Category: Femme

Femme identity and politics

No Choice; Where Women’s Studies Got it Wrong

Posted on by JAC

Recently I was asked a question on Tumblr about gender performance theory which stirred an intense awakening of old memories and forgotten aggressions from my early days of coming out. When I came out, I didn’t know anyone gay, queer, or trans* and my only feasible connection to people like me was my campus’ Women’s Studies department. Like many people, my initial coming out was a frustrating, painful, and isolating experience. I desperately wanted answers to why I was the way I was and I thought Women’s Studies would have them. Turns out it didn’t, but it had something else: Judith Butler’s Gender Performance Theory and a dedicated hoard of faculty, students, books, and films telling me that it was my choice to be trans, and it was my fault.

I am a proud feminist. Don’t get me wrong, I have a lot of love for Women’s Studies. All in all, the department served as significant safe space for me and I am grateful. But the good things about Women’s Studies don’t block out the problematic elements ingrained into the origins of gender theory that are continued to be taught today. No, we wouldn’t have Queer Theory if it hadn’t been for the charges of Women’s Studies pushing it into legitimacy, but we wouldn’t have a lot of inner community transphobia either. Know all those sayings about how trans people mutilate themselves and are trying to steal people’s spaces? Yeah, women’s studies theorists wrote that shit too, or have we forgotten second wave feminism and Janice Raymond? Women’s Studies is awesome for a lot of reasons, Gender Performance Theory is not one of them. “Choice” is not always a choice. There have been many points in my life where I have been told I could fix “it” if I made different choices – it was just a matter of wanting it. I could be happy, if I wanted to. I could be healthy if I believed I could. I could do well in school, if I tried harder. If I wanted to, I could be feminine and pretty, and when I came out I was additionally told I could be masculine and tough if I worked at it. If I really wanted to, I could pass as a guy and no one would harass me. If I wanted to, I could stop being trans and just be a lesbian, or better yet be straight. If I wanted to, I could be everything I’m supposed to be, agree with everyone, and fit in just fine. Seems like people assume that I’m a weird, stupid, crazy, trans, queer, genderfucked, failure on purpose. But what does that have to do with Judith Butler? Nothing really, except to point out that this idea that we can and should control and change certain integral elements of our bodies and identities is the center of every “-ism” I know.

Did the Butler intend for gender performance theory to be oppressive? Of course not. “Gender as performance” was one of the women’s empowerment movement’s moves to legitimize gender difference and subversiveness, primarily referencing expression but at the time, gender expression and gender identity were thought to be the same thing. Under this theory, there is no personalized element of gender and that is the main fallacy; It denies is the most human element of gender: identity – the personal. Gender Identity is expressed through visible cues and we figure out what feels right based on our identity and work from that. If our decisions about presentation (or “performance”) are based out of some internal drive to express ourselves, is it really a choice? My femme exists as an embodiment of what I feel, to show the femme I have on the inside. I didn’t choose to be feminine, but I do technically choose to allow myself to express femme. I could force myself to not be feminine, but if I am given the choice to either be myself or to be someone I’m not, I don’t think I actually have a choice. I didn’t come this far to live as someone else. If I was going to do that, I never would have transitioned in the first place.

