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At my Frameline volunteer shift the other day, I was doing will call with an older gay guy, John, and since it was the middle of the afternoon and thus a fairly quiet shift, we got to chatting. And by “we got to chatting,” I mean mostly that I asked him questions about his life, which he warmly and enthusiastically answered. He’s lived in San Francisco for over 35 years, in the Castro for 35 years. He was 22, he said, when he came out here, realizing he was gay. He moved here because of the Cockettes, whom he met when they were on tour in Milwaukee. He hung out with them after their show and just decided to go with them on the rest of their tour and then back to San Francisco.
He lived in San Francisco during the Harvey Milk days. He teared up when talking about the sadness and anger and overwhelming solidarity when Milk was assassinated. He lived in San Francisco during the AIDS crisis, and had to stop talking for a few minutes, he was too overcome with emotion to speak.
He told me that he sees the splintering in the gay community as tragic. “What splintering?” I asked, curious about what he was referring to.
“Everyone’s concerned with their own issues,” he said. “People come together to fight for marriage equality, sure, but at the end of the day marriage equality is about personal relationships. It’s about us as individuals. It’s not about all of us, together. And it allows us to think we’re fighting for ourselves rather than for each other.”
I nodded.
“During the AIDS crisis,” he said, “there was a real sense of camaraderie. I have such close, intense relationships with many lesbians from that generation. They really came out of the woodwork in support of us during that time. There hasn’t been anything like it since. Everyone does their own thing now.”
I said I thought so too, that I’d noticed something similar. I thought of the post I wrote last week.
He said, “it’s sad. What we’ve been fighting for all along is happening, equality, justice, acceptance, visibility. All of that. It’s happening, at least it’s happening in San Francisco. But it means that there isn’t as much of a need for us to watch out for each other anymore. Straight people don’t all watch out for each other. Being straight is hardly something to think of as having in common with each other. The more we get what we’ve been fighting for, the more we become normalized here, the less ‘being gay’ is something that brings us together. We’re becoming complacent.”
Is this true? I hadn’t thought of it this way. Does getting to a place where we’re no longer oppressed, where our society is no longer heteronormative, where we are fairly represented in government and where we’re systemically, institutionally, and socially equal to straight folks mean that we won’t have solidarity with each other anymore on the grounds of being queer? And if that’s the case, is it worth it? To me, that seems like such an unbearable loss. And John, tears in his eyes, seems to be suffering that loss. Or are his thoughts just tainted by nostalgia? After all, he knew three quarters of the people who came up to will call while we were sitting there together, men and women alike, and they all seemed to have so much love and support for each other.
The other night, I attended a volunteer orientation for the Frameline queer film festival. (You get a voucher to see a film for every volunteer shift you take.) There were probably a hundred fellow volunteers, and most of them were men. But when the volunteer coordinator stepped up to address us, I was surprised – because the volunteer coordinator was a woman. A queer woman. As in, asymmetrical haircut, half a shaved head, totally tatted, hip young San Francisco queer woman. And after a few moments of being surprised, I became perplexed, because after all, it is a queer film festival. So why the surprise at the volunteer coordinator being a queer dyke?
It reminded me of the feeling I got when I first visited my women’s college campus as a junior in high school. Until I visited, I had been pretty vehemently opposed to attending a women’s college. I had thought it would lack diversity (which in retrospect seems laughable). But when I visited, I was suddenly struck – wow, this all exists for the education of women. The male professors and campus police and facilities staff etc., despite being men, were working at an institution that educated women. Women matter! Holy shit! And it dawned on me that it had been so internalized in me that women don’t matter that I was actually surprised and delighted to be confronted with evidence to the contrary.
And I got the same feeling at the very first Dyke March I ever attended in San Francisco, in 2006. I was with my ex-girlfriend at the time, and I remember holding her hand, processing down Valencia, feeling giddy from all the solidarity and empowerment I felt, due in no small part to the fact that there were gay men hanging out of windows, waving rainbow flags and hoisting banners that read “FAGS <3 DYKES” and the like. And I was all, “omg! Gay men love us! They care! Whoaaaaa!”
