How Would You Like Your Queer Femme? No, They’re Not All the Same
“I was in denial – it’s occurred to me that, despite my self-identification, those living in butch/femme or gay worlds would define me as they chose” wrote La Mala, in a post titled “queer femme,” and I agree. I agree that the majority of those living in the queer world (in any community) will define a person any way they choose to, regardless of that person’s self-identification, but I don’t think this is just a queer problem. The majority of people – gay, straight, bisexual, pansexual, omnisexual, queer people – will define a person any way they choose to. Only a problem in the queer world? No. More of a problem in the queer world? Yes.
I’m accepting more and more the idea that most people are never really going to know what *I* mean when I say that I’m a “queer femme.” Will it always bother me inside? A little. I’m jealous. I’m jealous of people who can say “I’m straight,” “I’m bi” or “I’m gay” and feel that everyone really *gets* what they mean. When you identify as a queer femme, other queer femmes aren’t even sure of what you mean.
My queer femme identity is the culmination of my attraction to queer masculinity, my desire for the same and more-complicated-than-opposite sex, and the power that *doing* femme as a gender presentation gives me (I know, I’m using the word “femme” to define “femme” – it’s because I refuse to use feminine and I’m not really left with any other options). I’m sure this list is longer – but those are the biggies.
La Mala continues:
I continually end up in a space where, because I am deemed “femme”, I must contend with butches who sexualize me or ignore me – neither allowing for me to appear within their mind as a complete person.
Worse, dealing with femmes who will only communicate with butches, in that coy/head tilted way, which diminishes both them and the butch.
One of my biggest peeves with the queer community is the refusal to see that people who share the same identity are individuals. If you spoke to ten women who identify as straight, you would find that they all have unique personalities and attractions (they may all be attracted to men – but not the same type of man). Everyone accepts that. Everyone accepts that someone who identifies as a straight woman is not the same as all other straight women – yet when people identify as femme, butch, trans, lesbian there’s a strong desire that they fit in with the others (read: pretend to be something they are not) so everyone can create this one definitive way of being. Well, there’s a way to guarantee misery!
I must say, I’m not the most coy person (there’s one way of putting it). I don’t really *giggle* and “the head tilt” isn’t my thing. Is there a problem with this in the butch-femme community? For some people, like those La Mala keeps having the misfortune of running into, there is. Oh well. It only gets worse when I – Oh My God – “strap it on.” *Giggle*
*I have the need to the put phrases I can’t stand, such as “strap it on,” in quotes.
Labels are a starting point for me, not an ending one. People who assume the transparency of words probably won’t get along with me, lol. I’ve played on enough sites where people identified as femme, and I have not yet come across one other femme who understood the term as I did.
Is femme a gender?
I do self-identify as something (lots of different somethings, actually) but how anyone else chooses to label me is their problem. I’m old enough that I have finally learned to disregard perceptions about me that I don’t like or don’t agree with. I refuse to be a category and won’t act like one. I will admit to being human, and I happen to like some other humans as friends and some others as lovers (and others as targets). None of us fits neatly into a standard box without some parts slopping over the edge of the box; you can very rarely get a cover on that neat little box. We’re all unique … just like everyone else.
Once again, the mantra is: “Anytime you slap a label on something, you cover up some of what’s underneath it.”
I hate when Jen comes around here with the difficult questions! (I’m kidding – I dig it and I have no idea where that just came from!)
Is femme a gender?
Dare I say there are no genders? I really have no idea what “a gender” is. That’s different to me than gender presentation. Are there genders like there are sexes? I don’t know. When someone asks my gender I say femme because I don’t know what else to say. It’s my presentation. I won’t say female – that’s my sex. Would people say something like “woman?” That seems off b/c of all the people who are female who aren’t “women.”
I like your mantra, Jami. :)
I’m finding that I am having the same problem with the idea of gender(s) – I’m not sure what constitutes gender. That’s why I started a page over at the site to try to track and capture the different uses and meanings attributed to certain terms. I was taught in school that there were two genders, masculine and feminine, which were the cultural aspects of the two sexes male and female. I knew that couldn’t be right, lol. I’ve heard people identify “butch” and “femme” as genders, and that makes me wonder to what extent self-presentation and gender identity come into play. I feel like English forces me into conceptual contortions that are the result of the language’s limits. The more I learn and read about sex and gender, the more fluid, complex, and often inadequate these terms become to me.
