Thankful for Femmes

Today, on the eve of thanksgiving I’ve been thinking a great deal about what queer community means to me,  and more specifically what it means to have a community of femmes.  This morning I was reading an online community where people were bashing “labels” by which they meant people who identified as butch and femme. Their analysis was that butch/femme is “just another way for a gender-biased society to impose gender-normative stereotypes on our community which is, at best, completely counterproductive and at worst incredibly harmful to everyone involved.”  This of course is not the first time I’ve heard someone say this about us, but it broke my heart all the same. Still after all these years I really struggle to understand how it’s so difficult for people in the community to really *get * that being femme (or butch for that matter) isn’t about buying into a gender-normative structure, nor are we somehow responsible for taking down the whole community with our fantastic gender presentations/identities.

I can’t remember if it’s something I’ve talked about before on this site or not, but when I came out as queer, I didn’t see femmes. I was coming out in a city ruled by androgynous lesbians and in my naivety I thought that femmes were a relic of a bygone era. I tried desperately to adopt masculinity in order to be seen as visibly queer, and repeatedly failed.  I wanted my queerness to be recognized and I believed that the only way that was going to happen was if I adopted masculinity. It goes without saying that I was a failed butch. Gender has always been something that I knew I wanted to play with, and so for about three years I lived as an FTM , injecting testosterone and trying desperately to deny my own femininity.

It was years after I came out as femme that I was able to develop and feel part of a femme community.  The first communities I became involved in were everything I despised about the ‘popular girls’ in high school, and I remember leaving events in tears because of how cruel other femmes had been. It took time, but I’ve reached a place where I have a large and diverse group of femmes that I adore, and The Femme’s Guide is part of that for me. Thanks to the internet I have femme friends and colleagues all over the world that I talk to, create art with, and just on a really basic level know are part of my community.  This year, in addition to my loving partner, our fuzzy family, beautiful home, books, art, and chosen family I’m incredibly thankful for all the femmes that are in my life – those who read my writing, whose blogs I read, who email or write me letters, the ones who I craft with, gossip with, or just know are part of my extended femme family.  Please know that tomorrow when we sit down to the feat of homemade unturkey I will be thinking of all of you, and how much glitter you add to the world.

Other posts by Sassafras

• Femme friends are the desserts of my world - July 26th, 2010
• Sunday Morning Cartoons! - July 25th, 2010
• July Femme Prompt - July 1st, 2010
• being out & visible - June 26th, 2010
• The beauty of femme - June 13th, 2010