Gender identity and gender expression are linked to one another, not as a point of causation, but as a series of interactions. The clothes don’t make the human. Sometimes I feel the most masculine when I appear to be the most feminine. I can wear a dress and make it masculine simply by being a male person who is wearing it. I can still be masculine, it is just a different kind of masculinity that, perhaps includes some femininity or is just genderqueered. Or I can make myself more feminine by wearing a dress, and my femininity can be masculine or it can be genderqueered. It’s all about how we conceptualize it, and we must conceptualize it via rejecting cultural definitions of gender. I’m like a broken record, always saying that gender is the key to societal recognition. If you are outside a heteronormative construct of gender expectations you can not be recognized by society as anything but “other” without challenging gendered society itself. I think thatButlerintended this same idea in the original argument of gender performativity – people wanted to challenge gendered society and reject definition by presentation. The problem is that they took the theory too far, enabling it to delegitimize every form of gender expression and identity. A perfect example of this is Femme-phobia. Gender performativity states that if you are feminine, you are choosing to perform it, and according to some branches of feminism, being feminine is supporting the patriarchy that sexualizes women as beauty objects. So femmes are choosing to support the patriarchy. There is no option for someone to like being feminine for the sake of enjoying femininity. This is essentially saying that femininity is bad and that a woman can not be feminine for her own pleasure without being a sell out. It is arguments like these that lead me to believe gender performance theorists were down right delusional. How is that feminist? And speaking of feminism, as I mentioned before, gender performance theories are at the root of second wave feminism’s rampant transphobia. If we are performing gender, then we are choosing to violate our bodies and minds, and taking the rest of society down with us.  We are impostors, perverts, and invaders transitioning out of weakness or selfishness, or both.

I can already picture people getting upset about what I’m saying; I’m being too harsh on gender theories and I need to take them contextually. I don’t think I should have to apply context to any theory that does not apply context to me. If every Women’s Studies classroom was teaching Gender Performance Theory through a critical lens, discussing the complexities of social gender presentation and personal gender identity and expression, then I would have nothing to say about it. But that is not the case, so here I am writing this post. It is not that I don’t see some value in Butler’s original ideas. I think that ‘performance’ can be used to reference gender presentation, but only in certain circumstances. One could say the difference between performing gender presentation and expressing gender identity through presentation is the genuineness of it. A lot of culturally gendered practices and expressions (such as make up, or “macho-ness”) are acts of cultural coercion and therefore ingenuine. I perform gender very consciously sometimes: When I am on the road in the inner Midwest, I almost exclusively try to pass myself off as female because it is safer to be a punked out, possibly lesbian woman than a flamingly queer guy. I will raise my eye brows, raise my voice, smile a lot, and do whatever else we stereotype to be “female” behavior.” It is an act and I use femininity as a tool. On stage, I use visible gender performance in ways that correlate closely to Butler’s Gender Performance Theory. I use gendered elements such as clothing, movement styles, and expressions that are culturally coded as masculine or feminine in order to create a conversation about gender. The cultural binary framework for what is masculine and what is feminine enables me to raise and lower gendered elements, combine them, or erase them. I think this might be how Butler really intended us to think about Gender Trouble and everyone just interpreted it wrong, but I could be just trying to be supportive of a history that I want to support me…

Gender performance isn’t all bull, there are elements to be analyzed, but it can not be done without oppressing gender variant communities unless it is supplemented by the recognition of gender identity and personal gender expression. I think that a lot of people intend to think of gender performance in this way, but because of privilege, they don’t realize that by simply stating ‘gender is performed’ they are being problematic. Let’s be real, if there was a “How to exercise non-trans privilege 101” gender performance theory would be in chapter one. Gender Theory has a lot of updating to do because as it is now it is actively promoting the oppressions it originally set out to demolish. We must destroy the idea that there is one way to be feminine or masculine, and instill the knowledge that there are ways to be both or neither. Once that happens, if it ever does, then performance will really be seen as what is deliberate and chosen, like on a stage, and expression is what is understood and personal, and that the two are not the same. Then, and only then, can we be certain that all the future’s baby genderqueers will go searching for a safe space, searching for answers, and actually find them.

 

Our Growing Trans Community, Our Community Growing Up

Posted on by JAC

This weekend was a fabulously busy. It was my 2nd year at the Philly Trans Health Conference (PTHC), first time as a board member. I presented six times, volunteered, and had tons of meeting, both for fancy business and friendly love. My thoughts about the conference circle around a sense of growing community, and our past and future. This was stirred particularly by my seeing friends from early on in my coming out, people who I haven’t seen in years, reawakening memories of first finding community, that desperation to not be alone, and the joy of connecting with someone who was like me.