Do you need to have a term for yourself or is that for others? I understand that words are meant to convey information, but sometimes a given language is inadequate to describe certain concepts. It’s “snow” or “slush” or “ice” to us, but I understand that the Inuit have scores of terms for frozen water. That’s because their world requites it. It would seem that “gender” is one of those concepts that it’s a struggle to convey in our world. So, I guess I could be called lazy because I quit trying. I’m just me and while I know I have a gender and a personality and a sexuality and an identity, I no longer feel compelled to explain those things about me to others. If others want to discover those aspects of me, then they need to get to know me and maybe they will be communicated in ways other than verbal (or written).
Having a term for myself is very important to me. I agree that labels do cause problems, but I don’t know how I would feel if I had *nothing* to call myself. I’d be invisible (and I’m pretty much already there most of the time as it is!). In a perfect world, “human” would do… but no labels in this world makes me uneasy. If I didn’t label myself at all, how would anyone know that I exist? That I’m not the straight girl they assume I am? How would other women like me feel without hearing a term that they might be able to say “that fits” to?
I have a feeling that I’m older than you, but unfortunately that only gives me age and not necessarily wisdom. I won’t lapse into “I know better” mode (because I doubt that I do), but I will say that one of the things I had to do in order to get on with my life was realize that defining myself in terms of others was the easy way out: let other people tell me who I am rather than figure it out on my own. The only definition that mattered was mine and one of the hardest parts of defining myself was realizing that who I am cannot be articulated. Slapping labels on yourself (or letting others do it) only quanitifes a small piece of the totality that is you. That’s like trying to define a diamond by describing a single facet. Once I got my head around that concept and simply accepted myself for who I am, I stopped worrying about how others might see me or try to describe me.
(OK, wait … is this starting to get a little too deep and/or metaphysical?)
I just realized I totally screwed up the spelling of “quantifies” above; http://www.dictionary.com can’t find the word “quanitifes”.
Yeah, maybe I’m jealous of those less complicated folks, too. But I also get jealous sometimes of folks with smaller minds and simpler jobs. Sometimes I just want it all to be easy. And sometimes I just want to take a nap.
(BTW, appropos of absolutely nothing, for some strange reason I really like the way “DDOQ” sounds when spoken aloud.)
Dictionary.com is my best friend. :)
It’s interesting how we all have different and unique relationships with defining ourselves. I don’t feel at all that my identity, or my femme label, exist as a complete description of who I am. To me it’s like saying “I’m a woman” – that really doesn’t say anything about me, does it? It’s a starting point. My “femme starting point” matters a lot to me. I’m grateful to older femmes who have put themselves out there and have given me women to look at, read about, etc., and know that there are other people like me (not always exactly like me, but like me enough ;)) . I think I’ll always be a little jealous of the mainstream understanding of other less complicated identities, but that’s life. I’m sure there are people jealous of things about me that I can’t stand. lol
Oh, I’m very familiar with that piece of
crapwriting. Ariel Levy is also the author of Female Chauvinist Pigs: Women and the Rise of Raunch Culture (which I thank the Spinster for pointing out to me!). The woman has issues.I am glad you wrote about this topic and happy that you took the time to quote from my blog. I started the blog to plot my own course as a woman on fire. That said…
While I truly believe that only my identifiers for myself are important, I cannot help but be bombarded by others’ definitions/stereptypes on me because I am deemed “other” as a working class queer woman of color. I could say to hell with them all but still, in my every day existence, there is some incident of sexism, racism, heterosexism or classism which doesn’t enable me to completely and joyously live with my identity/life.
I would say, both as women and as the perceived “woman”[femme] that there is inherent sexism involved in not allowing women to live free of stereotypes or preconceived perceptions. While butch/femme dichotomies may be old school to some, there are new ways to express sexism within queer communities that show that we, as a queer community are choosing gender artifice instead of getting dirty in the work of removing sexism. Check it out: http://newyorkmetro.com/nymetro/news/features/n_9709/index.html.
hello – this is a bit of a late comment, but what can i say – i just found this blog entry today. can i weigh in as a … errr … straight woman? the “errrr” because i flinch when i say i’m a straight woman. i so can’t see myself as straight, not sexually, not politically, not anything. so what am i? heterosexual? my current behaviour is heterosexual but does that make me be heterosexual? my sexuality as a whole does not direct itself only to men, just as it does not address itself only to intercourse. there’s more to my sexuality than this simplistic “plug-in” principle that i see implied in the word “heterosexual”.
you’re saying that
One of my biggest peeves with the queer community is the refusal to see that people who share the same identity are individuals
i’ve heard other people complain about that but i wonder whether that’s really so different anywhere else? isn’t it more about the general human compulsion to categorize and to be in “in groups”? again, taking myself as an example, everyone has me pegged as heterosexual, therefore they “know” me and can tell whether or not i’m part of their group.
