I haven’t blogged at the Femme’s Guide in awhile and I apologize for that…life got a little too intense and the fallout from that has caused weeks to slip by unnoticed. I woke from my funk when a friend asked the other day if I was “ready for the holidays?”

Holidays?
From my fog, I repeated the question…Holidays?…and then I had that “oh shit” moment. Yeah, holidays…as in, I hadn’t shopped, hadn’t decorated, and hadn’t planned any parties.

Now, I can honestly say that as a writer, I have often lost track of time…not quite dementia…but pretty damn close. It’s just the strange reality that I live in…I’m here, I’m not; I’m me, I’m someone else for awhile (being a fictional character for awhile can be quite liberating by the way.) It can also be a marvelous escape when life is getting a little too insane and too hectic, which mine was…

So, now, I’m back and in horror realized that not only is it seven days until Yule and ten until Christmas…and I am totally out of time. Last night I cleaned, decorated, made a shopping lists (presents, grocery and spirits) until the wee hours of what is today. My teenage daughter (who is 17 and referred to on all my blogs as Beautiful Girl) was wide eyed and thrilled. She knew at some point the decorations would go up but she’s also learned that the current Work-In-Progress must be completed first (it isn’t but I’m hopeful to have it submitted to my editor by December 31st.) My husband doesn’t understand the panic…he doesn’t see the reason for all the hoopla…(he was christened “Sir Hotness” on a blog two years ago by a reader…and much to his chagrin, the name has stuck.)

So Sir Hotness and Beautiful Girl watched as a whirlwind transformed our normally cluttered living room into a magic winter wonderland.

Later, Sir Hotness asked, “Why?” as in, “Why the panic?” And I explained that we are nothing without our rituals (traditions) because they bring order, peace, and magic to our lives…and even though he understands that…he still doesn’t understand my panic.

I think a lot of my angst comes from being raised by a Betty-Crocker mom, who even though it was the seventies, approached her home and family duties as if it was still 1954. She wore a frilly apron in the kitchen that coordinated with the seasons and holidays as they came and went. She cooked real food, not from a box or microwave every meal. And there is no level of household cleaning that could stand up to her level of clean so I’ve never bothered trying…lol…but honestly, my life and my lifestyle don’t demand it; however, the holidays do. Is that insane? Try explaining it to a husband who really enjoys his laid-back wife.

Our conversation really opened my eyes to a few things…

I miss the big family get-togethers of my youth where grandparents, parents, siblings, aunts, uncles, and cousins all gathered…and I try to recreate that insanity with family/friend gatherings. There is just something about having a house full of people with little in common…the catching up from year to year…the noisy chatter! I miss my cousin Mark…the first man I had ever heard called “gay” and not knowing what that meant, only that the older adults talked about him in hushed tones…and then one year another cousin explained to me what “gay” meant…and I managed to silence the table when I asked if Aunt Laura was “gay” too…I might have been young, but Aunt Laura stood out as a fairly “different” kind of girl…she was a Marine, she cussed in public…and she never married.

Isn’t it funny the stuff that stands out from the past?

What we remember? What we choose to forget?

Now, it seems surreal that my oldest daughter tells her babies that they are going to grandma’s house…and that is ME! I’m too young to be a matriarch…and what does that mean anyway? In part I think it means that I am the keeper of traditions…the person who reminds everyone else…of the way it used to be. I realized that I am the only living person who knows who my mother was…her family tree…her stories…I need to write things down, find old pictures, and put it together…a scrapbook for each daughter…and that seems like a very big job…not one I’ll complete by this Yule…but hopefully for next Yule. But this year, I can share a story or two because it’s important that my daughters and granddaughters know where the “holiday plates” and “good silver” came from (my great-grandmother’s who used good china and silver for every meal)…and why I drag out the antique stuff for the holidays and no other time…maybe it’s important to know that the butterscotch pie made for Christmas dinner is the same recipe passed from her as well…and that her “English name” was Sarah…and that her Cherokee name was lost with the passage of time….

I love butterscotch pie.