I ran a trans performance plenary with the amazing performers Bryn Kelly, Katastrophe, Athens Boys Choir, The Notorius OMG, Leah b. of Gender Edge, Ignacio Rivera, and AJ Bryce. As we all spoke, points of similarity kept arising; we all started out alone, isolated from anyone else like us. We never planned to be this visible, we were searching for ourselves, and ended up finding more than we ever thought. And in searching for myself, I selfishly loaded the conference with femme stuff this year. I brought the issue to the board, stressing the importance of femme inclusion, and before I knew it I was titled the Femme Program Coordinator – something PTHC has never had before. Honestly, I questioned myself  like “but, wait, I’m not what most people think of when they think femme… should I be in charge” but then I realized that not only was there no one else, and it was me or nothing, that also the fact that I am not the “mainstream” vision of what femme is might be a good reason for me to take it on. Time to break the mold and get the wheels of change moving! There were so many folks like me there, it was like looking in a mirror – a much more fabulous and well dressed mirror. And when the inevitable happened, and non-trans female femmes raised their eyebrows saying “wait, you are the one in charge a femme programming….?” I brushed it off and smiled to myself, because the femme workshop they attending would not have been there if it wasn’t for me. If they didn’t think I was femme enough, then they could get out of my workshops- and there were several. Through the supportive conference  leadership I was able to take PTHC from having one femme workshop (that had only been in programming for two of the ten years of the conference) to seven workshops focused on femmes presented by a diverse array of femmes of different identities, and all of them were packed! My femme boys workshop had almost 160 people in it which was intense but wonderful, and gave me ideas for new programming next year.  I also did a workshop with my mentor and friend, Moonhawk River Stone about gender identity disorder removal which was a success, and we have new plans for the next year, and how we aren’t willing to wait anymore on what we’ve been nervously dragging our feet on. Our community is getting too big, too strong to sit under this oppression any longer. Ignacio Rivera and I did a fun sexual liberation workshop for the young folks in the youth programming track. It was incredible to hear 16 year olds talking about the gender binary and privilege. It made me wonder where I would be if I had known about that stuff when I was their age, and it blows my mind thinking what they may accomplish by the time they are my age. Speaking of age, I also got a ton of baby time this weekend, getting to play with S. Bear Bergman’s son, while totally blowing off other stuff that was not as important as crawling around the carpet with a 16 month old. I wonder what things will be like in the trans community when that baby grows up…

My other big task of the conference planning was I directed and performed in the new show, “Blender! Trans Performance Showcase.” This was the first time a performance showcase has been a part of the Philly Trans Health Conference and it couldn’t have gone over better. I wanted to do a show because I wanted to promote trans and queer performance, and also to stress the importance of including art in our work as activists. Our community’s art is our community’s culture, and if we don’t support it, who will? This show was great. It was honestly the most hectic, disastrous, stressful show I’ve ever organized but it was also one of the most exciting because we were forging a new space. In the end, all the hard work was worth it. All the performers were fantastically talented doing spoken word, music, dance, and drag. We bonded together, ready to create something for our people, and to show our people what we had created. The fabulous Liberty City Kings Drag and Burlesque troupe were life-savers in helping me run the stage, and the audience was happy and excited giving the night such a positive energy. It was a great way to wrap up the weekend and I’m looking forward to running the event next year!

Video from the performance, which loops in perfectly with this blog topic.  I call it “GenderBent Kids” partly after the name of the song the dance is set to, “Kids” by MGMT. Its a little reflection on myself growing up, enjoying both femme and masculine cultural expressions, but continually feeling the need to choose between one or the other under the imposed narrative of social authority promoting the gender binary. Like most of my favorite pieces, it came together from a last minute idea that hit me like a hurricane like “OMG this would be awesome” and there it was. This is the first run of it so I’m looking forward to beefing up the dancing a little bit more and maybe making it a little more complex.

This conference was just a good example of where I want our community to be going. This conference is the biggest trans focused conference in the world, and it just turned 10 years old. Seems fitting we are on a good path of growth, which could not have happened without the amazing folks working on the project. We weren’t without issues this weekend, not without people being hurtful and oppressive, or without pain, but we worked through it. We were together with our elders and our youth, forging a community that was accountable, responsible, active, understanding, and loving.  Hell, even Chaz Bono got an earful of community folks asking him about his behavior and holding him accountable – more on that later. Our community is growing, and we’re getting stronger. We gotta keep this up.

