a doubt recommend to anyone looking for suggestions on picking new toys!
Also, if you’re a femme author, artist or zinester I’d love to review your work for the site! If you’re interested, please shoot me an email at Sassafras@PoMoFreakshow.com
This is not a new post, but I believe it is relevant to the discussion here. Take a look at my post from November…
I’m becoming a different kind of lesbian and a different kind of femme, and it has all been surprising.
I quit shaving my legs about 2 months ago.
I’m becoming the type of lesbian who gets excited about canning and pickling.
I’m that girl who gets excited about baby making, and sewing cloth diapers and pureeing my own baby food.
I’ve been thinking a lot about capitalism, and its role in my life.
I want to know more about where my clothes and food come from.
I’m feeling less and less concerned about grad school and more and more concerned about becoming a responsible human being who tries do to with less.
My cravings for a more open and poly-leaning relationship are waning dramatically because the One I’ve got keeps on seeming more and more like the One I want. Other People ™ are too hard to manage.
What I’m craving now… there is a long list of things… nature walks, community meals, cooperative parenting, knitting groups, quilting circles, vegetable and fruit gardens and cotton summer dresses…
To think I haven’t worn a high-heeled shoe in months, and only recently purchased clothes at a retail store for the first time in almost a year! My sewing and knitting repertoire keeps growing, and so does my skill at home cooked meals. I know how to make pie crust from scratch!
Life is so different for me lately. Am I still femme if I don’t shave my legs? I think so. Do I still count as lovely, sexy, beautiful? Yeah, I think so. But all these words mean such drastic different things from when I was first beginning to belong to this bright glimmering butch-femme community. It would seem that I’m in the process of refining and redefining my femmeininity all over again. How does it happen that way? Just when we decide that we’ve figured ourselves out, something throws a wrench into the gears. I’m taking apart the cogs and unscrewing the wheels, trying to decide what to change when I put it back together next…
Anyone interested in a holiday card, some of my Grandma’s cookies/recipes, or just a little surprise treat of my choosing, feel free to write to me with your mailing address. If you’re feeling vulnerable, but would still like to remember the art of hand-writing letters, I’ll give you my address first.
I love you all so dearly…
I’m not part of the planning of the Femme Conference, but over the past few months I’ve gotten emails etc. from folks thinking I might have some information about what was going on with the conference for this summer. This week the collective revealed some info, it’s not going to be in Atlanta due to finances, but instead in Oakland. Below is the message the Femme Collective went public with for all interested folks. As an east coast femme I was looking forward to going to Atlanta (secret: i’ve never been to the femme conference) but I fear that unless I book some gigs about the same time as the Femme Conference California just might be too far for me this year. What about all of you? Will you be at Femme 2010?
*****
Dear Community Members,
Finances are tight for all of us these days, particularly for community-supported events requiring travel and lodging, like the Femme Conference. After a great deal of effort and research, we have determined that it is not financially possible for us to hold the 2010 Femme Conference in Atlanta as we had hoped to do. We are incredibly hopeful for our future as an organization, but we believe that Atlanta would be cost prohibitive to both the members of the Steering Committee and to the larger Femme Conference constituency. We realize this is a disappointment for many of us.
However, we have decided that rather than skip a year, we have the resources to hold the Femme Conference in Oakland in 2010. We are tremendously excited at the prospects of holding a conference in the city we had originally chosen for the very first Femme Conference (we ended up in San Francisco as a result of financial considerations, so this feels like a full-circle in some ways)!
We appreciate your understanding and your continued support. All details about hotel, dates and calls for submission will be announced at the beginning of February. We are excited and we hope you are too!
Femme Collective
Hey everyone, I’ve got some blogs in the works that I hope to get posted soon, but in the meantime I came across this call for submissions that I thought some of you might be interested in…..
