conference – some first thoughts
(written on the plan coming home)
In high school I travelled with my student ballet company to a workshop in Boston, one day of competing and one day of classes from 9-5. Sick with a cold, after day of doing the same steps over and over, when I closed my eyes in the car on the way home, I saw people turning and turning. I felt like I was still dancing in the same way you feel the waves still rocking you after a good day of swimming.
Tonight, on the plane home to Boston, I closed my eyes and heard stories, not coherent passages, not the notes I took but phrases I swallowed whole and gobbled up with my heart. I saw the bright colors, purple and red and green and yellow and glitter, so much glitter and silver and flowers and feathers in hair.
I’ve got a tour diary for you, that I need to edit first, and I want to write about all the things I’ve been thinking about, and about what was hard and frustrating and disappointing. But what I want to share with you now, flying through the dark, with no idea how long we’ve been in the air because I’ve been sleeping, is how much I want to go back.
How I want to be part of two hundred or so femmes and allies telling each other we’re beautiful, strong, sexy, survivors of misogyny and worse, capable of loving and fucking and building a movement and changing the world. How when I was alone on a street in some Chicago neighborhood I can’t even name, waiting for a bus, I looked at groups of women carrying purses and diaper bags and birthday presents, women in dresses going out to dinner, and I saw them as friends because I’d just spent 48 hours surrounded by people in dresses who were friends. How I want to keep seeing all feminine people that way, to let go of the idea that femininity in queers is subversive and special and superior and make this about chosen femininity, not about special us queers are with our big glasses and big earrings or whatever it is this year, like Julia Serano challenged us to do. How I want to be surrounded by glitter and glasses and colors and heels. How Dorothy Allison told us our shoes were sexy. How she rocked us like a preacher at a tent revival, how her story was just one of so many about loving and needing and pain and joy and survival, how they’re echoing around in my brain. How it was hard and frustrating and imperfect but also healing and inspiring. How I’m inspired to tell stories, to keep telling stories, to tell stories but also to do the work, to make a better for girls and feminine people and through that for everyone.
August 18th, 2008 at 4:32 pm
Thanks so much for sharing this! I wasn’t able to go to the conference and have been eager to hear about what it was like and the kind of reactions or even revelations it engendered.
I’m fascinated by what you have to say about the continuities between queer femininities and other forms of femininity. This certainly makes sense thinking about Julia Serano’s work. Still, it’s quite a departure from the usual discussions which center on the differences between femme and femininity. I’d love to hear what others have to say about this.
Thanks again for your post.
August 18th, 2008 at 7:44 pm
You’re very welcome! I have more to say in detail about that idea…sometime later this week.
August 19th, 2008 at 3:21 pm
Looking forward!
September 5th, 2008 at 11:14 am
[...] the femme show – some first thoughts: “… what I want to share with you now … is how much I want to go back. How I want to be part of two hundred or so femmes and allies telling each other we’re beautiful, strong, sexy, survivors of misogyny and worse, capable of loving and fucking and building a movement and changing the world. How when I was alone on a street in some Chicago neighborhood I can’t even name, waiting for a bus, I looked at groups of women carrying purses and diaper bags and birthday presents, women in dresses going out to dinner, and I saw them as friends because I’d just spent 48 hours surrounded by people in dresses who were friends. How I want to keep seeing all feminine people that way, to let go of the idea that femininity in queers is subversive and special and superior and make this about chosen femininity, not about special us queers are with our big glasses and big earrings or whatever it is this year.” [...]