Trans and The Rest of My Life

Posted on by JAC

I looked out over the Wisconsin lake. I’d been on the road touring almost two weeks, my batteries were running low, but in the best way.  She asked me about when I came out. I thought about it casually, “Well, its been four years…” I stopped, “wait… six… no, I mean five…” I thought about what day it was and wondered where I’d been. February had come and gone, along with a date I thought I’d never forget. February 17th, my “transiversary” as I like to call it. The day I officially mark my coming out, even though by that time  I’d been “working” on things for months, years. I use February 17th as the marker because of my state of mind then and what I was working out.

Back then I dedicatedly kept a journal. Every year I look back, and every year I see different things. Its like watching a movie over and over, you always catch some new thing you hadn’t noticed before. Every year I look back and whatever relates to my life at that time is what stands out. Last year was all about love and gratitude; reflecting on my history through realizations and gradual empowerment. This year, I am influenced especially by the fact that I forgot my Transiversary; I knew it was coming up but so much was going on with tour planning, documentary filming, performances, show production, drag practices, conferences… It just slipped passed me. I wondered at how it happened. Maybe I’ve finally reached a place in life where the absolute fact that I’m TRANS isn’t as prominent as it used to be, like I’m used to it now… Maybe I just haven’t kept an eye on myself as well as I should. This year has been amazing for me. I’ve been working non-stop; I’ve been on the road, enveloped in being an activist and a performer in ways I’ve never been able to do before. And I’ve been surrounded by the outside world more frequently and more intensely that I’ve ever experienced. To me, the “real world” means bouncing up, down, and around gender. What bathroom I’m in, what pronoun I’m called, flashing IDs, sirs to mams, mams to sirs – all rapid fire from airport, to gas station, to train car, to university, to theater, and back. I play ‘woman’ when I think its safest, I play ‘man’ when I think I can get away with it, and in between I’m just me; your average, flaming genderqueer femme transguy, genderfucked from head to toe.

This year when I look back on when I was coming out as trans, I see the identity-focused back and forth that forged the foundation for where I am now. When I started to come out I didn’t know anything about gender or queerness. I didn’t know anyone gay, I didn’t even know if I was gay. I didn’t know what I was…

January 27th, 2006: I wrote about coming out to my sister as “Bi-sexual.”  I have no idea why I spelled it like that (or capitalized it). Maybe it was from quasi-reading outdated text books and off the path internet forums. Shows how foreign it all was to me… guess being in that GSA in high school didn’t really prepare me for anything.

“I walk around and have to remember how other people see me is not how I see myself. That I cannot act how i feel because to them, I am a woman. If i say “I’m a gay man.” I don’t think they will be happy. I worry gay guys will look down on me because i don’t belong with them. I can’t claim to be a lesbian because I am not a lesbian. …I feel like a guy inside.”

January 30th, 2006

“I’m just sick of being different from people, but I don’t want to change…”

Febuary 11th, 2006

“Am I my clothes? …it’s almost like my skin is dress up… Fuck it all, i’m finally gonna be something that I feel like i should be.”

Taken February 14th, 2006: The first picture I took of myself in men’s clothes after starting to come out. I didn’t own a tie, so I used a belt from a sweater jacket.

[image description: young JAC in a white collared shirt and knit hat that covers his hair with a knit belt tied like a tie around his neck. His eyes are brown, his face is rounded and young-looking]

Febuary 16th, 2006

“everything i have is purple or pretty or some shit like that. i do like my stuffed animals… alot. Fuck, this whole color scheme is all society, who says a guy can’t have a purple robe. why do i feel i have to be everything? can’t i be some bothness, like girly_boi… guess it’s how i’ve always been. I’ve always been ‘both’ and i can’t be anything else so i need to accept the constant change.”