it also occurs to me that the onus is, unfortunately, on me. it seems like a whole lot of trouble to idenity myself as a sexual human being as opposed to being taken for granted as a heterosexual or straight woman. the explanations. the consternations. the misunderstandings. the rolling eyes. the discomfort. do i want to undergo those, or do i want to undergo the constant nagging discomfort i experience for being pegged as something that i don’t feel comfortable being pegged as?
i’d love to hear whether you think we have something in common here …
isabella
Hi Isabella – mind if I ask a question on what you said? If I am being intrusive, please disregard this question. When you mentioned that you didn’t see yourself as straight beyond (some?) sex with men, does that mean you see yourself as queer in other aspects of your life or sexuality? Or am I forcing another label by using the word “queer”? I don’t mean to, but I am trying to understand more what you mean when you say you don’t feel at ease with claiming the identity of a straight woman.
the “errrr†because i flinch when i say i’m a straight woman.
I think I know what you mean by that. I’m really uncomfortable saying I’m a lesbian most of the time. When I say I’m a lesbian, all I mean by it is that my sexual and romantic relationships are with others who were born female. Nothing else. It’s not a statement about my politics, beliefs, lifestyle, or anything else it can be taken as.
Does my behavior make me a lesbian? The easiest thing to say it yes. But I’m not sure that’s the answer. Especially when something like one of my friends recently calling me and saying “I’m calling you because I feel uncomfortable talking to my lesbian friends about this” happens. I don’t know how to respond to that. And at the same time I’m not shocked by it either.
’ve heard other people complain about that but i wonder whether that’s really so different anywhere else?
I, personally, haven’t see much of this attitude with straight friends of mine. But I don’t doubt that it happens. I guess it really just depends on the individuals we’re surrounded by.
jen – you ask why i don’t see myself as straight. thank you. there’s two answers to that, none of them unassailable. one is that to me, straight means mainstream. there’s not too much about my life that’s mainstream – not my life experience, not my politics, not the ethnic mix in my family, not the furniture, art and books in my house.
now the sexuality part. this may sound really, really stupid – but i would say the reason why, with a few negligible exceptions, my sexual encounters have only been with men is, a) accidental and b) convenience. when i was “available” (i am finally happily married), i certainly would have been open to a relationship with a woman. it just never happened (yes, i realize that this is only part accident; partly i probably didn’t send the right signals).
also, i grew up in a environment where having a relationship with a woman would have added another layer of difficulty to my life, which already was quite a juggling act.
i realize that if i was “truly” (whatever that means) bisexual, that probably wouldn’t have stopped me. and i also realize that i have repressed a full expression of my sexuality, both consciously and unconsciously.
now that i’m in menopause and not constantly swelling with lust anymore, this just gives me pause for observation and some regret (i can tell you, i sure would do things differently if i was 20 again!!!) in the meantime, i continue to find women and men equally attractive and prefer flirting with women rather than men. i just don’t do anything about it anymore.
does that make me queer? yes – in a very general sense. but maybe not in a sexual preference kind of sense. it certainly doesn’t make me straight.
ok, a comparison: there’s many aspects of christianity i like – the mystics, the hymns, the emphasis on compassion. so i incorporate it into my spiritual mix of christianity, buddhism, the 12 steps and pagan approaches. but i don’t want to be called christian – not because i don’t like christianity in general but because i don’t want to be part of that christian in-group. does that make sense?
sorry for the long post …. but this really helps me clarify things …
isabella
OK, I’ve wandered back into this and I’m glad I did because of Isabella’s comments. Ray Wiley Hubbard has a line in one of his songs that goes: “Buddha wasn’t a Christian, but Jesus would have made a good Buddhist.” Labels again. Isabella, It seems to bother you that you self-identify as straight; is it because that label doesn’t seem to fit you and you just utilize it because others do? Then don’t let it be applied to you and don’t apply it to yourself. Does it bother you to self-identify as bisexual, as queer, as menopausal, as spiritual? Does it bother you when others identify you that way, when they slap that label on you? IMHO, the only thing that matters is how you identify yourself internally. If you are strong in your own realization, then whether or not that is congruent with any external identifiers is somewhat moot. Like most transgendered people, I grew up with a recognized incongruity between my gender and my sex. My way of dealing with that incongruity was ultimately to simple accept it and not try to figure out why I happened to be different and not try to explain to society why they were wrong about me. I guess what I’m trying to relate here is a rather Zen concept of just learning to be and accepting what you are without trying to justify or explain your self.