Have you ever tried to find butterscotch pie around town? No one makes it. Hardly anyone has ever heard of it. Butterscotch pie was the most important pie during the holiday…trumping the more standard pumpkin, sweet potatoe, or pecan…

My mother would always get mad at my grandmother for indulging me with a slice still warm from the oven (because it hadn’t “set” properly and the filling would run…supposedly ruining the pie…Yes, I was a little spoiled…and yes, I cut that first piece for myself sometimes, while it is hot…and watch the filling run into the empty space…not because I’m spoiling myself, but to remember my mother’s voice…and that of my grandmother’s…

I don’t know if it all matters or not, but for right now, for me, having recently left the fog of my other fictional world, it seems I should be doing something to keep established family traditions rooted in the minds of my daughters, while keeping the rituals we’ve created together in place as well…

To all of you, who have read to the bottom of this post, I wish you Happy Holidays…

And I’ll share the Butterscotch Pie recipe here…I rarely bake but this is one recipe that I do well…and it makes a generous amount of filling (for a large deep pie shell or enough for a small pie and several cups of pudding):

Butterscotch Pie

Make your pie crust first and bake it so that it is ready to fill as soon as the butterscotch filling is ready. Here’s the basic ingredients for the crust:

• 2 cp flour
• 1 tsp salt
• 2/3 cp shortening

Here’s the important part: Sift together the flour and salt…no one sifts anymore…cut in the shortening with a knife or pastry cutter, you can also mash it together with a fork until it resembles grains, add just enough ICE-COLD water to bind it together (2 tbl but no more than 1/3 cup…just sprinkle as you knead until it just barely holds together)…refrigerate dough for one hour…

Preheat oven to 400 degrees. Sprinkle flour on flat surface and roll out the pastry. Press into place in prepared pan, trim edges, pinch to “decorate”. Prick crust with fork. Line shell with parchment paper and fill with rice to keep shell from forming bubble. (Rice is not damaged and can be reused.) Bake for 12 minutes. Remove rice and paper…bake empty shell an additional 6 minutes or until light golden brown. Cool on wire rack.

Now you are ready for the filling:

Preheat oven to 425 degrees. Combine following seven ingredients in a heavy bottomed pan or a double boiler. Cook over a medium heat, stirring (I use a wooden spoon) until thick. (It will take awhile, don’t get anxious and turn up the heat…and when you think it is thickening, don’t get into too big of a hurry, let it get as thick as a rich pudding)

• 1 1/2 cp light brown sugar
• 10 tbs flour
• 1 tsp salt
• 4 cps milk
• 6 beaten egg yolks (set aside the whites for meringue, keep refrigerated)
• 4 tbs butter
• 2 tsp real vanilla

Pour filling into pie crust. While the filling is still very hot it is time to make the meringue…do not fear meringue…trust me, this is the easy part!

• 6 egg whites
• 6 tbs sugar
• 2 tbs powdered sugar
• pinch salt
• 2 tsp vanilla

Beat the egg whites until stiff, then add sugars, salt and vanilla, beating well…peaks should form. Spread the meringue over the filling, starting at the crust edges (slightly overlapping the crust) and fill toward the center, mounding slightly higher in the center. Bake for 5-7 minutes or until meringue is light golden brown.

I’ve been wanted to learn to rock climb for two decades…there was only one thing standing in my way and it was a doozie…fear of heights, as in a standard ladder was too much to conquer for normal household maintenance (like screwing in a light bulb.) I know, insane.

When I met my hubby the only thought that went through my head was sex. (I was horny the minute I met him.) The second thought that went through my head was kink (of course) because I refused to be in another vanilla relationship. Having passed both tests, I proceeded to first date where I was astonished to learn that he was an avid rock climber (or as avid as a man can be with a full time job/mortgage responsibilities which is honestly a big bonus because since meeting him, I’ve met several men and women who consider climbing the only thing of importance, shunning relationships, jobs, and mortgages in favor of traveling from cliff to cliff with nothing more than their shoes, rope, and tent.) So meeting him, really seemed too good to be true…

I thought…he’ll teach me to rock climb…

In the past two years since that first date, I’ve mentioned on several occasions that I wanted to learn to climb but it seemed I was destined to be the belay slave (the one who holds the rope and adjusts the rope tension as the climber climbs) for the rest of my life because of my FEAR.

Last weekend that all changed. Hubby flew in (btw he’s been mostly gone since August 3rd for business) for a week’s vacation to celebrate Samhain with me. I surprised him by signing us up for a weekend membership at a rock climbing gym. He was less than enthused since he’s seen my paralyzing fear in action and once had to rescue me from a three foot step ladder but he went along on the adventure stoically hopeful that the day would end without any hysterics on my part…

But, I was prepared…mentally…in addition to meditating for weeks, focused on abandoning my fear of heights, I whipped out my most powerful persona…my Femme Fatale…and I dressed for the occasion: color-coordinated yoga pants and athletic top, full make-up, bouncy ponytail. I lotioned my shoulders and arms with wonderfully scented, luminous lotion (okay, slightly glittery) that made my shoulders look like there might actually be some muscle there and I wore full make-up;)

I felt smoking hot.
I felt strong…no, make that invincible as we drove to the gym…

I climbed a thirty-five foot beginner wall without even considering the height factor. It was wonderful. I surprised everyone, including myself, because when I looked down and waved at my hubby and daughter, I knew I’d really conquered my fear.

