This is an angry piece I started writing about on a month before our last show. It’s still a work in progress. This piece is hard for me to figure out because I think my anger and frustration are legit, and I need to express those feelings, but I have a lot of misgivings about this because I don’t want people to think I’m generalizing. As always, this is just my experience, I’m obviously not speaking for all femmes and it’s not meant to be an indictment of the whole community. It’s just that there are a lot of people out there who need to be schooled on femmes.

Don’t ignore me. Look me in the eye when we’re introduced. Shake my hand without squeezing it like crazy to show how tough you are. Yes, you probably have more upper body strength than me. Many people do. Good for you.

Don’t think you can spot a femme by her lipstick or her shoes or her walk or her hobbies. Don’t assume that we have long hair on our heads and none on our legs. Don’t assume that femmes have cunts, that we were assigned female at birth, that we’re bisexual or that we just came out and will be showing up at the barber shop for our crew cuts any day now.

Don’t assume that just because my clothes match that my politics suck or that I shop at the Gap. Carhartts are not a mandatory uniform for the social justice minded. Don’t assume that just because my gender expression matches the sex I was assigned at birth in some socially prescribed way that I haven’t read Kate Borenstein or Judith Halberstam or that I haven’t thought about gender, mine and everyone else’s. Don’t assume that my relationship to gender is any less complicated than yours.

Don’t assume that because I like butches, I want to be patronized and treated like child. Don’t assume that I want to hang out in the kitchen with your buddy’s girlfriend. Don’t call me “ditzy” when I drop or forget things. It’s not a compliment and it’s not flirtatious. Don’t ask me how I can walk in those shoes or why I need to carry that purse around with me everywhere. I’ve been dressing myself for years without any help from my mother and I don’t need your help now.

Don’t tell me that you like girls who are feminine, but not “high maintenance.” I’m so sick of that veiled misogyny. When you say you like girls who are down to earth, who don’t take forever to get ready, what you’re really saying is that you believe all those lies you’ve been told about girls and girlyness and feminine things, that women are weak, that femininity is frivolous, unnatural, unnecessary, inferior.

I thought we were so over that. Guess I was wrong.

This entry was posted on Monday, February 4th, 2008 at 12:00 am and is filed under musings. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.