Intergenerational Femme Community

(taken on the MegaBus on my way to Philly)

Ok, so to be honest I’ve been falling a little bit behind in my regular blogging. I don’t have any super great excuses but it’s been a hectic month of starting to get things finalized with the manuscript for my anthology Kicked Out and in general with my day-job, touring, my family etc. etc. etc.  Anyway, I was planning on writing a blog this weekend about the experience of packing and how I’m not very good at it because I have little mini-crises all the time as in I’m going on a very short weekend tour what am I going to be packing? I do I need tutus? How many pairs of shoes? Aprons? Ladybug rain boots? Housedresses? Heels?  Anyway I was going to write a somewhat superficial short blog post about the difficulty I have when packing for gigs—-but being here made me stumble onto something more…. I don’t want to say “important” because to me fashion is very important, but let’s say timely.

This weekend I’m writing to you from the beautiful Swarthmore College campus in Pennsylvania. I’m here for the 21st annual student organized Sager Symposium, which is super kick-ass, and I was absolutely thrilled when they invited me to come and be part of it with them.  The theme for this year’s conference was Intersections of Queer: Coalition Building Across Our Communities.

I did a queer storytelling workshop on Friday afternoon, and then that evening did a reading called “Stories of Cell(ve)s Replaced” which comes out of my forthcoming book GSA to Marriage: Stories of a Life Lived Queerly During the Q&A after my reading one thing that came up from audience members was this idea of femme community, what it would look like—what it COULD look like, and how as femmes we handle the idea of invisibility and being seen as inherently less queer.

I didn’t have all the answers about this; I only know what my experience is.  It was interesting though especially because an audience member and all around incredible femme author, organizer, and activist  Amber Hollibaugh (who as an aside gave an incredible lecture on Saturday about LGBTQ aging) spoke up later in the evening starting with “as a 62 year old high femme” and continuing with really important insight about how femme community is something difficult to build. She spoke about how our community should be intergenerational, but how it’s something that doesn’t always happen.  Amber also addressed how femmes don’t always befriend each other, and don’t always build community together because of complex things like desire, and how even finding one another can be difficult—I couldn’t agree more.

Those of you who know me, or who are at all familiar with my work know that queer history is something that I see as incredibly vital and it’s a theme that features very prominently in my work including one of my stories titled Searching For My History that appears in “Visible: A Femmethology” which has just this month been released from Homofactus Press! As well as other pieces that will appear in my book GSA to Marriage… including “Where I Come From” which I performed as part of the 2008 Femme Show NE tour.

I’ve been thinking a lot about the power of femme community this week, and how important it is for me to have in my life. It’s been a dominant theme in the past few days for me starting at the beginning of the week with Amanda Harris’ wonderful blog over at Bilerico titled “A Different Kind of Herstory: Longing for Femme Mentors. The intergenerational  nature of community is something that I find completely essential. Through the creation of chosen family I am incredibly blessed to have strong relationships with queer folks of a variety of generations. There is however a void for me in that my femme community is not always nearly as intergenerational as I would like.

I’m curious to femme readers of all ages: How intergenerational  diverse do you find your community of femmes to be?  Is it something that is important to you? Is it something you are working to build? What has that process looked like for you? I know at different points I’ve struggled with femme community in general, have you? What is the importance of femme community to you?

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