On Monday, he flew out again…
I went back to the climbing gym and signed up for a month’s membership for my daughter and myself…(it’s also been a major stress reliever but I will not even bother to get started on my personal life insanity) and in the few days since…I’ve climbed every day, even if only for an hour. I’m challenging myself on routes that I know are physically over my head and quite a bit higher than that first climb…but I’m sooo psyched. I even bought two climbing magazines so I could start learning terminology (not realizing in advance that almost every single article has a reference to sex…who knew?) and where the best outdoor places are to go for a beginner climber. Sure, I could wait and ask hubby because he already knows…but I really want to do the research myself.

Hubby has no idea that he’ll be coming home to a crag slut:)

Somewhere along the line, someone pointed out to me that I was too Femme for my own good. At the time I wouldn’t have dreamed of leaving the house without full makeup… Manicure…
And Pedicure.
I mean even in winter, the boots and socks have to come off at some point. Right?
At the time, I snickered and didn’t give it much thought.

Years later, I was told in a group setting by a well meaning lesbian friend that I needed to “Give up the charade” that I was just a “cunt-tease and nothing more unless I made a committed effort to come out of the closet and give up men forever” because in her words “bisexuality is a myth.” Everyone except me laughed…

Whatever.

But that statement made me shirk labels for years. It was no one’s business whether I was straight, or bi, or lesbian. Or so I thought…but maybe that single statement made me withdraw from a group of women who until that moment had been a source of comfort because they’d accepted me for who I was.

I like to think I know who I am…and since I am a creature who is always growing, changing, evolving…I don’t let labels play a big part of creating who I am. Sure, some labels are necessary; they help us communicate to a certain level of who we are. Today, I’m willing to own a few labels that help identify me: Woman, Female, Wife, Mother, Bisexual, Femme…

But does that mean I can’t step out of the role sometimes?

Roles.

Are we all just role-playing?
Some days, it seems that way. That we are all playing some weird form of dress-up to get across the point of who we are, without saying the words.

A few days ago I came downstairs wearing a consensual-partner-beater, jeans, and my biker boots. I didn’t think about it. I woke up. I got dressed. Came down for breakfast. My husband said, “Wow, we’re feeling a little dyke today.” Of course my first response was, “We are?” But then, after breakfast was cleared, I looked in the mirror. I’d neglected to put on makeup, my hair was in a tight pony-tail, and as in 90% of the time, my wallet and cell phone were in the right hip pocket.

I did an about face and went back upstairs. It bothered me that he saw me that way…too.

Maybe it had just been an excruciatingly long week and I was really too tired to go to the trouble to straighten my hair, put on makeup, and choose a color coordinated outfit…

Or maybe something else was going on. Maybe I’m tiring of wearing my Femme label all of the time. After all, my twenty-three year old daughter had told me only a few days earlier that I was “getting a little too dyke all of a sudden”. What in the hell does that mean anyway? Then the next day, I had a very cute, very femme young blonde in my lap, whispering in my ear all of the terribly naughty things she wanted me to do to her…and in the moment I really didn’t feel very femme at all…

Upstairs, I pulled on a tiny black cropped leather jacket over the white tank, exchanged my biker boots for sexy high heeled black boots, and threw on big hoop earrings and a long necklace. I straightened my hair and applied make-up. When I came back down, I demanded, “Are we still feeling a little dyke today?”

My husband swallowed, shook his head, and managed, “Femme fatale?”

I smiled and said, “You better fucking believe the Fatale part…if one more person says I’m trying too hard to be dyke…”

He grabbed me and kissed me. He said, “I like it when you’re dyke. The girls I catch looking at you when we are out like it too.”

Why was everyone but me noticing that I’ve been less and less femme…and why does it matter, if it matters at all that I “look” butch today or femme? I’m still the same person when I look in the mirror…

And maybe that’s the problem. I am still the same person who hates labels. I don’t want to be trapped into behaving one way or another by a word. Whether I am dressed in heels with make-up or wear my biker boots with a freshly scrubbed face, the bottom line is that my thoughts, feelings, ideas don’t change…I am still who I am. A bisexual woman, mostly femme, but also highly connected to her inner boi.

The thing is, that day, with my husband, I noticed something. When I have my makeup on and I’m wearing heels…I walk a certain way…I smile and tease a certain way…I feel sexy but in a girly way. I try harder to catch the attention of girls who can only be labeled as butch…I’m bolder. Compare that to when I am not dressed femme. I feel tougher, stronger. I swagger more. I smirk more. And I try to not be noticed and by trying to not be noticed, I inevitably am…

But does that mean that if I chose to clip my hair and wear my biker books every day, I’d start feeling less femme? Or if I only wore my stilettos and stockings, cute dresses and makeup, I might actually start to carry a purse? Trust me, the answer to both is no.