And somehow I got the same feeling while at this orientation – because here was a group consisting largely of middle-aged-ish white gay men and they were all paying attention to this queer-as-fuck dyke, who, by the way, was absolutely hilarious and cute and rocked her job. I felt somehow vicariously visible. And it struck me again, as it did at my first Dyke March and when I first visited my women’s college, that I’m so accustomed to women being invisible to men in any way that’s not sexual. And it’s so consistently ingrained in women that we’re only useful to men as sexual objects that it surprises me every time I find myself in a situation in which I’m being genuinely appreciated, as a woman (or in which women in general are being genuinely appreciated), by a man for a non-sexual reason. And it makes me wish that it would happen more often. Not just to me, on an individual level, but publicly, and in media, and in culture-at-large.
You see, gay men and gay women are natural “bedmates” (har har).* We are among the few combinations of adult human beings that (in general) have a non-romantic/non-sexual connection. And there’s something really special about this bond, I think, that goes largely ignored. And it’s different from the relationship between gay men and straight women, which, if judging by the connotation lent by the term “fag hag” alone, is largely a mutually objectifying relationship (and, yes, that’s a gross oversimplification, but fag hags are not the topic of this post, and the relationship between gay men/straight women has been addressed again and againelsewhere). Maybe I’ll write about my thoughts on that some other time.
No, the point is, I wish the common bond between gay men and gay women were more acknowledged and respected. When I went to Berlin’s pride celebration in 2007, I was struck by how different it felt from San Francisco’s pride. In San Francisco, there’s Dyke March of course, and then Dykes on Bikes lead the main parade the following day. In Berlin, there’s neither – and without the women-centric portions of the celebration, I realized how gay-male-centric the whole celebration felt and was. Specifically, how middle-to-upper-middle-class-white-gay-male-centric. At the time, I remember having conversations with the folks I went with (a mix of genders and sexual orientations) about how these men were taking up all the “space,” probably without even realizing it. Gay pride parade means gay (male) parade. Gay bar means gay (male) bar. Gay issues are gay (male) issues. Gay white men are the default Gay, just like straight white men are the default Human in our society. And obviously, yes, gay men’s issues are super important. Of course they are. It’s just a matter of gay women’s issues also being important. And being similar, yes, but also largely different. The problem is, though, that there have been so few studies on lesbian/queer women’s issues specifically that we don’t even know what our issues are and what distinguishes them from gay men’s issues. And this, of course, isn’t the fault of gay men individually or even as an entity. It’s the fault of a society that naturalizes maleness as the default human, and that renders women a sub-category of human. (Same goes for queer people of color – their issues are woefully under-studied too, and POC are always just sub-categories of a humanity in which White is default and “normal.”)
So, right, individual gay men are busy taking up their own issues and fighting their own battles and taking care of their own survival, which completely totally makes sense. And yet I think it’s really sad that the bond between gay men and gay women is so often overlooked, or dismissed, or undervalued. I think it has tremendous value, as we are perhaps each other’s best natural allies. Sex and romance doesn’t get in between us, not personally and not in terms of prescribed roles. When I see a gay man, I see someone who both understands what it feels like to be queer in this straight world, and who will relate to me inherently free of any sort of sexual tension or sexual judgment. We understand what it feels like to be otherized. The homophobia we each experience often looks and feels different, sure, but when all is said and done, it’s the same animal. We can learn a lot from each other. I have learned a lot from my gay guy friends, and I count one of them as among the best friendships I have. I hate this phrase, but it just is what it is. There’s nothing underneath, no undercurrents, no invisible social glue that’s trying to glue us together in awkward ways. We just get each other. And I wish this were more typical, not just on an individual level but on a socially recognized level. Because then, maybe I wouldn’t be so surprised by gay men holding “fags <3 dykes” signs, or laughing at a queer gal’s jokes.
Has anyone else felt this way? Or is this peculiar to me? Maybe in other communities, gay guy/gal crossover is much more common. But even if that’s the case, where are our friendships ever portrayed in the media (TV, books, news outlets…)? Right, exactly. Never. And why do I not know a single gay male blogger? Where are they all? I just want to be friends, guys!
