February 29th, 2008 Sassafras
So I know I’ve written about femme community before, but it’s something that has come up for me again this week. Talking to one of my femme friends at work (can I just say how much I LOVE that I actually have multiple femme friends at my gay for pay job?!?!) she was talking about how she doesn’t always get along well with other femmes, and until me has pretty much not attempted to make friends with other femmes. This came up as we were discussing the Femme Conference. I completely understand where she is coming from, and honestly it’s only been in the last few months that my circle of femme friends has expanded dramatically.
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February 28th, 2008 Webmaster
Thanks for your patience! The Femme Show is now totally upgraded! It’s on sexy, Wordpress 2.3.3! And all those fun plugin thingy-ma-doogles are totally current…at least for right now at this very second. (Things change so quickly, you know!)
Also, our good friends at Dreamhost (hi, Jason!) cleaned out some of the tubes that were slowing down our connection to the internets. Everything is unclogged and pretty squeaky clean now, so you should also see a vast improvement in site performance (ie. speed)!
However, if you encounter anything funky (or have any questions), please email me!
Thanks again!
Your friendly, neighborhood webmaster..
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February 27th, 2008 maggie
In lieu of actual content this week, an announcement:
(I’m not affiliated with this in any way, just happy to pass it on)
Call for Workshops, Papers, Performance, and Art
Femme2008: The Architecture of Femme
Chicago, IL
August 15th - 17th, 2008
www.femmecollective.com
Femme2008: The Architecture of Femme is a multi-threaded conference and forum for those who
think about, talk about, and create Femme as a queer gender and identity. Read the rest of this entry »
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February 21st, 2008 Sassafras
The first time that I heard the word femme, it was being used as an insult. I discovered queer culture through the wonders of AOL chat rooms, where I would log in to watch the mating dance of lonely queers. It was from there that I picked up my first information about queer culture, I learned what bands were cool, which books I should read (not that the Clackamas library had them) and ideas about how to come out to parents and school (again not especially fruitful as I was kicked out). I also learned that the more masculine I appeared the more desirable I was, and femmes were dismissed, inherently less queer, painfully old fashioned, and shouldn’t be trusted. We called people femmes when we wanted to shame or quiet them.
I’m ashamed to say, that in an effort to fit in, and as a direct result of my internalized femmephobia I participated in this cultural shaming. The ex of my first butch lover was a high femme of the fiercest sort when I was still trying to be a boi. I participated in gossip, and consistently said that I couldn’t understand her or the other femmes, why they would wear dresses, and makeup and why they wouldn’t shave their heads and start acting like real queers. Truth be told, I was afraid to understand myself.
I had no idea how many guts it took to be a femme, to put on a skirt and show up to a queer event in a non-ironic way. The world is hard enough on femmes, queer people misunderstand us with such frequency it breaks my heart to think that a younger version of myself participated in a community that made it harder for my fellow femmes to survive. Thinking back to those days, all I see is a scared baby femme terrified to admit that ze secretly wanted to have pigtails, and wear glitter. It took years for me to be ok with being femme, and to stop desperately trying to hide it behind forced and failing appropriated masculinity. I’d like to say that the queer community is becoming more welcoming to femmes, and I think that important steps are being made through the construction of femme community, but I don’t for a minute believe that it’s easy, I know better.
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February 18th, 2008 maggie
I’m on the way to see a play. At the bus stop, I huddle in the corner with my book. I glance at the man sitting on the bench and feel a flicker of annoyance - it’s raining, he’s got a five year old with him, and he’s smoking.
“Hey, those are some nice pantyhose†he says to his wife. I don’t know how to respond. If he were alone, I would ignore him, pretend that reading made me deaf, the way I used to on the bus in middle school. Read the rest of this entry »
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February 15th, 2008 Sassafras
The past week has been beyond hectic for me, between dinner guests, preparations for Kestryl’s one-queer-show’s NYC debut in the next two weeks, changes with my gay for pay job, beginning to seriously plan for the June release of my first book, and my femme show performance proposal 
I haven’t had a whole lot of extra time. This of course means that now more than ever I have to be thinking about time management and prioritization. You might be wondering how this relates to being femme, but I assure you there is a reason behind listing my schedule, the above are a sample of the things, which in one way or another tend to make it onto my ‘to-do’ list. Thus you can only imagine the hilarity, which ensued when on Saturday I announced proudly that there was one more thing I could cross off the list- I had painted my nails. Read the rest of this entry »
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February 13th, 2008 maggie
My mom is absolutely convinced that homosexuality is genetic. The evidence being that I have a gay great-uncle (my grandfather’s brother) on my dad’s side and a lesbian cousin on her side so distant we’ve never met. Read the rest of this entry »
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