I’ve been doing some people watching ever since my own hard look in the mirror…women who dress exclusively butch…and women who dress exclusively femme…even women who are so androgynous that neither butch or femme seems to be an adequate description…and I started to wonder…if we are becoming so determined to express ourselves that we dress a certain way every single day…even when we might want to dress a different way…to fit into another’s definition of a label we’ve accepted for ourselves…are we repressing ourselves and stifling our own unique personalities in deference to what we think others (need) to see in us?

I’ve already admitted to being guilty of this…pulling out my Femme Fatale when all I really wanted to do was spend the day in my comfy biker boots sans makeup…and it wasn’t really even to make someone else happy…just to throw off a label. But all I did was exchange one label for another…so did I gain anything that day? Knowledge, a new look at myself and how whether if I like it or not the labels I’ve accepted ownership of do define me…
But I’ve also gleaned the insight that I am willing to defy convention (convention being the assumed labels we apply to ourselves and allow others to apply.)

I want to be who I am any minute of any day. I want to be able to look in the mirror and see “me” not the person someone else expects to see. And from now on…that’s exactly what I’m going to do.

Last week I went to a party…A Gigglefest…and trust me, I had a very good time but something happened that night that has left me thinking…a lot…about all of the rules I have created for myself…

I’m forty-four years old; isn’t it time I throw out some of the old rules with yesterday’s trash? And then with that thought immediately follows the chastisement from the little bitch dressed in white sitting on my right shoulder, “Don’t even think about it.”

Sigh.

Thank goddess I have that nasty little she-devil all dressed in red sitting on my left shoulder, shouting, “You go girl!”

By now, you, my reader, are probably as thoroughly as confused as I am…

Here was my dilemma, seeing that I was at a party with forty amazing, beautiful women…and hooking up with one of them seemed to be a probability…

There was lots of giggling…and jiggling…and flirting going on. I got to dance with a woman who I really like and admire (she once asked me to have her baby and I still regret not doing so…after dancing, we shared a few drinks and talked at length about that decision and how it has affected both of our lives. Okay, we got drunk together…and I felt a lot worse about the decision.)

Hours later, I got to hug and snuggle and kiss a beautiful woman who until that night had just been a passing flirtation…

And then sometime later, okay…much later…sitting by a campfire, listening to the sweet music of some of the women who had brought their drums…I tried to figure out just why I wasn’t somewhere private and naked with either of the first two women…and ended up with a third woman in my lap.

Did I say woman?

Oh sweet goddess…

Rephrase that to girl…soft, sexy, waist length blonde hair billowing around us in a sexy, sweet scented cloud. And I was in lust up to my eyeballs (Did I forget to mention that in her own innocent way she’d been trying to hook-up all evening?)

Twenty-two and plenty legal but soooo off limits because of my damn rules…

I have a rule about the girls and bois I get involved with…they can’t be more than fifteen years younger than me. Why? Good question and one I really don’t seem to have an answer for except for the fact that one of my ex-husbands was fifteen years older than me and that seemed acceptable…whereas if there had been more than fifteen years between us that would have been somehow…unacceptable.

I’ve been plenty tempted to break that rule in the past and so I amended with a clause that if tempted, I might be swayed, but I would never enjoy the favors of anyone younger than my daughters…there, that would keep me safe for a good long time. I definitely wouldn’t break that rule, right? That would just be too gross being with someone younger than any of my daughters…

And then the beauty in my lap kissed me.

Wow.

She rocked my world and then some…I won’t bore you with the details of what followed but I was good (okay, I was as reasonably well behaved as I could be with a luscious beauty in my lap intent on hooking up)…in the end I politely declined an invitation to join her somewhere more private…

And I was left to stare into the fire…binding myself with mental ropes to keep myself from chasing her into the dark…because I really wanted to.

I could blame it on horniness…My husband has been away on business since August 3rd with the exception of a Saturday once a month…

Or, I could just admit that I’m a hypocrite and be done with it…

Wouldn’t it be so liberating to toss all of the rules to the wind and just enjoy the moments that come my way? It would…it really, really would…

Looking into the fire, listening to the drums…I realized that my heart was pounding out of my chest because the too young girl had spoken a primal language to the beast that lives inside of me…the one who only sees life in fantasy and dream…the one who I packed away when I left my inner boi behind so long ago and didn’t allow him to become a man…because I had to be someone else…I had to be someone’s mother…and my Femme-self came into being.