By February 17th, 2006, the day I now use to mark my Transiversary, I had started to use the word queer in my regular vocabulary. By March I had started to use the men’s bathroom, had passed as male three times, and had fully gained a new “queer” lexicon. I have to laugh and think its kinda cute how I sorted out the labels.

March 1st, 2006:

“i’ve got a new description for myself.  I’ve been reading up on it for a while.  Like, what am I?

Straight. – “Yeah, that’s probably me.  It must be, right?” Bisexual. – “You know, I think that’s really me.” Pansexual. – “Yeah, that sounds much more like me.” Genderqueer. – “Wow, that actually fits.” Polygendered. –  “That fits even better.” FTM. – “That sounds like me.” Transgendered. – “Sounds a fuck of a lot like me.   Me to a T.”  (HAHA trans pun, total accident.)

So I’m a female [sex], pansexual, genderqueer, polygendered, transman.  Fuck, how about I just say ‘Queer?'”

I remember that day. Its funny because first, all those labels meant the same thing to me then as they do now. I think at the time I used genderqueer more to describe my non-binary gender identity, rather than now where I use it primarily to describe my non-binary gender expression/existence. And though I identified as non-binary and polygender, its curious that I used the word “transman,” a label I never apply to myself now because for whatever reason, it doesn’t fit me; I say transguy exclusively.  Really, I don’t remember ever calling myself a “transman,” so maybe it was just for the sake of print and definition. I cycled through a lot of labels for myself back then, a lot of names, a lot of identities – all within a couple months. Back then I used all those words to try and gain some validation, some explanation for what I was and why. In that same post was a quote from a trans activist. I remember clinging to it for months:

“What helped me a lot was to stop asking ‘What am I?’ and to start asking instead ‘What changes do I need to make to be a happier person?'” -C.Jacob Hale

March 7th, 2006:

“I still feel like there really is something wrong with me… Normal is over rated… probably.”

February 19th, 2007: (one year later)

“This year I have been so at peace with my gender ‘situation’ and my life… It is the dream-life I always wanted, which a few deviations… Because of the relationships I’ve had [I wouldn’t change it] even if it meant avoiding the frustration and difficulty of this life.”

“This life.” I keep going back to February 17th as some anchor for “this life” but really, I think that (though I had reasons) I picked that date to give myself a reference point for where I came from. Now, I think I’ve been cutting myself up. Lots of big moments have happened in my life in reference to my gender identity; New Years Eve 2005 when I was dolled up femme but “acted and felt like a boy” all night; six months before that I was dressing “as a guy” at home, and dressing “like a girl” in public; six months before that in the confidence of a close friend I “was a guy for a day”;  six years before that I was signing notes with my “boy name” and secretly wished to be my best friend’s boyfriend; six years before that I begged my parents to cut my hair short like a boy. Which matters more? The day I said, “I am different that I thought.” or when I said “I know what this is.” or when I said “I accept who I am.” All of it had to happen, all of it mattered, and all of it got me to where I am now.  Witness, I am officially limiting the Transiversary status  as a marker date for ornamental purposes only. It will no longer represent a sectional “moment” of my life. Instead, like a birthday, it will be a representative of time passed, and times to come. I used to obsess over knowing myself, what I was, why I was that way, how I was going to handle it, and where I was going to end up. I’m starting to think that not knowing yourself is one of the few things that drives us towards tomorrow. Every time I think I’ve got myself figured out, something new arises. Its not a bad thing. The day I stop learning about who I am and working on who I want to be, I’ll be dead. I used to think time was a factory, producing life bit by bit. Now, I’ve come to know that time is more like the earth, holding us beneath our feet, surrounding us with all that comes from it, and passing over us like the sky hanging over head. We move under it, within it, and over top of it, no sense of control, and no way to be controlled. I think that in this year of being out in the world, I’ve been hiding more than ever before. I’ve been hiding more because unlike the past, I know who and what I am. I know what I want to be, how I want to be seen and treated, and I know I have the right to have it. Still I’ve been hiding; out of fear, out of convenience, out of remorse for being different. I’m not going to try to cut up my life any more and I’m not going to cut up myself either. Whatever that means for bathrooms, I don’t know. The women’s room is still gonna be cleaner, and it’s still gonna be safer. But maybe I need to start pushing the buttons I haven’t wanted to push since I was a high-strung, newly out transguy refusing to take anything less than a “he/him” pronoun and a men’s bathroom… who am I kidding, even at my most militant I was never very aggressive when it came to standing up for myself. I’ve always been better at defending others, so its what I’ve always done and I’ve counted on catching that overflow into my own life. It’s pretty clear what I need to do about that… I need to take ownership over myself and truly recognize that I’m not just a cog in the machine of this movement; I’m a human being within this community.

