September 20th, 2008 Sassafras
It’s been a busy weekend here filled with lots of work in the home office, writing, planning, grocery shopping, extracting a few fall clothes from “the trenches,” and nyc’s own circus amok performing in our neighborhood. The show was fantastic, and as we were leaving I started to think about how *seen* I felt there in this group of other freaks. I often feel like my queerness is invisible which as I’ve talked about before has been quite the culture shock over the past several years after living as a FTM for so long and being very visibly queer. While there Kestryl and I got to talk with some dear friends who we don’t see often, and they mentioned that they had been showing pictures of us to some guests last night and been trying to explain us, but it was hard :) It was so lovely to have our complexity as individuals and as a couple seen.
Anyway, the whole wonderful fall afternoon watching the circus with the dog on my lap and surrounded by talented freaky people got me thinking about visibility, and community and the places where I as a genderqueer/trans, femme, freak feel seen and then all of those places like every other day in our neighborhood, or on the subway where I don’t. So I thought I would ask all of you, where do you feel seen, and what does being visible in that space mean to you?
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September 18th, 2008 maggie
Here’s some shots from our workshop rehearsals, taken by the awesome Steph Plourde-Simard.
- In today’s tough economy, the job of performing has been outsourced to blow up dolls
- Read the rest of this entry »
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September 15th, 2008 maggie
So, I’ve been busy going back to teaching a lot (I teach ballet as my “day job”) and getting ready for the October show. We’ve had two meetings so far to get feedback on our new pieces and take photos. It’s been fun and inspiring. Yesterday we needed extra time to talk, so we paraded through Central Square, Cambridge from the rehearsal space to the Au Bon Pain, with clip lights, hula hoops, and suitcases. It felt like being back on tour. So much fun!
With all of this going on, I don’t have time for thoughtful commentary here, although of course I can’t seem to stop talking about gender with friends and with my GF. There are so many people doing amazing blogging about femme stuff right now. Here are some recommendations of blogs I wish I had more time to read.
Sublime Femme has great stuff to say about make up, celebreties, butch-femme, and more.
A Consuming Desire is a queer Buddhist femme, just as interesting as you’d imagine.
Nikki is telling some great stories and has a fantastic post about consumerism and femme identity.
And of course you should be listening to the FemmeCast.
Bochinche Bilingue: a Borderline Academic doesn’t post much, but I love the complexitiy of the posts.
And, if you live under a rock, let me tell you that there are rumors that Lindsey Lohan and Samantha Ronson are engaged! Ok, that has nothing to do with anything except my new obsession with celebrity “butch-femme.”
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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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