My beast…

My little boi grown up…

I don’t have a rule for this one. I’m in unknown territory. I know what my primal instinct wanted to do…I wanted to wrap her hair in my fist. I wanted to hold her down and kiss her mindless. I wanted to thrust my cock inside of her, dominate her, make her beg and scream…

That is behavior reserved for only in my mind…

But now, I feel like there is a battle going on inside of me and this round went to the little bitch on my right shoulder. I obeyed the rules…I was good…But watching the fire flicker and spark, I decided something else. I’m tired of living by rules of right and wrong that don’t really make any sense to me anymore (did they ever?) and I want to let my beast out to play…and honestly, there isn’t anything femme about that part of me at all.

Maybe this is “just a phase”…

I remember my mom saying that when I was young…at the time I’d cut off my hair and taken to carrying my wallet in my hip pocket…

A phase would be a comfort…I know who I am in my Femme skin…and this…unknown territory is so far out of my comfort zone that I really don’t know the answer to, “What next?”

Here we go again…

I was hanging out at one of the alternative lifestyle forums I frequent and the post titled FUTCH popped up…and it didn’t make me thrilled…and I wasn’t even one of the ones asking WTF? Maybe you, as I was, watched when Dani Campbell, one of the contestants on MTV’s Shot at Love with Tila Tequila said “Futch.” She explained it meant someone who is neither feminine nor butch, but a cross between. My eyes rolled.

Maybe you love the word…maybe you hate the word. My question is, “Do we as a community not have enough labels to describe ourselves? Lesbian, Butch, Femme, Stem, Stone Butch, Lipstick Lesbian…I could go on. Okay, one more: Gayelle.  (Why anyone would want a change of label to this happy, pleasant sounding word is beyond me, since Lesbian has history. Lesbian the word coming from the Greek island Lesbos where the first recognized “homosexual woman” was presumed to live…and where she wrote her many love poems to other women from. Perhaps you’ve heard of her: Sappho. Maybe not, since she lived about 600 B.C.

So, as much as I’d love to turn this into a label rant…I won’t…I will go back to the forum discussion that ensued wherein someone claimed that a Dominant Femme was an Oxymoron. Seriously. Forget eye roll, I laughed out loud! Then I laughed some more.

When did Femme come to mean soft and cuddly and vulnerable and submissive? When did someone add to the label rule book that Femme meant a woman who couldn’t be strong, capable, independent? Assertive? Demanding? Dominating?

Either I’m confused or the label creators are…

The Femme history that I know is one of a powerful woman, willing to stand out from the norm. Consider the era. Lesbianism first became very public in the 1940’s (yes, there were obviously lesbians pre-1940 but for the sake of this post…I want to keep it semi-current.) If you were a woman in 1940, you were a housewife, a nun, a spinster. Or you were a rebel. An outsider. Someone who could be beaten or killed for being Different. Someone who had to be willing to be Tough. Hardcore. In Order To Survive The Times.

Why 1940? In Odd Girls and Twilight Lovers, Lillian Faderman recognized that this was when women were first admitted to bars (in the U.S.) without a male escort. As a consequence, the outsiders developed ways to recognize each other. Some (Butch/Dyke) women women adopted male styled clothes and short hair which conflicted starkly with their feminine peers, others (Femme) women exaggerated their femininity with daring red lipstick and seductive dress. Paired as Butch/Femme couples, they resembled their heterosexual counterparts but because of their exaggerated representations brought attention for the first time to the Lesbian Subculture.

In Boots of Leather, Slippers of Gold, Elizabeth Lapvsky-Kennedy and Madeline Davis wrote that gender identities “were the key structure for organizing against heterosexual dominance.” Gender identities born from their heterosexual models: if Butch equalled Aggressor and Protector then Femme found importance as Seducer and Pillars of Strength.

By the 1950’s the Lesbian Subculture was firmly rooted making it possible for women like Del Martin and Phyllis Lyon to come out as a committed homosexual couple even though harassment and arrest were still common.

During the 1960’s and 70’s Lesbianism was under attack but by a new source: Feminists. With Butches accused of chauvinism and oppression and Femmes accused of enabling…the feminist lesbian strove for androgyny.

However, by the 1980’s Butch-Femme came into being as post-feminist lesbians reclaimed their right to have gender. A quote from Butch-Femme.com (one of the original genderqueer websites) says it better than I ever could: “A Butch without a Femme is still a Butch, just as a Femme without a Butch is still a Femme. But how we compliment one another. And it’s hot! We are about…passion!”