What’s your experience?
*In this post, I’m addressing specifically gay cismen and gay ciswomen — and yeah, I know that leaves out a lot of people, including queer but not-gay-identified folks, as well as genderqueer and trans people… Sorry about that, this is just what’s most familiar to me.
I don’t often link to events, but when I do, they’re events that I *highly* recommend and that I will personally be attending (unless otherwise noted). I am very, very excited about CUAV’s SafetyFest this year, and will be attending at least two of the events. Here is CUAV‘s mission statement:
Founded in 1979, Community United Against Violence (CUAV) works to build the power of LGBTQQ (lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender, queer, and questioning) communities to transform violence and oppression. We support the healing and leadership of those impacted by abuse and mobilize our broader communities to replace cycles of trauma with cycles of safety and liberation. As part of the larger social justice movement, CUAV works to create truly safe communities where everyone can thrive.
Yes. Yes. YES.
And here’s what they say about safetyfest:
safetyfest is a 100% free festival celebration of all the fierce ways queer and trans people in the Bay Area stay safe and strut our stuff. Our communities already have so many of the tools we’ll need to end violence and be truly safe in all the ways we deserve to be–we just need to share them!
Awesome. Count me in. (If any of y’all want to meet me, lemme know! I’ll definitely be going to Leah Lakshmi Piepzna-Samarasinha’s workshop on April 17th, and probably also the closing celebration. I wish I could go to Jen Cross’s writing workshop, too. Sigh. Next year?)
Declaring Our Erotic: A writing workshop with survivors of sexual trauma Jen Cross
• 870 Market St, San Francisco
Saturday, April 10, 1-4pm
Writing our desire is writing our resilience and our resistance—Gather with other queer-identified survivors to create a space in which we struggle with and celebrate our gorgeous, complex sexualities.
Transforming the Pain: Healing from Trauma
Prajna Paramita Choudhury
Hand to Hand Kajukenbo Self Defense Center,
5680 San Pablo Ave. Oakland
• Saturday, April 10, 1:30-4:30pm
After crisis, after dealing with its immediate effects on our lives – how do we move forward
in wholeness? This workshop will facilitate this discussion and provide some tools.
The Revolution Starts At Home: Practicing Community Accountability In Real Life Leah Lakshmi Piepzna-Samarasinha
Modern Times Bookstore; 888 Valencia St, SF
• Saturday, April 17, 2-5pm
$5-20 suggested donation (no one turned away)
In this hands-on workshop, we’ll talk about the nitty-gritty of building accountability, justice and violence-free zones in our lives.
Basic Self-Defense for Women and Trans People Self-Defense for Self-Determination
Hand to Hand Kajukenbo Self Defense Center,
5680 San Pablo Ave. Oakland
• Saturday, April 17, 1-4pm
Open to Women and Trans folks Come yell, kick and talk it out with us! Learn and share skills for the daily verbal and physical self-defense situations we encounter.
Work It Out: Closing Celebration! Co-Hosted by CUAV & El/La Program Para TransLatinas
SOMArts, 934 Brannan St, San Francisco
• Sunday, April 18, 4-8pm
$20-60 sliding scale (no one turned away)
Join us to wrap up safetyfest 2010 with a fierce and tender afternoon of dazzling performances from your favorite queer and trans rockstars, fabulous drinks and edible delights, glamorous prizes, and a chance to strut your stuff on the catwalk/dance floor. Parents and kids are invited to take a load off in the Family Space. Don’t miss this chance to party with your people!
This evening I was getting my hair cut. My hairdresser of choice works at a particularly queer salon in the Mission (natch). As I was arriving, there was a young woman who, by all appearances, was very queer, in a San Francisco Mission dyke sort of way. I know that statement is problematic, but bear with me.
She was tallish, lanky, boyish. She had a kind of swagger. She had a visible full sleeve tattoo. She was getting her hair cut at a fucking queer ass salon. And her haircut was the queerest of all:
This was her haircut exactly, except her hair was dark brown with bleached streaks. SO FUCKING QUEER.
