stone femme
Five years ago, that summer we met I thought our love that burned so hot and fast would devour us, drowning us in smoke, turning our aortas molten.Sitting on the rough pained wood floor of the old NE Victorian house, you extracted from the pocket of your jeans a warm dry rock, placing it in my outstretched hands.
My fingers traveled it’s cracked topography, finding before me a gift more valuable than diamonds or rubies.
You told me to hold it when I grew scared, to be reminded that sometimes love doesn’t shatter lives. The stone warm in my hand pulsed in time to my heart.
“I’m your stone,” you whispered. I’ve never let go.
(the above is from a new series i’m working on about love, family, and commitment)
*****
Over the past few months I’ve noticed a lot of conversations happening about stoneness. What it means to be stone, and what it means to partner with someone who identifies as stone. Specifically in femme community I’ve seen a lot of debate over the term “stone femme” mostly in terms of how it’s defined. I pretty much see it defined two ways 1. As a femme who partners with stone butches or 2. As a femme who personally identifies as stone. One of the main critiques/concerns I’ve seen from folks about using ‘stone femme’ to describe people like me is that it makes our sexuality tied exclusively to that of our butch partners, while I know others who use ‘stone femme to reflect their attraction to stone butches feel very hailed by the way in which it gives voice to their sexual experience.
Kathleen Delaney who I had the pleasure of meeting in person last week when I performed as the special guest of the Femme Porn Tour, provided me with what she likes to call her loose definition of stone femme “Stone Femme, lover of Stone Butches, offerer of a devoted touch that masculinizes, worships, adores.”
My good friend, writer and all around incredible femme Leslie Freeman says the following about her experience of stone femme:
“My femme stone is hard and sharp and jagged, hot on the outside but icy within. Stone femme may be touched, even penetrated. This stone femme may fuck and be fucked; I may offer myself for fucking. But my face, my hands, anywhere I carry tenderness– No. How my body recognizes and registers and calibrates sex, sexuality, sensuality– there’s both a disconnect and an exquisite tension. This stone femme makes you hard, takes you hard– but maybe can’t cry, maybe has to be fierce.”
Stone femme identity and terminology is contentious, complicated, and beautiful all at the same time. I identify myself as ‘stonesexual’ in that I am attracted to, and partner with stone butches, though I’ve never considered myself a stone femme, probably/possibly because in the femme community I came out into stone femme meant a femme who was personally stone which is sort of the exact opposite of me. I’ve taken a lot of heat for my love of stoneness latterly getting into a yelling match in a lecture halls with anti-stone folks who tried to argue my love of stoneness is oppressive, controlling, and manipulative. On the same spectrum, there are few things I find more offensive than the argument that stone butches are to be melted (but that’s a whole different blog posting for another day).
How about all of you, do you identify as a stone femme? If yes, how do you define it?
Last 5 posts by Sassafras
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4 Comments
Christine
September 12th, 2009 at 5:04 am
I pondered your question and wrote a blog post about it
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sarah
September 12th, 2009 at 8:03 pm
one of your best posts in a while!
agreed that my first, and only for a while, understanding (rudimentary, obvs) of ’stone femme’ was a femme who id’d as stone and was not down for being touched. to me the thought of this was so awful cuz i id’d as femme, and it was far from what i lived and wanted (as a femme) that i quickly forgot about it, and kept it forgotten for a while.
don’t think my brand of femme will ever quite match up to much near stone femme, regardless of the definition.
also as an FYI there is a rad piece in the latest j of gay&les studies about marriage & ann bannon books.
xoxo
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Betsy B
September 19th, 2009 at 9:42 pm
Well, you know it’s contentious, so here goes…
Okay, I am stone in the sense of being literally, physically “untouchable.” And I am a little bit bothered by people taking an identification based on seeking out stone partners. First of all, stone is not just a masculine thing; people of all gender identities and expressions can be stone. “Stone femme” to mean someone who desires stone butch partners sets up this diametrically opposed rubric for the meaning of “stone,” and I think it’s problematic.
Secondly, I don’t find it’s something many of us are especially proud of in private moments. Content in the pleasure and devotion we give to our partners, yes. But for many of us, I think stone is just a way of saying that there is an uneasy truce with our bodies, whether due to “gender dysphoria” (for lack of a better term) or sexual assault triggers or both or maybe something else. Sure, we should celebrate queer diversity in all its forms, and I’m the first to say that each of us should be as much of a “top” or “bottom” as we want and no shame in being 100% “bottom.” Yet the idea that someone might specifically seek me out, not just because I’m a loving top, but because I’m frankly too disgusted with my own body to take off my underwear in front of people I *love*, is really disturbing to me, and it does feel exploitative – perhaps even more so than the predatory straight men who pursue me because I have “a little something extra” (and because they expect trans female spectrum people to have low self-esteem, to be easily pleased, etc.) Really. I’m not butch or masculine so it hasn’t happened to me so explicitly, but in principle it still squicks me a lot.
Maybe this is just a difference between those of us who quietly use “stone” just to describe that relationship to our bodies, and people who fly their stone flag high to mean something larger. I’m just concerned that the line between us is probably fuzzier than it appears on the surface.
I mean, all due respect in this. I’m obviously not anti-stone. I realize that queer women and femmes who are 100% “bottoms” have to deal with people disputing their queerness, and that’s bullshit that needs to be called out. And maybe I’m wrong. I’m open to being wrong. That’s just my femme + stone (but not “stone femme”) perspective.
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fg
October 15th, 2009 at 7:49 am
this is always an interesting debate. i count (i suppose) as a ’stonesexual’, in as much as i am partnered with a stone butch and find myself attracted to others who identify that way. but i think there is a difference between finding oneself attracted to something and fetishizing it, and that’s where i disagree with the controlling and manipulative aspect.
**disclaimer**
there are certainly people who ARE controlling and manipulative around their partner’s stoneness, using it as an excuse to refuse to engage with their partner’s sexuality, or as a reason to push their partner to do things they don’t like. those people are not interested in healthy relationships, and i want no association with them.
**end disclaimer**
that said, i think there is something to be celebrated in being able to complement someone’s sexuality with one’s own and make something transcendent. these afore-mentioned stone butches are doing the same thing for me, after all. i find within myself a capacity to understand their needs in bed, to adapt to them, to respect their boundaries while still maintaining a fulfilling sexual relationship.
for their part, they must manage their end of this by clearly communicating their boundaries, respecting my desires and wishes, and understanding that i do have boundaries and limits too, though it often doesn’t seem that way. my boundaries are often emotional ones, rather than physical ones, but that makes them no less valid.
ultimately, a person’s stoneness should not be used as an excuse not to build a healthy, mutually respectful relationship with another. neither should a person’s openness be used that way either. and if the stone aspect of a person is a phase that they are going through during a process of healing, it should be recognized and celebrated just the same as if it is a life-long aspect of their sexuality. ‘melting stone’ is a repugnant, misogynist concept, based on the idea that we should all always make our bodies available for someone else’s sexual needs. you don’t find straight women trying to ‘melt the stone’ around their boyfriends asses very often, and it’s certainly not valorized as what every girl should be trying to do…
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