September 12th, 2008 Sassafras
As lots of you may know when I’m not blogging and performing with the femme show I’m an author and I’m the editor of the Kicked Out athology. I’m sure that you will all be pleased to know that the bedbug situation in our home appears to be completely under control, we’ve had no sightings in over a week and are continuing forward to with all required treatments!
It’s been a huge relief especially since a large amount of my time has been spent working on the new campaign that I have launched called “Come Out, Kicked Out.” www.kicedoutanthology.com is more than just a website for my anthology, it is truly about building a movement to break down the cultural shame and silencing faced by those of us who left home as teens because of our sexual orientation and/or gender identity.
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September 12th, 2008 maggie
I am writing a piece for the Society for the Preservation and Promotion of Sapphic Social Mores that’s full of one liners responding to the f-ed up things people say about femme id. We also want to include responses to the stuff people say about butch-femme relationships - things like “butch-femme is sexist/misogyist/anachronistic”.
How do you respond, especially when you really don’t want to “get into it” with someone? I think I natter on about personal choices and personal preferences.
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September 8th, 2008 Sassafras
My partner had the misfortune of waking op on Monday morning to the mo
st unwelcome discovery that we have bedbugs (oh the joys of NYC being infested with them). Of course it was a holiday, and of course our management company is useless. After spending two days on the phone fighting with our management company, learning that our entire building is infested, that some of our neighbors REFUSE to allow it to be treated, and the treatment that the management provides is ineffective according to industry standards we resigned ourselves to paying large amounts of money out of pocket to take care of the situation with a private exterminator. Oh, this might be a good time to add that our apartment is meticulously clean hence a lot of our confusion as to how these little monsters got here in the first place. We have now learned that they are capable of getting into a space via electrical outlets!!!!!!!! Read the rest of this entry »
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August 28th, 2008 Sassafras
I’ve been really sad ever since hearing the news yesterday that Del Martin died. The moment that she and Phyllis Lyon were married just a couple of months ago was so beautiful, and even though I have an incredibly complicated relationship to the institution of marriage I was incredibly touched by the fact that they were the first couple to be married. Yesterday I heard about her death before a lot of news outlets had picked it up and I just kept thinking about how sad it was, and what an inspiration their relationship is to so many of us in the community. When I got home from work and Kestryl told me that all the flags in San Francisco including a rainbow flag were flying at half mast in her honor I nearly lost it, it was such a beautiful image, and yet as a femme I feel incredibly conflicted.
As most folks know Del Martin and her partner Phyllis Lyon founded Daughters of Bilitis,the first national lesbian organization, and as part of that ran the organization’s monthly magazine The Ladder. This all relates to femmeness because the Daughters of Bilitis as an organization was primarily focused on the needs of middle class white lesbians, and encouraged its members to avoid standing out so as not to tarnish the cultural appearance of the rest of them. This means that the group actively encouraged folks to not cross-dress, to avoid appearing as too different, and to not embrace butch-femme cultures and identities. Read the rest of this entry »
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August 22nd, 2008 maggie
Warning: completely fluffy post follows:
Maybe because my brain is still fried from the femme conference, or maybe because I read US weekly at the airport (it’s my constitutional right to read gossip rags while traveling), I’ve been thinking about celebrity butch-femme type couples. Poor Samantha Ronson is getting tons of shit for her plaid shirts and hoodies, and while I don’t love her fashion sense or find her attractive, I don’t think it’s fair for the Go Fug Yourself folks and their ilk to take her style out of the context of her gender and expect her to wear whatever they think young feminine celebrities should be wearing. I don’t care all that much about queer celebrities most of the time, but it would be nice if people could make an effort to understand just a little tiny bit about different gender expressions.
Anyway, a friend just informed me that she has purchased the people magazine with Ellen and Portia’s wedding pictures and I am so excited! I love the way the lines of Portia’s dress echoed the lines of Ellen’s vest, I love how happy they look, I love the cream. Even if they don’t ID as butch or femme I like seeing a romantic, idealized picture of that celebrated in pop culture. But some folks at feministing are unhappy about Ellen’s joke about Portia cooking and cleaning and “taking her off the market.” I like feministing for news but they continually take a one-sided, second-wave view of queer women as gender-free, oatmeal-eating, cuddling overall-wearers. Fortunately, there are some good comments in response.
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August 18th, 2008 maggie
(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. Read the rest of this entry »
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August 15th, 2008 Sassafras
Just about every femme I know is either in Chicago this weekend for the big femme conference, at NOLOSE, or hibernating away from all of it. I had briefly entertained thoughts of going to Chicago, but in the end, a number of factors (including the in my opinion absurd cost of registration) contributed to me deciding not to go, and I have to say that now the weekend has arrived I couldn’t be happier with that decision. Maybe it’s a manifestation of my own internalized femmephobia, but the prospect of spending a weekend with several hundred femmes sounds completely terrifying. Playing a part I’m sure is that the first femme “community” I discovered was incredibly competitive, and catty, and even though I’ve since discovered my own communities of femmes (including of course the femme show folks) who are anything BUT that, I still can’t imagine a conference like that not disintegrating into a competitive mess. I hope everyone in Chicago is having an excellent time, but for me having heard some of the horror stories of previous years D-R-A-M-A I know I’ve made the right choice for me.
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