And then, this happened:
Her: “Oh my god, I love it!”
Hairdresser: “Awesome I’m so glad! It suits you great.”
Her: “Squeeeee! My boyfriend is going to love it too, oh my god he’s going to freak out.”
Hairdresser: “Well you should bring him in here, we have a lot of clients who are trans men.”
Her: awkward pause. “Um, excuse me? What? My boyfriend is not trans.”
The hairdresser didn’t miss a beat, luckily, and the awkwardness was kind of smoothed over, but I had two interesting reactions:
1) Chillax, dude, no need to get that defensive about someone mistaking your and your boyfriend’s sexual and/or gender identity! It’s frakking San Francisco!
and
2) IF YOU’RE NOT QUEER, AND ARE IN FACT HOMO- AND TRANSPHOBIC, AND ACTUALLY EVEN IF YOU’RE NOT, DON’T FUCKING APPROPRIATE THE VISUAL MARKERS OF OUR IDENTITY.
Part of me suspects that’s entirely off base. Whatever, she can dress and style herself however she wants, right? And honestly, who the fuck knows where the fucking faux hawk comes from? I sure’s hell don’t. It’s probably not the queers.
But, I don’t know. Part of me also wants to defend that reaction. It’s San Francisco, and with such a visible queer/dyke community here, and particularly the Mission, that kind of visual marker is pretty much unmistakable as being queer.
It’s like this: it’s our fucking picnic. You’ve got so many that we aren’t invited to. Leave us alone at ours.
I have similar reactions to the appropriation by white people of cultural aspects and traditions of people of color, at least when it’s done in a way that’s just like “hey cool I wanna be like that” and not in an educated, fully interested way. And also similar reactions when straight folks decide they can be both straight and queer, unless they’re really done a lot of self-work on that. Do these parallels work? Is my frustration justified?
Or maybe I need to practice withdrawing judgment, and assuming the best of people. Might make me feel better, too.
I got this question through formspring.me (see that little red box over on the right? if you put a question in there and submit it, I’ll answer it), and figured I’d publish it here as well. I imagine it’s a follow-up to my post a while back on being a femme in a relationship that’s not butch/femme. I don’t say anything hugely new and different here, but it’s certainly relevant to the blog.
Can you tell me more about being a femme sans butch? How does the lady feel about your femme identity? And how do you feel about her gender identity?
Gender identity stuff, I love it!
So, really, this is three separate questions. So I’ll start with the first one:
Can I say more about being a femme sans butch?
I guess the first thing I’ll say about it is that for the longest time, I hesitated to identify as femme because I’ve never had a relationship with a woman who identifies as butch (crushes, on the other hand? definitely). Intellectually, I know that to say that a femme can only be with a butch is like saying a woman can only be with a man. But it was sort of like trying to come out to myself all over again. When I started coming out to myself, I was just like “no way, this can’t be possible! I’m a girl! I’m s’posed to like boys! what is this craziness? I must be delusional!” It just didn’t seem possible to me that I was gay, and that gay was real. Coming out as femme was sort of similar, like “no way, I can’t be femme, femmes are supposed to be with butches! I can’t *really* be a femme!” But, for whatever reason, femme is just *right* for me, in the way that coming out as gay/queer in the first place just felt right. So, for whatever reason (biological? theological? coincidental?), I’m a femme and I don’t have a butch, and I don’t feel lacking in any regard. The identity itself is complete. I do think that femme and butch have a lot of traits that are very compatible with each other, and mi’lady has a lot of those traits anyway, plus a lot of other traits that I’m very much in love with ;)
How does she feel about my gender identity?
She’s totally supportive, and she tends to be attracted to femininity/femme-ininity herself anyway. I would even hazard a guess** and say that she’s found my blossoming into femme almost as exciting as I have — she certainly reaps many of the benefits (I’m stabler, more confident, sexier I think). She loves it when I wear heels, she has a deep appreciation for my domesticity (while making it always, always clear that she doesn’t expect anything of me in the way of cooking/cleaning/that sort of thing), she finds the girliness a turn-on. So she’s totally gung-ho about it.
