Femmes
Jennie asked me to write something about femmes, and what my experience is as high femme.
Being femme is harder than you’d think. First of all, I’m still read as straight, or next in line, bi. People, in general, don’t believe I am really gay. People see the high heeled boots, the accoutrements, the skirts and stockings and, in dyke culture, all too often, I don’t get seen.
At a brunch, following this year’s Pacific Friction (a kink event in Portland), a friend brought up the notion of high femme as intimidating. I was thinking about that, about how I get dismissed, or am viewed as unapproachable. I compensate, with humor, warmth and a kind of playfulness, but particularly in crowds where I don’t know other people, I would be standing by myself if I didn’t have the curiosity and self-confidence to initiate conversations.
Femmes experience our own kind of marginalization. There’s no free ride. We pay, perhaps, a different fare, but we are all-- paying our dues.
In dyke culture, despite the revival of butch femme, despite femme parades and lipstick lesbians on public television, it’s still easier and more acceptable to be androgynous. To blend in. To be recognizable by other queers. I think, people sometimes think, I am just riding the wave of media-fed identity. I get dismissed as having no real politics. I am seen as having colluded with mainstream media images and marketing.
Too often, people don’t see me as radical or political. They read me as unaware. Someone who sold out. Or they see me as feminine, and despite feminism, it looks, to them, weak. Or easy. Like all I did was conform. A passive identity. No courage, no fight, no risk, no stakes.
I think feminism made it easier for us to be androgynous, but not necessarily to be more femme.
To be a femme, and particularly, a femme bottom, is to stir up, unconsciously, a brush with people’s own vulnerabilities.
That being said, femme identity is powerful and personal. It’s a carving out of a determination to inhabit dyke space. There’s a part of me that loves, despite discrimination within lesbian culture, developing who I am. Rebelling, within the movement. Stretching another edge. Being femme means being creative. It means learning to flirt more, to dance more, to cultivate and bring into queer space—feminine charms. Now I dance urban street rap, now I spin on the pole, now I’ll strip and lap dance. I spin fire with poi and staff. The kind of femme I am, I don’t really want to be boxed in. I still want to learn to shoot a pistol. I still want to kick your ass in pool. I still climb up on the roof and haul the branches back.
I want to bring out the butchiness in all of you. I want you to come run my charcoal grill. I want to make you hot and full of heart and confident and open. I want us all to play more, a lot more, and laugh more. That’s the whole purpose of being femme, to make it fun for you, and for us. To widen the playing field. To exalt our resourcefulness. To turn you on. To push another edge. To be here, to back you up and to nurture you, when we get worn down. To take you in my arms, to pull your hand across my body, to draw me into the circle and into our eyes.
I want solidarity and inventiveness with other femmes. I think we get that, some. We see each other, not so much as rivals, but as co-conspirators.
I don’t have long nails. I don’t have big tits. I don’t fit every image. As a queer, I pick and choose.
I want you, other queers, to see me as solid. What I want you to know is that I have taken another line, a different front line (from the butch frontier), and that the drive behind it is for all of us. I’d like you to be able to see me, if you don’t already see me, and see inside what it means being femme.
For me, it’s courageous, though sometimes exhausting, to push our edge. And particularly, it can be extremely discouraging to fight invisibility and dismissal in our own ranks. Not a complaint, just a heads up—about respect.
Gratitude to all of you, for reading this and opening your minds. For listening into my experience.
And gratitude, a special gratitude, to all of you who, so many times –have- stepped in and stood beside me, who have let me give to you, who have given, back to me, electricity.
October 16, 2006
Oregon
Julie Weber