The 1990’s brought the recognition of transgender, changing the face of the community forever…

October is officially LGBT History Month and so the past as well as the future of Femme has been on my mind. And so looking for inspiration for today’s post, I went looking for Femme and found instead Futch. Why did I cringe so hard when I was reading the Forum’s comments? Was it because I see myself in the term Futch? Is it because I have such a fierce aversion to any label that tries to fit me into a nice tidy category…

Or maybe it is because I fear what this new century is bringing to the table as our future’s history. Are we really so confused that we have to coin a new term seemingly every day to define ourselves…or by creating new labels are we enabling ourselves to truly live our lives authentically? I sincerely hope it is the latter … for me, I’m just happy that today I am able to say I am Bisexual. I am Femme. And no one is going to throw a brick at my head.

So, as much as I would have loved to have ranted about labels, I hope instead that this post encourages at least one to do some research into the history of our roots. And in writing this post I am given the opportunity to say thank you to all of those beautiful Femmes and Butches who came before me…for their Strength and Courage and Determination to make the path I walk one that is easier than the one they walked.

Thank You.

Forgive me for another thrifty posting.

After I finished my previous posting here at The Femme Guide I realized that I left out another thrifty thing that I do: I swap. I’m a long-time crafter, maker, sewer, artist, thing-doer kind of lady, and these swaps really inspire me, teach me, and make me feel really happy. You know at holiday time when we swap gifts and secretly you’re always more excited to give than to get? Swapping is like that, but, (get this) it is year round.

And, people swap all sorts of things. I’ve participated in swaps for pink things, handmade dolls, handmade ornaments, handmade monsters, paper goods, cool thrifted items, mix CDs, handmade dammit dolls, aqua and blue vintage cards, and even, a vagina themed swap.

Swapping works like this:

1. You find a swap you like online
2. You contact the swap coordinator and ask to join
3. You are –usually randomly- assigned a swap partner (sometimes partners)
4. You make/find items for your partners (this is a lot of fun)
5. You ship these items by a deadline
6. You wait
7. You receive awesome goodies in your mailbox from your swap partners!

My two favorite swap sites are Swap-Bot and SwapDex. Swap-Bot requires that you join the site (free) and all swaps are hosted through the site. You are able to search, by category, a pretty exhaustive list of swaps. Once you receive goodies from a swap partner you can rate the quality of these goodies. The rating part sounds a little weird, but in actuality it insures that people don’t stiff one another etc. SwapDex is a blog that lists swaps that other people are hosting through their own personal blogs. Usually, the SwapDex swaps are a little bit more specific, and a little bit more tailored to specific tastes.

Here is an amazing swap I found out about on Swap-Bot that celebrates International Day Against Homophobia. (Oops. I just realized the hyper-link will not work because you must be logged in to swap-bot to view swaps.  So, after you get a login, use this link http://www.swap-bot.com/swap/show/22010 to view the swap)

So, I was thinking, why don’t we have a little Femme-tastic Swap here at The Femme Guide? Let’s swap awesome “femme” themed items with one another. And, hey, this is open to everyone, not just femmes!

In order to participate:

1. Comment below and list three fabulous things about yourself (these can be about your appearance, stuff you own, your attitude etc.) along with your blog (if you have one).
2. Leave me a way to contact you (you can write out your email address to protect yourself from bots, or email me directly at hinterland.femme@gmail.com). I will contact you for your shipping information which will only be shared with your swap partner.
3. I will match you up with another amazing reader
4. Make/buy/thrift something femme-themed for your partner inspired by the fabulous things they listed about themselves. Keep your purchase/creation under $10
5. Mail your item(s) to your swap partner.
6. Wait and receive some swap love in your mailbox
7. Post pictures of the items you send/receive in The Femme Guide Swap Flickr Pool

You can continue to join the swap until October 10^th, and let’s ship our items by October 31^st.

Believe it or not women can and do ejaculate…and women who honestly believe that they can’t-can be taught how. Personally, I was once one of the latter. I thought women were peeing not ejaculating…and then…(I bet you’ve already guessed)…someone proved me wrong by causing me to ejaculate.

And honestly, how embarrassing to the doubter to be not only proven wrong but left laying in a puddle blushing head to toe.

So, how can you tell if you’ve ejaculated? The obvious sign is a gush of wetness just before or during orgasm. Some women actually produce a spray or stream…

It is my belief (now that I am a female ejaculation convert) that all women can ejaculate…

It merely takes patience, practice, and a willingness to learn. So partner up and let’s get started (although for the very shy a solo run is very possible.) First comes exploration of the G-spot.

The g-spot is the spongy tissue of the paraurethral gland, which is similar to the male prostate. It is located about one to two inches back from the vaginal opening inside the front vaginal wall. (The same side as your belly button.)