And lastly, how do I feel about her gender identity?
I am totally and completely in love with it. We have talked a bit about what gender identity label she feels most comfortable with, and she keeps coming back to “dyke” as what works for her. And really, I can’t think of any better way to describe her. She’s kind of a rocker chick, with a definite masculine edge (so. hot. – the way she leans back in a chair, for example, legs apart, chest open and relaxed, shoulders back… swoon) but also with a feminine underside, if you will. She’s got shoulder-length angled side-parted dark hair (longer than mine) which frames her face so perfectly, and she has gorgeous eyes with long lashes. And, erm, she’s got a great rack, which she’s rightfully proud of as one of her great assets. She loves to be fucked. But she also loves to have the cock herself. So, she’s definitely queer, definitely a dyke, definitely NOT femme, I wouldn’t even really use the word feminine to describe her if pressed. Just, dyke. Think, I dunno, Tegan & Sara?
And she’s funny and boyish and she calls me “baby” and “sweetie” which makes me melt, she’s protective and gracious. She lets me do my puttering and my little grooming and she’s mystified by a lot of my feminine ways but she loves them, too. So, really, we’re perfectly matched :)
**After reading my answer, mi’lady said (in her own words) “your hazardous guess is correct!” :) :)
It seems I’m down to just about one really substantial post per week here, which is too bad, because I actually have a lot to write about and I love doing it. I guess working a more-than-full-time job, plus taking a statistics class, plus staffing a rape crisis hotline 32 hours a month, plus having a girlfriend, plus trying to have other friends aside from my girlfriend all sort of adds up. And, while I love the thoughtful substantial posts, I think it might be time for me to expand beyond just a once-a-week post. So, I might start introducing some lighter fare to this here blog-o-mine. I can’t handle the pressure of a regular feature, or anything like that, but you might start seeing around here stuff like fashion snapshots (I’m not the most fashionable person you know, but I’ve been having a lot of fun working on my style lately), cocktail recipes, music/youtube clips (I’m a pianist, you know! maybe I’ll play something for you!), and little sex vignettes. Or, who knows, maybe I’ll just start posting substantial stuff more regularly again. Theoretically, I should have more time now that my grad school applications are in. Theoretically.
Anyway, discussing this blog was not actually supposed to be the topic of this post. I was going to write about burlesque. Last night, I and some friends had free tickets to Teatro Zinzanni, a famous cabaret and cirque show that resides along San Francisco’s Embarcadero at Pier 29. The show was splendid, and while I enjoyed the cabaret and the acrobatics and the live music, I was completely captivated by this one character, played by Rachel DeShon:
And I realized that this captivation was of the “I want to be her” variety. I don’t actually want to be Rachel DeShon. I don’t want to be an opera singer and perform cabaret and all that. But, somehow, I just watched her the entire time, thinking to myself “THAT.” It just sorta clicked. I have a similar body type to her, short hair like that, and LOVE CORSETS. But watching her perform I had this urge—no, it was more than an urge, it was more like a longing—to glam it up sometimes. Strut around, feel utterly confident in my sex appeal, pull off dark purple sparkly lipstick and huge plumes! Yes! I want that!
And so I went home and signed up for a burlesque class. I’ve had pretty healthy body positivity in the past few years, and my confidence issues aren’t because I think I don’t look good. It’s more that I’m somewhat reserved and a tiny bit introverted and so I don’t much like being the center of attention. I tend to sort of shrink into myself. In the past few years, so many people have told me that I’m tiny, and I think a large part of the impression I leave is not actually physical tininess but metaphysical tininess, if you will. I’m sort of ephemeral. I’m very good at not being noticed.
There’s a whole history there, a complicated history of sexual violence and family patterns and all that that I won’t go into right now, though I probably will eventually. And so while I think that some of my metaphysical tininess is my personality—I’m just not the life of the party type—which I’m not worried about changing, I think a lot of it is also a sort of unwillingness on my part to take up space. This certainly isn’t the case all the time; if I’m around people I know and love and trust, I fully take up my space, and am the master of my body. But in new situations, when meeting new people, or when I feel out of place and noticed, I freeze up. Sometimes I panic. Sometimes I withdraw. Sometimes I muster through. But whatever happens, my tendency is to get really small.