Five years ago I wrote that this life was a dream, a gift. I still think that, and for the same reasons. It’s the people in life that make it worth living, and while I don’t think I am “living for some else” I don’t think I am living my life just for me. The better I can live my life, the better I can work to make other people’s lives better too.

Last month, my mom dug out an old school paper I wrote about what I wanted to do when I grew up:

February 20th, 1996: (11 years old)

“I will be an artist and a musician… I will obtain my PhD… I will try to go into space where I will discover a solar system and each planet will be named after one of my friends. When I return to Earth I will be the first woman president, if there hasn’t already been one. I will encourage kids to build their self esteem… I will try try to make the world a better place.”

I’m not counting on ever getting a PhD, (no matter how happy it would make my mom). I don’t think I’ll have much luck on discovering a new solar system or obtaining the presidency – first woman or otherwise, but I’ve got the first two down, and I’ll be working hard on the last two for the rest of my life.

No Boys Allowed: The Fucked Over Femme Part II

Posted on by JAC

One of the photo blogs I follow, FuckYeahFemmes, has been having a lot of discussion about inclusion recently. Some issues were raised about the blog being un-inclusive of transfolks; all sentiments I can identify with whole heartedly. However, I never felt that about this blog because though trans/non-female identity posts were not common, I asked the author a long time ago if I could post and she was very welcoming. But to anyone who has not asked, they probably wouldn’t think it was very representative of all femmes. The author reached out to me about being more inclusive of guy/trans/gq femmes and she immediately began to act on making a more inclusive blog. Unfortunately some of the blog readers have not been equally awesome and have been posting commentary about how it is “ridiculous and offensive that femme is being appropriated by masculine identified people…” and how “femme IS restricted to female identified, feminine presenting, lesbian/bisexual/transgender/queer women.” This is so hurtful. I continue to struggle with why we are oppressive of our own communities, and frankly why we queers can’t get our act together. Below is my response posted on the blog:

“I’d like to respond to the several “femme appropriation” posts that have been appearing. I have a female sex assigned body. I am a male transguy. I am genderqueer. I am read as a man but more often as a woman. I live as guy. I am a femme.

I am a feminine person and though masculinity is an aspect to my identity it is not prominent. I used to beat myself up over it, my whole life spent stuck between what I wasn’t and what I couldn’t be. It was lonely, frustrating, and painful. When I found FEMME I stopped feeling so “wrong” and I started feeling something I had never felt; included. Femme supports me so I am no longer ashamed of being feminine despite other expectations. It empowers me to not feel obligated to be something I’m not while also validating me in being who I am. When you tell me I am not allowed to be femme, you are telling me I am not allowed to be myself.

Boarder policing is one of the most detrimental things we do in our communities. How is stating that people “are not allowed” to identify with how they feel any different from the oppressions placed on us from outside queer communities? Yes, there are words other than femme, but femme is more than a word, it is an identity and it is a community. And if there is a community of people who identify similarly to me, live similar lives, have similar politics, why would I not be in that community? Is it because I am not identical to you? To that I say is anyone really identical to you? History is important. And in history we have been combating oppressive systems that try to define femininity based on what someone else wants. I find that we are now doing that again, but in a different forum. We must always remember where we came from, but we also must look ahead to where we are going. An identity label is not a physical space; it is a state of mind, and it is a community in communities. Me, a guy, standing under FEMME is not stealing someone’s spot under the umbrella. There is always more room and there is strength in numbers. When you tell me I am not allowed to be femme, you are telling me that you are going ahead but I must stay behind alone.