“Femme Means Attack” is a collaborative zine of submissions by people who identify as femme and as radical, anarchist, and/or anti-authoritarian. Femmes are often seen as non-radical or counterrevolutionary in many radical communities, despite the fact that we can take to the streets just as well as anyone else, in heels or steel-toed boots, and are FIERCE while doing it. As radical femmes, we often find ourselves alienated from mainstream femme discourse that focuses on standards of femme/femininity which are white, homonormative, aspire to be bourgeoisie, and rely on conspicious consumption. Thus, we radical femmes often find ourselves alienated from both our radical communities and femme communities.
“Femme Means Attack” aims to change that by giving us, radical femmes, a voice. We welcome submissions from femmes of all genders, trans and cis, binary gendered and genderqueer, of all races, socioeconomic backgrounds, both urban and rural, of all dis/ability statuses, etc. While submissions should touch on both femme identity and radical politics/communities, we leave it up to each contributor to determine what that looks like. We welcome all types of submissions – essays, personal accounts, poetry, artwork, etc.
Along with your submissions, we ask that you submit a one hundred word bio. This is merely to let us know who you are and where you are coming from on the femme spectrum. That said, there will be a bio section in the zine, so if you do wish to have your bio included, let us know.
Likewise, if you wish to tell us (the editors) your name, but would not like it published in the finished zine, just let us know. However, we do request that you use a pen name or nom de queer so that half of the zine is not attributed to “anonymous.”
Criteria for submissions are:
Absolutely nothing oppressive.
You may submit as many pieces as you would like.
Submissions must be in an easily accessable computer format.
Additionally, written works must be submitted in a format that will allow for editing. That is- editing of format, not content.
PDF files will not be accepted.
Artwork must be submitted in jpeg format.
If any other issues arise with submissions, they will be handled on an individual basis.
You will receive notice as to whether or not your submission has been accepted. If you wish to challenge our rejection of your submission, we welcome your feedback. We only ask that you are as respectful to us as we will be to you. We both identify as anarchists and do not wish to hold any sort of power over anyone else. Thiszine’s purpose, and our purpose in publishing it, is to bring unity and strength to femmes around the world.
Submissions are due by April 15, 2010
Please send submissions to:
femmemeansattack@gmail.com
Your co-editors,
naydeehn pearl messier and gayge sparkly purple unicorn freyjasbarn
Johnny Blazes and I met when we had the pleasure of working together as part of the 2008 tour of The Femme Show. Johnny’s work there was fantastic and really spoke to me as a genderqueer femme with a complicated gender history. As someone whose performance work is almost exclusivly word based, I also really appreciated the way that Johnny uses all sorts of movement to convey stories- it’s not a style I ususally have an easy time following, but Johnny’s style is so smooth I found myself picking up on nuances of movement that normally wouldn’t connect for me.
One of the things I’ve loved about work of Johnny’s that I’ve seen is how ze challenges labeles, expereinces, and socialization in a style which maybe can best be summed up in the first part of Johnny’s statement of purpose on hir website:
“Perhaps somewhere along the line you got the message that you are ordinary. Or if you are not, that you should strive to be. Fit in. Follow the trend. Be normal. Yet in a world of 7 billion people—each with their own way of expressing, being, living—how can any one thing be considered “normal”? This seemingly simple question is one that we often forget to ask. We allow ourselves to be persuaded by media and power structures in place that there is a correct way to be. Their labels—“white,” “woman,” “middle class,” have strict definitions. When we allow ourselves to believe these definitions, to assimilate them into our consciousness, then we become limited by their immovable boundaries and stop being truly ourselves.”
I’ve never seen Johnny’s full-length solo show wo(n)man but am really excited that it’s coming to the city! The show will be up at WOW Café Theater here in NYC. Wo(n)man is a one-person, evening-length show that incorporates theater, dance, drag, circus arts, clowning and classical voice to humorously explore notions of gender performativity.
Friday January 15 – Sunday January 17, all shows at 8 pm
WOW Café Theater
59-61 East 4th St, Fourth Floor
$15
I’ve already got my tickets and will be there Sunday night! Now I just have to figure out what to wear!!!!
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