So when this intense urge to be like her came up for me, and I realized that it’s not, in fact, because I want to do her but because I want to be her, I decided to run with it. My first class is next Wednesday, it’s a 12-week class, and there will be a performance at the end. Gulp. So scared. But also so. excited. In fact I think I may be more excited about this than I’ve been about anything in a long, long time.
And so, on this Friday night when mi’lady is out of town and the plans I had with my good friend fell through due to a crisis in her family, I am sitting at home, on my computer, drooling over websites like this.
I’ve been thinking about this quite a bit lately. What makes me femme specifically, as opposed to just feminine, more generally. I guess another way of posing this question would be: what makes Queer Femme different from Straight? This has been inspired, partly, by some discussion on other blogs (see, for example, Sinclair’s four-partseriesonmasculinity, Dear Diaspora’s post on “butches are not men,” and Packing Vocals on being a gentleman) regarding female butch masculinity and the transmasculinity “spectrum” (I use the word spectrum largely because I’m not sure what other word to use, though I’m not really comfortable with calling anything queer or gender-related a spectrum), and, among other things, what sets it apart from cismale masculinity. These kinds of discussions naturally led me to pondering what sets queer femininity apart from straight cis femininity.
This has also been inspired, though, by my own gradual “coming out” as femme, a process which has been unfolding for the past year and a half or so; with burgeoning self-awareness comes the revealing of a whole realm of possibility regarding what femme can mean, and I’m still (maybe always will be) trying to figuratively pick through and identify what works for me and what doesn’t.
So, for example. Jewelry is not really my thing. It’s not that I dislike it, but rather more that I don’t have strong feelings for it. I don’t get excited by sparkles and shiny things, really, and while I can certainly appreciate a pretty pair of earrings (and do wear them from time to time), I’ve decided that accessorizing with gems’n'things is an aspect of femininity that I’m fine with setting aside (for now, anyway).
Shoes, on the other hand, are a comPLETEly different story. I. LOVE. SHOES. It is an unfortunate love affair, because shoes are not cheap, even if one does one’s best to only buy them when they’re marked down. I’m sorry, but when I pass a gazillion shoe stores every week in my wanderings, how can I not get giddy? In fact, you should be congratulating me that I only own about three dozen pairs. I could easily own hundreds. And the kind of shoes I love are decidedly feminine. Heels, bows, colors, peep-toes, sex-on-stilettos. So there is a characteristic of femininity that I unabashedly own.
There are others, obviously, but there are also many more, I’m know, that I’m still working through. There are a few right off the top of my head that I can think of, and maybe these are even little femme-goals of mine for the near future. Some of them frivolous, others less so:
1) find *my color* of lipstick (you know what I mean, right?)
2) get a tattoo (I’ve got several ideas but need to settle on one and on where) (maybe this will be a separate post soon, because I have oh-so-much to say about tattoos and queer femininity)
3) learn better how to shop thrift stores, because about half my wardrobe is out-dated and I want more skirts, dammit! I now have like three that I wear on a rotating basis.
4) invent a signature cocktail! It will be called The Alphafemme, duh. And it will be fizzy and fruity. That much I can guarantee.
5) get into a regular exercise routine. I want to get back into yoga, which I really miss, and I’m also considering a hip hop dance class.
Those are just five, and there are more, but you see? All of those things, to me, in their different ways, mean femme. What I love is that femme means something totally different for everyone who identifies that way, and femininity can be performed, intentionally or unintentionally, in infinite ways. But I guess what I’m curious about, to bring this back around to my initial question, is: any girl could write the same list I just wrote, and out of the context of this blog, where HI I’M GAY, you wouldn’t know if she were queer. So, are there things that belong specifically to queer femininity? Or at least, do they mean something different as an aspect of queer femininity than they do as an aspect of non-queer femininity?
What is it about femmes that distinguishes our femininity from that of straight women? Whether you think it’s a je ne sais quoi or something very specific, I’d love to hear what you think.