When we talk about appropriation, we are discussing communities of power and privilege adopting words, behavior, etc of communities who have less/none. By being male one may think I have more privilege and therefore I am appropriating but I am not seen as male in society, by government, by the average person on the street, in a gay bar, or even on the internet. I do not receive a plethora of privileges from the patriarchy. It oppresses me too; not the same ways as for a woman but in ways just as legitimate. Closed spaces and safe spaces are vitally important. Women have the right to be in women-only spaces and use language that speaks to their experience. But for femme, there is not one femme experience and your femme experience is not the only one. As queer people we have a lot of doors closed on us. I can not understand why we continue to close doors on each other. We must do all we can to combat privilege and exclusion in order to create a just and conscious community. Maybe femme means woman to you, but it does not mean woman to me. How can we judge who is right? The presence of maleness or masculinity does not negate femininity. The gender binary is not a friend to anyone, including femmes. I work hard for the femme community, just as hard as someone who is not male. When you tell me I am not allowed to be femme, you are telling me I am not good enough to have a safe community.

Yes, I admit that I do get frustrated when any group address at FemmeCon or on a femme blog is “Ladies!” My response is to remind folks that I am here in hopes of change. FuckYeahFemmes is not a transphobic blog. Originally, I didn’t know if I was allowed to post on it so I asked the author and her response was very welcoming. We can’t know everything all at once, what matters is learning responsibly and correcting our mistakes. FuckYeahFemmes did correct itself and I know that for a fact because I was personally contacted by Shawna (author) about how to make the blog more inclusive. I wish everyone in our community had FuckYeahFemmes’ drive and love for community inclusion. When we see others challenging our friends, it is hard not get upset but the answer is not to pick up our toys and go home. The answer is to listen, to talk, and to open our arms to one another saying “This is hard for me too, but we can make it together.” When you tell me I am not allowed to be femme, you are not standing up for the femme community; you are standing in the way of it.

In solidarity and love, Midwest GenderQueer”

Fortunately, not all the blog followers are un-inclusive. There have been posts by readers advocating for the diverse spectrum of Femme, including the author herself. I guess we can only keep working, keep fighting until we all are included. Until then, we’re going to continue to hurt each other and fuck each other over.

Femme & GenderQueer Contributors Wanted

Posted on by JAC

The Philadelphia Trans-Health Conference is looking to expand on creating a great community for both genderqueers/ non-binary folks and all kinds of femmes. The Philadelphia Trans-Health Conference is one of the largest transgender-specific events in the world, which makes it a great opportunity to expand on our communities. So if you’re into conferences, you like to travel, or you live near Philly please consider submitting a workshop, host a discussion, or just attend!

The Fucked-Over Femme

Posted on by JAC

This past weekend was Femme 2010, the biannual Femme Conference put on by the fantastic Femme Collective. The Femme “community” is like any other where it is in actuality many similar communities grouped together under one umbrella. I am always excited for Femme Con and this year I was optimistic about making more femme friends and also meeting more femme guys, which were few and far between last time (2008 in Chicago). But the longer the conference went on the longer I was alone.

Early in the conference I met a transguy, a femme ally, who confided in me about a woman purposely making negative comments about “masculine energy” taking up space in the conference, insinuating that non-female people were not welcome. I wasn’t surprised, but I assured him that was not the opinion of the general populace of the conference. I have always admired the Femme Collective’s hard work to expand the femme umbrella’s reach, but what do we do when oppression is coming from under the umbrella in addition to outside of it?