You can explore your g-spot with your fingers or a curved dildo. I find it easier the first time to go with fingers because feeling the difference in texture in the vaginal wall is important. The area directly over the g-spot will feel bumpy or rough compared to the smoother surrounding area. Remember, smooth fingernails and lube are important…

And really, this step by step approach is going to read kind of dry, so remember…kissing, cuddling, massaging, teasing are all assumed as foreplay before you dive in…the g-spot is much easier to find when you (or your partner) are highly aroused…*wink*

Solo Practice:

Slowly insert one or two fingers into your vagina and make a “come hither” motion stroking the front wall of the vagina. Sometimes it helps to apply pressure from the outside with your free hand. Press down in the area just above your pelvic bone while simultaneously stroking the g-spot until you are feel like you are going to pee. (Don’t stop because you are getting close!) As you near orgasm, push a little and the stream of liquid that flows out is ejaculate.

Partner Play:

Face your partner while she is lying on her back and insert your index or long middle finger into her vagina about two inches. Then crook your fingers in a “come hither” motion, sliding your fingertip along the top of the vagina until you find an area that is rougher than the rest of that vaginal wall.  If you don’t get an immediate response, don’t panic, sometimes direct pressure from the outside is needed to find the g-spot successful…and…every woman is different. Some women need soft touches, others harder touches, that’s where practice come in.

Be prepared:

The amount of liquid expelled during female ejaculation can vary from a teaspoon to a cup…and on bed sheets…that’s a lot of liquid. So have towels ready. Try to not be too disappointed if on first try there is little volume…the secret is to stroke the g-spot to “plump it up” and as you do create more fluid. Again. Practice makes perfect.

If you Google G-spot or Female Ejaculation…you will get a myriad of results. What you will not find are what comes from experience…

All of that play and exploration leads to over-sensitivity and it is not uncommon to feel “uncomfortable” the next day…especially if ejaculation isn’t achieved…because the fluid build up will be in that spongy area. Before I actually “learned” how to ejaculate, I thought I had a constant UTI from too vigorous play. Once I figured out that liquid build-up was the cause measures could be taken to not feel so tender and swollen. Now that I am an experienced ejaculator, if I feel that there is excess fluid it can be “milked out” with that same “come hither” motion, but usually I’ll just take a couple aspirin or Motrin after extended g-spot play.

Also, if you do experience frequent UTI’s make it a habit to urinate immediately after any play that involves lube and/or g-spot play.

Now it’s your turn, tell me your ejaculation stories…triumphs, failures, most embarressing moments…tricks to make it easier for a first timer…

I’m cranky today…maybe I should blame hormones, I did start this morning (I know TMI), but I’d rather blame the patriarchal educated society we reside in for blowing my day to hell in a hand basket.

First, I wake up to Forum Drama over censorship by moderators…whatever…I share my two point five cents and get on with my day.

Second, I open AOL and the headlines blaze Palin’s Church: You Can Pray Away The Gay. I argued with myself all afternoon that I was not going to blog about it. I even had my mantra going…”I will not contribute to the negativity, I will not…”

I blogged.

Third, I went through my revision requests. I have two outstanding manuscripts that need some work before they will be accepted by their targeted publishers. I’ve put off the revision requests because I was a little irritated by both on first read through.

I try to wait, breathe, reevaluate. It keeps me from screaming at someone for wanting to change what I’m trying to say before I realize that I might just agree with their opinion. I’ve waited…a week…I’m still not convinced.

So, I wait until the day I start my period and I’m already cranky. Brilliant.

Ms 1: One of my editors hates the word pussy. She REALLY hates the word Cunt. And the word twat.

Try writing an erotica that doesn’t include a reference to the female anatomy beyond vagina and labia. Really. She doesn’t have a problem with dick. Or cock. Or prick. Favoring them equally with penis. And phallus.  Or at least she didn’t, until she read my latest ms. Try to write erotica about two women and one strap-on and not use the word Cock (or pussy.) I need to breathe a little longer before I address that one.

Ms 2: I have been requested to turn my FF scene into a FM scene or a menage with a man (although they’d prefer a menage with two men and one woman) or flip the whole thing to MF. Why? The submission policy clearly states LGBT. I emailed back, “Can you tell me what LGBT is the acronym for?” (I know, you would never know that on occasion I can be quite the smartass.) A general discussion ensued but the final consensus is that women do not read lesbian erotica. However, women do read gay cowboy, gay vampire, and really, really love to read about a woman watching two gay men fuck…

I’ll try to keep that in mind for my next ms. Or not.

It took me a moment to realize that it isn’t the revision requests that are making me cranky or even that we live in a prejudiced patriarchal, fundamentalist society, or the censorship drama that actually started my day. It is that all three rolled up into a little ball is eating away at my guts.

I feel censored. (Even though I received two acceptance letters in the same week MF and MMF respectively.)

