when did you feel connected?
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A week from today I’ll be climbing aboard a big Amtrak train, leaving NYC and heading upstate for the Queer Spirit Camp. I’ll be leaving behind my beloved cell phone reception, and having to decide in advance what I’m going to wear for two days, and make sure that everything (including the crinolines) fit into my messenger bag, but I can honestly say that I’m starting to get extremely bouncy
I’m so excited to get to perform, and am equally excited about getting to lead two writing workshops for the folks attending camp! As I’m beginning to prepare to go one of the things that I keep thinking about is the utter explosion of femmeness that has taken place in the states in recent years, and how fantastic that is.
One of the things that really makes my journey to a queer femme identity was grappling with the fact that I didn’t see a queer femme community, nor did I even see femmes for a really long time, which just furthered the isolation that I was feeling as I began coming out and like so many people began adopting traits of androgyny because I thought that was how “real” dykes were supposed to act. And now? Goodness there is femme stuff everywhere! There is an ever-increasing number of books, the femme-coloring book, the femme conference, and last but certainly not least those of us here at the femme show making our way around the east coast this summer! I wonder what it must be like to come out with there being so much flamboyant queer femininity just being part of the fabric of community.
By the time I was close to coming out as femme I’d begun having more and more interactions with ‘femmeness’ but there was one moment in particular that I remember realizing that femme was something I could really identify wit. We were sitting at a friend’s kitchen table and realizing that their new girlfriend talked about femme as gendertransgressive. I hung on her every word, and listed as she talked about her journey to femininity, queer discourse, boas, and glitter. Had we not become friends I think I would have eventually found my way to femme, but it certainly wouldn’t have happened in that moment. It was also in that moment that I realized femme didn’t have to mean a lack of community, and that there was a whole wide queer world just waiting for me to explore. What was your first experience with “femme” that you related to? How has that impacted your life?
July 18th, 2008 at 12:41 pm
Femme is something I was only very dimly aware of until just this past spring (after being out for a decade). It was a revelation to me that there was a name for what I had been unconsciously embodying for so many years. I am so glad to have found a community of people who understand where I’m coming from.
I always on some level resented being the type of lesbian that is ‘acceptable’ to the straight community, like I wasn’t being out there or rebellious enough to be really accepted in the queer community. It’s very empowering to be living in the Boston area, where being femme is definitely on the table as a topic of conversation.