Femmes

Fonte/Source: en/Gender

Posted by helenboyd on 04/30/09

I’m not one & I don’t understand them, somehow like a teenager whodoesn’t understand the boys or girls he ogles. They are a mystery: aperfect, empowered, complicated mystery.

I have had, like so many tomboys and masculine spectrum androgyny-leaning and genderqueer sorts, the kind of frustration withfemininity that is about me & about the world & its expectations, butone day while listening to a femme talk about intentionally trying tolook like a dyke so that others would know she wanted to date women, I had one of those revelatory moments.

I explained why I was smiling to her: that I had experienced the reverse, trying to fem up my naturallydyke-spectrum gender even though i wanted to date men. We both had amoment of why is this shit so absurdly stupid along with a little andwhy are there always uniforms and prescriptions that go along withdesire?

I don’t know the answer but I do know I have mocked femininity likethe injured tomboy I can be, but this book - so full of longing andcoolness and love and desire and girlness and attitude that I feelonce again something like that teenaged boi or grrl utterly confoundedbut this time, a little in awe.

This book Visible: A Femmethology Parts 1 & 2, edited by JenniferClarke Burke and published by Homofactus<http://www.homofactuspress.com/index.php/bookpagefull/visible_a_femmethology/>, is full of the narratives of the people who call themselves femmes,and they ponder such a range of questions: the obvious ones aboutinvisibility and identity - especially relevant to readers here whenthat (in)visibility relates to having a trans-masculine partner — to the femininity of a self-confessed “stopped pretending to be a male toqueer to femme female” trans person.

They are full of gender theory,concerned about community, biphobia, butch-femme dynamics and too manyother things to mention. It gives me hope that even I, one day, canovercome being a jerk and punching those girls I like in the arminstead of just telling them how awesome & fabulous they are.Thanks femmes, for making me look again at femininity. You can readmore at www.Femmethology. com <http://femmethology.com/>