well, thursday it's off to the femme conference in chicago! this week has been so busy preparing - there are *twelve* of us from the femme mafia twin cities roadtripping together, not to mention another member meeting us in chicago, as well as a handsome out-of-state friend i met at an academic conference a few months ago. full reports when i get back! i'll have access to a comp, but i'm guessing not much time to do on-site blogging. we'll see!
also, i'm thinking of making the move of femme FATale over to wordpress. while blogger suits me relatively fine, i like the option of being able to keep posts private and only accessible via password. i thought this was some fancy html magic you were all using, but it turns out that it's just another awesome wordpress feature! my readership has been increasing more and more and with it comes the possibility of people stumbling on here that needn't read certain things, things i want to keep to a select audience, etcetera, thus the switch. i'll have more info about the move as it happens, but i'm guessing over the next few weeks?
for now though, off to chi-town!
xo.
Showing posts with label femmes. Show all posts
Showing posts with label femmes. Show all posts
Wednesday, August 13, 2008
Thursday, July 31, 2008
Radical Queer Femmes Gather at the Femme2008 Conference
Here's a guest post from my fellow Femme Mafia Twin Cities member (and bff!) spreading the word about the femme conference! We can use all the publicity around this that we can get, so if you're able to do so, please re-post this guest entry on your own blog and leave a comment here so that we can thank you from the bottom of our hearts. xoxo - hussy red
What: Femme2008 Conference: The Architecture of Femme!
Who: Femme Collective, along with speakers Dorothy Allison, Leah Lakshmi Piepzna-Samarasinha and Julia Serano
When: August 15-17, 2008
Where: Chicago Wyndham O'Hare
How: Register online! Registration is still open, and is $95. You can get all the conference details at www.femmecollective.org.
Guest post by Charlotte Albrecht, Femme Mafia Twin Cities
For months now, I have been looking forward to attending Femme2008: The Architecture of Femme this August in Chicago. It has been just a few years since I started to claim a femme identity and only in the last year that I began to find community and connect with other femme-identified and femme-supportive people. As a mixed race light-skinned femme who grew up steeped in middle class white American culture, my models for femininity were clear and, like many other girls, I learned to examine all the ways that I deviated from this norm. When I started to acknowledge my desire for female-bodied people to myself and to those around me, I found myself wanting to be visible to those I desired. This desire coupled with my longstanding understanding of myself as "not feminine enough" added up to a gender presentation that was not true to myself. It wasn't until a few years later when I met femmes of my age who encouraged me to embrace whatever feminine parts of me there were, that I ceased apologizing for dressing up and accessorizing, and, more importantly, started to think critically about the relationship between my own femininity and my sexual desire.
I see the Femme Conference as a unique opportunity to push myself further to think about the numerous forms 'femme' can take - shaped endlessly by each of our cultural and social locations, sexual desires, gendered selves, and outward appearances - and how I can support other people in their own journeys. I am particularly looking forward to meeting others from across the country who are organizing for femme visibility in their communities and actively connecting this work to radical liberatory politics.
You might be asking, but what is femme? Femme can mean many things, and if you ask a hundred femmes what it means to be a femme, chances are, you'll hear a hundred different responses. Since femme is a complex, varied identity, it is frequently misunderstood. However, we can say that femme is based in a queer subculture of radical femininity. It can be both a sexual and gender identity. Femme is a queered, transgressive, stand-alone version of femininity that can be constructed independent of and/or intimately connected to biological sex.
Femmes have been both underrepresented and misunderstood within and outside of queer communities. The Femme Conference is an important and exciting time for femmes and allies of all walks of life to increase visibility and create radical queer femme community. It will be full of amazing performances and workshops, as well as a powerhouse keynote lineup: Dorothy Allison, Julia Serano, Leah Lakshmi Piepzna-Samarasinha, and Veronica Combs a.k.a. Vixen Noir.
