The Femme Mystique

I read Leslea Newman’s ‘The Femme Mystique’  for the first time many years ago.  Reading it came at a pivotal point for me.  I’d just begun exploring femininity and what it meant to me, if it meant anything to me. I remember checking it out of my university’s library reading it half heartedly and on the whole not being very impressed. I didn’t identify with most of what I was reading. The passages didn’t fit my conception of femme and I struggled to see myself within it’s pages.

Last week I purchased my own copy of the book. Lingering in the back of my mind was the memory that it hadn’t spoken to me, and yet I found a cheap used copy online, and decided that regardless of how much I did or didn’t love the book – it was one that I should own.

Since it’s arrived I haven’t been able to put it down. I feel hailed by this book in ways that I previously didn’t, and reading it has been like discovering a new friend who you spend hours talking with shocked you haven’t been friends before now. Maybe it’s age, or time, or  just that I’m in the right place to hear it now but I’m really glad I’m reading this book again. I love the sensuality of it, the talk of passing, of being the partner of a butch, of what it means to pass together, to love, to fuck, to build a life and a family. Bellow is one of my favorite passages:

“My desire, my passion comes from being femme to your butch, comes from knowing my power over you and yours over me. it comes from looking at your handsome beauty, at the width of your shoulders and the cut of your hair. It comes from feeling your hands on my neck, on my mouth, on my arms, ever insistent. It comes from feeling that my curves- my lips, my breasts, my hips, my ass— are there to meet your hardness, there to make you wild in your need for me. it comes from knowing the constant craving I feel, the boldness with which I make my needs known. It keeps me excited, wet, on the edge, waiting to be pushed or to throw myself over.”

- Debra Bercuvitz ‘ Stand by Your Man’

how about all of you- do you have femme books for whom your perspective of has changed over time?

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