In this day when I should be celebrating my sexual liberation my sexual expression is being limited. My female characters who are strong and opinionated will never have a voice because their sexuality is seen as taboo and their love story incomplete because there isn’t a man in the house. (I’m not sure what the editor read but one of my character’s was packing…I’m just saying.)

But because two hot guys (Hollywood Heros) put the sexy in gay cowboys…gay is now the new cool relationship material and lesbian is just taboo. Gay erotica is celebrated. Lesbian erotica is censored, hidden away…

Ugly.

That’s how I feel. That the world we live in is trying to make lesbian and bisexual erotica into an ugly, dark thing.

Well, screw that people!

I put together a new list of publishing houses. Ones that list specifically Lesbian not just LGBT…so I’ll let you know how that works out for me. Until then, I’m writing what I want to write…I sure hope you’ll support the cause and purchase lesbian literature every chance you get.

As my inaugural post here at the Femme Guide, I want to introduce myself…Hi! I’m Roxy Harte, erotica writer…lol. More seriously though, my goal as a fiction writer is to challenge the way people think, change their prejudices, and trample all over their boundaries. I write GLBT and BDSM erotica…usually combining the two…

This post may be offensive to some people, not because I’ve included adult-material excerpts (which undoubtedly will find their way into future posts), but because when it comes to my authenticity, I’m fairly vocal…

I know who I am, a bisexual Femme. I’ve known since my “Epiphany Day” during an ordinary Jr. High gym class in 1978 when Amie R stripped down to her skin for showers and I tripped over my jaw (which had hit the ground.) How many times had I showered naked with the other girls and not “noticed”? I was in utter and total lust.

And it was noticed.

After that, I was the outcast, the queer girl no one wanted to talk to…and after a decade of being in the “In” crowd, that hurt. But as I sat with the Principal and the female gym teacher in a conference with my parents, I refused to renounce my stance that I was Bisexual…even after counseling to dispel my confusion. The consequence  was showering solo (before the other girls through Jr High and after the other girls through High School) because no one wanted a fag in the shower room. (It was 1978…)

I made a stand at thirteen.

I’ve been challenged ever since.

Lesbians try to convince me I just haven’t met the right woman yet; heterosexual men try to convince me I haven’t met the right man yet…or beg to watch.

Please, believe me when I say Bisexuality is real! Ask anyone who identifies as bisexual. There is not an on-off switch. There is no way to ever be 100% heterosexual or 100% homosexual. And I’m not sure about anyone else, but given the choice to be 100% anything…I wouldn’t take it. Partly, because I am really comfortable with who I am, even if I tend to make everyone else a little crazy. But partly because I feel like “my world view, my sexuality” is superior. Now, don’t get all in a tissy (I already explained that I tend to make people crazy…that includes rage at my opinions).

Here’s what I mean…I don’t think I’m better than anyone else…just a bit more evolved. I’m not trying to fit into a gender (I identify as masculine and feminine under different situations) and I’m not trying to be either straight or gay because I’ve already accepted that I’m neither…and so there is no prejudice, no anger, no frustration. I am who I am and I totally accept that you are who you are because I know that whether you are gay or straight, bi or transgender…that’s who you are. I can’t and wouldn’t want to “fix” me, so why on earth would I want to “fix” you? That’s it…that’s my attitude. Why can’t everyone else be so kind?

I lust after men, I lust after women…I’ve even fallen in love with a few of each. So get over it already. Accept me for who I am.

Sometimes, I meet other bisexuals who are afraid to “come out of the closet” because they’ve been identified as straight or queer so long by people in their sphere that to suddenly say I might want to be with x instead of y for a while would topple their world…and most of them want to know how I’m brave enough to just be myself. Honestly, I don’t know that it’s bravery. It’s a refusal to lie.

I have a lesbian friend who assumed I was lesbian and struggling to “come out” because I was dating a man at the time, but I clearly wasn’t a heterosexual female…I told her I was Bi…she actually held her finger to her lips and shushed me. She didn’t want her partner to hear the word Bi because her partner, as a very Butch, very opinionated lesbian in the community, might “go off”.

Seriously?

I didn’t get it…

“Because you can’t make up your mind,” she said. “You’re afraid to come out of the closet and that makes you a clit tease.”

My friend and her partner then got a dose of MY SOAPBOX…

So, for anyone who still thinks that bisexuality isn’t real or needs personal affirmation. Here are a few links to various places of interest(I have dozens so if Google doesn’t quench your thirst for more info…I’m sure I’ll be blogging again and will be supplying more as the mood hits me.

If you are bisexual or know of other bisexual sites please feel free to comment…

Bi Net USA

BiCommunity News

BiWriters Association

Bisexual News and Opinions