So, the title of this post is misleading, I know. It makes it look like I’m going to NAME what I think are markers of queer femme. But instead, I’m copping out and asking you, because the truth is I don’t know.
Still sitting on the post I was tweeting about yesterday, the one in response to all the Mary Daly stuff that’s been floating around. That should come tomorrow, hopefully.
In the meantime, see this reaction to my posts on growing into my identity as femme (see here and here), and my response to it in the comments. (As of this posting, my comment hasn’t yet been approved, but hopefully it will be soon.)
She writes about how my definition of femme, and my femme fantasy, are not hers, as a femme domme, and it seems that she equates her version of femme with being both feminine AND powerful, and my version of femme with being … not powerful. Which I take issue with. I thought it was pretty clear in those posts that (a) I don’t think my version of femme is THE definition of femme, and (b) coming out as (my version of) femme was EMpowering me, and the way I am femme continues to empower me, rather than (as she seems to think) DISempowering me.
So, I just wanted to reiterate that for me, being femme and being a nurturer/submissive type IS being “utterly feminine and unquestionably powerful,” as she puts it. That’s where I get my power. And, also, I do not live as a full-time submissive, and I do make my own decisions and do make sure my needs are met, whether by mi’lady or my family or my friends or me, and I’m very capable, kind of a control freak, pretty assertive, and of course feminine and powerful. Femininity does NOT equal submissive. But for me, the two are increasingly intertwined.
My femme fantasy is not to be the Betty to Don Draper. On the surface, it might seem that way. But their relationship is my femme fantasy gone horribly wrong. Betty Draper does not get her needs met, and she doesn’t have any space to even communicate what they are, because it’s her job to be the perfect housewife. That is not remotely what my fantasy is, to be disempowered and living solely for and under another person, unable to stretch my legs and meet my own needs. But I do, in a weird way, want to be a Betty Draper. I want to be perfectly put together yet delicate, host dinner parties like the Heineken one in season two, be a perfect socializer, make my husband slash whoops I totally mean my wife look totally put together, be the quiet engine in her background (who makes noise when called upon… ahem) because it’s all so effortless. Those things make me feel immeasurably powerful. But that’s the extent of the way I want my relationship to resemble Don and Betty Draper’s. That’s IT. Because Betty doesn’t have any power. And I do. (I could also do an interesting discussion on how I relate to Joan, but I’ll save that for another time.)
Apologies for those of you are are not totally obsessed with Mad Men and have no idea what I’m going on about.
I’m over how my uncle talks about “the gays” as if we were some exotic species, and asks me weird personal questions about my relationship that he doesn’t ask my sister about hers (with a guy).
I’m over having phone conversations with mi’lady about what we’re up to with our respective families that include sentences like “this would be awkward for you” or “I don’t quite know how you would fit into this.”
I’m over trying to explain to old friends from high school why I don’t want to hang out with their ultra-Christian crowd.
I’m over having my sister tell me that she’s got it worse because “at least people don’t constantly ask you when you’re getting married.”
I’m over my mom saying “just get over it, of course people act weird about something they don’t get.”
I’m over being told by my dad, yet again, that he doesn’t see how people can have the “same kind of relationship” with non-biological progeny.
I’m over how my brother finds guys who really “shove it in your face” that they’re gay distasteful.
I’m over feeling self-conscious about recommending a book or movie to someone if it happens to have a queer character or sub-theme (because what if I’M one of those people who “shoves it in your face”?).
I’m over “OMG that’s SOOOO GAY!”
I’m over being left out of conversations about what everyone in the family is up to “because it could be uncomfortable.”
I’m over censoring myself in order to avoid making other people feel uncomfortable about something that’s so vital and important to who I am.
I’m over small-town USA.
I’m over how being around our families completely squelches our ability to be sexual with each other, even by distance.
I’m over being irrelevant to her Playing Straight life.
A long, long time ago—back in August?—I got an email from a reader named Asha, (1) asking where I came up with the name “alphafemme” and (2) saying that before she’d even read any of my blog, she felt a click—the word alphafemme, she thought, worked really well for her, and would I be offended if she appropriated it for herself. I promised her a post on the subject, and it is woefully overdue.