Invisibility. Many queer femme women feel invisible because the world doesn’t understand/believe that feminine women can also be queer nor do people often recognize the subversive political action that goes with being a femme woman. Femme transwomen who, among many things, are often refused access to women spaces and have severe issues of safety. Whether it is misogyny in its most traditional ‘women are demons’ sense or in more complex spheres where somehow cute shoes equal complying with the patriarchy – femme women have a lot of shit to deal with. That said I would like to point out that not all femmes are women, and femme women are not the only ones who have to deal with shit.

“Come In Ladies!” The signs were all over the conference, but what about us femmes who aren’t ladies? Can’t we come in or are boys not allowed? I heard whispers: “Men shouldn’t be here” “What’s with all the butch looking people?” and “This is a femme only space” essentially telling me not only am I not a femme, I am also unwelcome. I was really perturbed by the 1970s-esque pro-vagina sentiment that was overtaking everything. Yes, pro-vagina is awesome but vagina does not always equal woman, and woman does not always equal femme. What about those who don’t have a vagina (or a specific a type of vagina), or have one but don’t identify with it? As the weekend progressed I found myself getting nervous. I was worried people didn’t want me there or wouldn’t be interested in my workshop or in my performance (which was in an all women line-up). I felt alone, desperate for people to talk to. I went to a workshop for guy and genderqueer femmes but the whole thing was over run with female femmes processing their loves and issues (some very problematic) about transguy femmes; which I found particularly ironic because it was the only workshop dedicated to non-female femmes but it was dominated by females – but “male energy” is what’s stealing all the conference space. There were multiple testimonies of how femme transguys presented competition for community, status, and even sex partners. This dialogue made me too angry to constructively comment. It was a typical bubble-world testimony of coastal queers thinking the entire world is their liberal city, where apparently transqueers are running wild en masse. I’ve never found it easy to find my own folks, in fact out here in the Midwest the closest feminine (not femme, just feminine) transguy is a nine hour drive away and I only met him last year. Yeah, us femme guys are a real invasion.  Claim your radical status and sex partners now before its too late!

Not only am I invisible but I’m getting fucked over by my own communities. Folks like me, we’re the Fucked-Over Femmes. We have to deal with similar oppressions to female femmes but we aren’t allowed to bond and unite over it because we are male or masculine. How much male privilege you think is allowed someone like me? Not a fuckin lot, if I’m even read as male at all. Femininity is considered equal to woman, and not being a woman I am frequently denied the identity of femme, even by those who know me well. Instead I am habitually told how ‘gay’ I am, which I don’t mind because I am queer, but the use of gay here is incorrect and it says something about unconscious gendering. Someone may lovingly say “JAC, you’re so gay'” because I’m wearing a poofy skirt but they don’t say it when I’m restoring a bike. I’m the same person but I’m not expressing the same “gayness” AKA male femininity. Pushing against masculinity is hard; coping with scrutiny from other guys for not being ‘man enough,’ even pitied for getting delt the femme hand in life. I am continually asked why I transitioned at all if I was just going to be like a girl. I do not deserve to pass as well or get the right pronoun because I don’t exude the hypermasculinity that would make me worthy of it and if I am at all bothered by this it is my own fault for not being a “normal guy.”

I love my femme communities and I will continually work hard for them. And I know for a fact that the general community of Femme Con is awesome and strives for inclusiveness, but – and you know there is always a ‘but’ on this blog – different types of femmes have many different oppressions to battle and no one is harder than another. In general we are all up against the same shit: You get cat-called, I get called fag. You’re afraid, I’m afraid. Our big similarities outweigh the tiny differences. I may be a Fucked-Over Femme, but not any more or less than any other femme. You may feel invisible, but no more or less than I am. What is more frustrating that seeing your community when it refuses to see you? We all feel invisible, we are all getting fucked over, we all need to fight together. We all are undervalued and stereotyped because, as Kate Bornstein so eloquently said in her keynote, “sexy is evil and cute is dumb.” How are we supposed to rise above the oppressions put on us when we are still counting people out, or counting people as less-than? (sound familiar?) Kate talked about how no femme is truly invisible, but femmes are still being fucked over, sometimes by each other. We need to stop the legitimacy wars and start doing what we do best, fighting for justice and looking fabulous while we do it.