So join me, and let's create some radically affirming community together. It'll be fierce
--Charlotte Albrecht, Femme Mafia Twin Cities
Monday, July 21, 2008
butch vs. femme, or why it's not ok to play "i have it harder than you."
after a fairly successful weekend of fun, i was visiting my usual online haunts before getting ready for bed and came across the most recent vlog by resident youtube butch, AJ on her sister channel, the Beaver Bunch. i don't know how popular AJ, of Ask AJ Anything fame, is amongst us tech savvy queers out there, but basically she gives advice and makes a lot of "top 10" lists. i've never found her much to write home about, but that's just my opinion.
anyway, this week's vlog was about sharing coming out stories, which was all well and good until about 4minutes and 45seconds in when AJ starts talking about being visibly queer and how she can never not be "out" because of her appearance. shortly after this, she relays the following message that has had me fuming for the past hour. basically, this: femmes have it easy. maybe my anger is misdirected. AJ is only one of many butches i've heard voice these sentiments in the past few years and i'm officially over it. so, to AJ, and all those who might agree with her, here's my rant:
so, check it. unfortunately, most of us who are queer have had homophobic speech slung at us at least once in our lives. whether it was directed to us individually, as part of a couple, or with a group, the impact is still the same. for me personally, this usually isn't what i get called out on the street for when i'm on my own or with a group a friends. if i'm going to be heckled in broad daylight in the middle of downtown, it's going to be because i'm fat or, the way i like to think of it, because i'm a hot fat girl who defies every convention of what it is i'm supposed to do - cover up every inch of skin, wear dark colors, talk quietly. basically, do everything i can to keep attention away from me, to fade into the woodwork. though truth be told, assholes on the street would find me there too.
when i've been the target of queer bashing though, it's always been in the company of others. a big group of my homo friends at a non-queer bar or arm-in-arm with someone i'm dating who, because i always date on the more masculine end of the gender spectrum, tends to be more visibly queer than myself, thus drawing attention to us. those times have mostly been scary, some downright terrifying and, later, when safety is certain and blood pressures have resumed a normal range, angering for everyone involved. never, though, have i sat down afterward with my significant other or with my friends and deliberated which one of us motivated the attack, who's most queer in appearance, or who has it easiest/hardest...and i, frankly, can't understand anyone who would!
i know all about the differences of visibility and invisibility when it comes to butch and femme (or anyone queer who doesn't pass as straight and anyone queer who does - the labels don't matter here); i deal with what it means to be invisible to a straight world, and even a queer world sometimes, on a regular basis. for example, there are few things more infuriating to me than my lack of recognizability as queer and the swiftness with which that changes based on who my partner is. far too often, my entire gender and sexuality become about the gender identity of the person i'm dating rather than anything about me. all this being said though, i also know that i'm privileged in passing because my queerness is rarely a visible target of staring, behind-the-back whispers, or violence, and that those are things butches and other masculine-identified, female-bodied folks are forced to deal with constantly. i don't deny AJ, or any other person who exhibits female masculinity of any kind, the fact that their visibility is always more dangerous. the ways in which they bravely navigate that on a daily basis will always have my utmost respect and appreciation.
my frustration instead is about the need to make this comparison, to attempt to outdo eachothers' experiences of oppression. i would never say to a butch, a trans guy, someone genderqueer, that i experience discrimination worse than they do because of x, y, or z. i realize, in the case of visibility, their identity puts them in a different place, a more volatile place even, than myself, but i'm not going to tolerate them or anyone else telling me that i have it easy. this is not to say that differences in experience don't need to be acknowledged. of course they do! and in the particular case of discrimination as a result of visibility, i know who has a roughter time. but what's the point of sitting around contrasting whether the attack on your queerness is greater than mine? what gets accomplished in that? and more so, what significant information gets erased in this attempt? what about the particulars of space and time? or the specifics of the person and the variety of other intersecting identities like race and class and size, amongst others, that operate simultaneously with queerness and how we experience discrimination? are we really going to spend time figuring out whose feelings were hurt more or who was treated more unjustly when a stranger called you a "dyke" and me a "fat bitch"? or are we going to acknowledge the fact that it sucked in a bunch of different ways for both of us, but we learned a bit from each others' experiences as a result?
if we're queers and know what that means to us and understand the politics and investments of using that word beyond an identity of being G, L, B, or T, we need to learn what it means to be allies to one another; to be supportive, caring, respectful, self-reflexive, and to know that finger pointing and pitting ourselves against each other is futile. acknowledging the different ways we experience our lives and our identities is invaluable, but the pissing contest of who has it easiest and who has it worst seems to be a game with no actual winner.