Let me first address the second thing—if the word alphafemme seems like a good fit for you in your identity, and even if your reasons for finding it a good fit are completely different from the reasons I will articulate below, by all means, if it feels good to you, use it. I think there’s a huge difference between deciding that alphafemme works as an identity label for you (which I would not call appropriation), and deciding you’re also going to publish a blog under the title “alphafemme” and write about (many of) the same things I write about or telling people that you’re me (which I would call appropriation). I would guess that most people are not inclined to do the latter, but I fully endorse the former! Run away with it people!
And now I’ll go back to the first thing, which is where I came up with the name “alphafemme” in the first place. I address this a bit on my About page (which needs updating anyway), but let me go into a bit more detail here.
After the obligatory coming out identity crisis, which I think many (if not most) queer women go through at some point or other (and I think this in itself is fascinating, and I totally want to write about this too), I started grappling with that all-important question: Who Am I? And maybe I have less self-awareness than most, but it took me quite a lot of trial and error to come to an understanding of my identity that felt right. I guess that was part of what I wanted this blog to do for me, to help me go through it all and decide what works for me and what doesn’t. And while I’ve (for now) finally settled on femme as a sort of umbrella-word for how I identify, it was hardly easy to come to terms with that.
I’m sure part of the insecurity in identifying as femme was internalized sexism, that some of the fear had to do with not wanting to choose what might seem to others to be “unenlightened” or, worse, hurting feminism. I’ve pretty much gotten over that now (see my post on femininity for a discussion of that), thank goodness, and am now fiercely, comfortably, and even subversively feminine.
But another major qualm I had with identifying as femme was this fear that I somehow didn’t actually know what femme meant, and that I would be scoffed at by other self-identified femmes for identifying as such. (“YOU’RE not femme, you have short hair!” or “but I hardly ever see you in dresses! that’s not really femme!” or “femmes don’t strap on! femmes don’t do the fucking!”) In San Francisco, it seems to me like everyone I’ve met who identifies as femme fits a certain image: dyed blonde or raven black hair, porcelain white skin, bright red lipstick, fishnets, tattoos… And believe me, these ladies are smokin’, but it’s just not my look. And so I was like, well, if that’s what femme is, then I’m not femme. (There are, of course, many other femme-identified ladies in SF who do also do not fit that particular description, as I’ve come to realize. Yay!)
And yet it still appealed to me. I still felt that my mild obsession with high heeled-peep-toe pumps and my growing infatuation with cooking still somehow made femme the right word for me. But since I was still kind of hesitant, it needed a qualifier. Something that made my identity mine.
It came to me last summer when I was watching old episodes of The L Word with a friend of mine, reminiscing about the pre-Dana’s-death days of the show. Or, rather, it came to my friend. We were watching one of the episodes where Bette is dealing with the protestors to her gallery’s art show. My friend turned to me and said, “she reminds me of you, she’s such an alpha female.”
“What does THAT mean?” I asked.
“Well… you’re strong, and fierce, and driven, and you’re always on top of everything, always in control. And you dress sharply feminine, powerful. But you’re also vulnerable, I think, I mean right? Don’t you sometimes just want someone to hold you and have someone else be the stronger one?”
And oh. my. god. YES. She was so right. I think my similarities to Bette end there (I’m not a raging bitch who cheats on my lovers in order to maintain a facade of Control Freak, and unfortunately I look nothing like her), but such as they are, the similarities ring so true. And “alpha” is an excellent way of describing me. I’m confident in my intellect, and I am meticulous, in control, ambitious, and driven. But I’m not just alpha. I’m alphafemme. I’m an alpha who wants to be enfolded at the end of the day. I’m an alpha who loves to pretend I’m a 50s housewife, a la Betty Draper, but happier (I’m currently obsessed with Mad Men). I’m an alpha with soft eyes and a maternal edge. I’m an alpha, with femme. Alphafemme.
Of course, to you, it can mean anything you want it to. If it conjures anything else for you, please share!