anyway, this week's vlog was about sharing coming out stories, which was all well and good until about 4minutes and 45seconds in when AJ starts talking about being visibly queer and how she can never not be "out" because of her appearance. shortly after this, she relays the following message that has had me fuming for the past hour. basically, this: femmes have it easy. maybe my anger is misdirected. AJ is only one of many butches i've heard voice these sentiments in the past few years and i'm officially over it. so, to AJ, and all those who might agree with her, here's my rant:
so, check it. unfortunately, most of us who are queer have had homophobic speech slung at us at least once in our lives. whether it was directed to us individually, as part of a couple, or with a group, the impact is still the same. for me personally, this usually isn't what i get called out on the street for when i'm on my own or with a group a friends. if i'm going to be heckled in broad daylight in the middle of downtown, it's going to be because i'm fat or, the way i like to think of it, because i'm a hot fat girl who defies every convention of what it is i'm supposed to do - cover up every inch of skin, wear dark colors, talk quietly. basically, do everything i can to keep attention away from me, to fade into the woodwork. though truth be told, assholes on the street would find me there too.
when i've been the target of queer bashing though, it's always been in the company of others. a big group of my homo friends at a non-queer bar or arm-in-arm with someone i'm dating who, because i always date on the more masculine end of the gender spectrum, tends to be more visibly queer than myself, thus drawing attention to us. those times have mostly been scary, some downright terrifying and, later, when safety is certain and blood pressures have resumed a normal range, angering for everyone involved. never, though, have i sat down afterward with my significant other or with my friends and deliberated which one of us motivated the attack, who's most queer in appearance, or who has it easiest/hardest...and i, frankly, can't understand anyone who would!
i know all about the differences of visibility and invisibility when it comes to butch and femme (or anyone queer who doesn't pass as straight and anyone queer who does - the labels don't matter here); i deal with what it means to be invisible to a straight world, and even a queer world sometimes, on a regular basis. for example, there are few things more infuriating to me than my lack of recognizability as queer and the swiftness with which that changes based on who my partner is. far too often, my entire gender and sexuality become about the gender identity of the person i'm dating rather than anything about me. all this being said though, i also know that i'm privileged in passing because my queerness is rarely a visible target of staring, behind-the-back whispers, or violence, and that those are things butches and other masculine-identified, female-bodied folks are forced to deal with constantly. i don't deny AJ, or any other person who exhibits female masculinity of any kind, the fact that their visibility is always more dangerous. the ways in which they bravely navigate that on a daily basis will always have my utmost respect and appreciation.
my frustration instead is about the need to make this comparison, to attempt to outdo eachothers' experiences of oppression. i would never say to a butch, a trans guy, someone genderqueer, that i experience discrimination worse than they do because of x, y, or z. i realize, in the case of visibility, their identity puts them in a different place, a more volatile place even, than myself, but i'm not going to tolerate them or anyone else telling me that i have it easy. this is not to say that differences in experience don't need to be acknowledged. of course they do! and in the particular case of discrimination as a result of visibility, i know who has a roughter time. but what's the point of sitting around contrasting whether the attack on your queerness is greater than mine? what gets accomplished in that? and more so, what significant information gets erased in this attempt? what about the particulars of space and time? or the specifics of the person and the variety of other intersecting identities like race and class and size, amongst others, that operate simultaneously with queerness and how we experience discrimination? are we really going to spend time figuring out whose feelings were hurt more or who was treated more unjustly when a stranger called you a "dyke" and me a "fat bitch"? or are we going to acknowledge the fact that it sucked in a bunch of different ways for both of us, but we learned a bit from each others' experiences as a result?
if we're queers and know what that means to us and understand the politics and investments of using that word beyond an identity of being G, L, B, or T, we need to learn what it means to be allies to one another; to be supportive, caring, respectful, self-reflexive, and to know that finger pointing and pitting ourselves against each other is futile. acknowledging the different ways we experience our lives and our identities is invaluable, but the pissing contest of who has it easiest and who has it worst seems to be a game with no actual winner.
Sunday, June 29, 2008
femme conference!
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