This has been posted a few different places including The Femme’s Guide, and I decided it needed to be posted here as well.
It’s not often I’m moved to tears… or maybe it is often when someone articulates something so well as Ivan E. Coyote has here. The title of this post is a line from the first video, “The Femme Piece.”
Through watching the first I found the second, “A Butch Roadmap,” also by Mr. Coyote.
I thought this might be of interest to some of you other than just me. I’m going to try and make the Portland conference, I think, since Portland isn’t too far away or too expensive to get to. I’ll be keeping an eye on further information and posts about the conferences and I hope you do the same. I like the multiple locations of semi-smaller conferences, it makes it more accessible, but it probably also makes each less well attended, so it’s a bit of give-and-take.
Next year we’ll have the second full sized Butch Voices conference to participate in, this year we have four regional conferences.
Butch Voices 2010 Regional Conferences: Call for Submissions
BUTCH Voices is a national organization composed of social justice activists who share a commitment to building inclusive community for self-identified Butches, Studs, Tombois, Machas, Aggressives, our partners and allies.
This year we will be holding BUTCH Voices Regional Conferences in Dallas, New York, Los Angeles & Portland. We invite you to join us for workshops, panels, and performances intended to celebrate our diverse identities.
BUTCH Voices Dallas – June 5, 2010 – contact – bvdallas2010@gmail.com
BUTCH Voices NYC – September 25, 2010 – contact – bvnyc2010@gmail.com
BUTCH Voices Portland – October 2, 2010 – contact – bvportland2010@gmail.com
BUTCH Voices LA – October 9, 2010 – contact – bvla2010@gmail.com
These regional conferences will be an amazing opportunity to create local and regional community awareness, to share butch voices, and critical thinking about who we are. BUTCH Voices Regional Conferences are a place to: talk about why we identify in the ways we do, learn how to tell our stories, address femininity, masculinity, discuss areas of overlap and intersection that are none of the above. We will talk about sex, embodiment, community building, our physical and mental health, and issues that stand in the way of Butch-identified solidarity and justice. Most importantly, BUTCH Voices is the place where we can be ourselves with one another.
This is our Call for Submissions. We welcome workshop ideas of all kinds, films, performances, skill shares, especially on topics which speak to the cultural, sexual, emotional, physical, and psychological relationships that arise in the lives of Butches, Studs, Tombois, Aggressives, Machas, etc. We are open to all perspectives–queer, feminist, womanist, neither or beyond! We particularly encourage proposals by and for people-over sixty, under twenty-one, working-class, and people of color or persons with disabilities.
Deadline for Submissions for BUTCH Voices Dallas is May 15, 2010 and for the other three Regional Conferences is August 1, 2010. Please submit your proposal or abstract to the corresponding Regional Conference (email addresses listed above) in which you wish to present along with a short bio of yourself and any other presenter.
Please forward this widely to all who may be interested in participating.
Thank you,
BUTCH Voices
While I was in Juneau I bought a sports bra which is smaller than recommended for my breast size. I bought it for the sole purpose of using it as a binder, turning my large breasts into a still-large-but-slightly-smaller chest. I wore it while performing in Julius Caesar and quite a bit around Juneau in general.
I haven’t worn it too much since I’ve been back in Seattle, partially because on days I know I won’t be doing much outside the house I tend to wear things that are comfortable and loose, partly because I have been feeling rather femme lately whenever we have decided to go out, and partly because I’m not completely comfortable showing off this masculine identity to the world yet.
The last few days, however, I’ve been feeling more and more like binding, packing, changing my gender presentation to one that is more masculine. I woke up this morning and just knew I was going to bind.
I’m still not comfortable enough going out here. Juneau was more comfortable, but less comfortable for other things. I don’t know this part of myself well enough to show it to people here yet, but I’m working on it.
Image from The Adipositivity ProjectThis is the eleventh of many posts with answers to my Size & Sexuality Study questions within them. The responses have not been edited in any way. I hope you find them as interesting and informative as I have. I have gotten a huge number of responses already and I still want more! If you would like to answer these questions you can find more information on The Size & Sexuality Study here including links to the other responses.
This set of responses comes anonymously from a 34 year old “woman? not butch, not femme” lesbian who is “in an (open) relationship (i say open in brackets since neither of us have actually acted upon the opening up of it yet, and we haven’t quite worked out how this will take place exactly).”
What size is your body?
quite big all round, especially my thighs, I am a US size 18 for pants (UK size 20) – if they’re cut right… tops are easily 1-2 sizes less. (I don’t live in either of the countries I mention, and where I live I am way above average). if this helps, medically I am obese (and no longer just overweight).
How comfortable are you with your body both in general and your body size specifically?
I have always been overweight, ever since I can remember. I tend to oscillate between not paying any attention to it (as long as I don’t put on any more weight), and dieting strictly. I get very frustrated when I make a big effort to diet and it doesn’t work. I don’t recognise the image I get from mirrors – my inner image of myself hasn’t kept up with my weight increase.
Having said that, I do like my body in itself. I do wish it were smaller; but I also wish all that social pressure and absurd anorexic role models didn’t exist.
So, when I’m on my own and away from society I love my body- I feel self-conscious with people I don’t know, but I am happy to walk about naked on my own (I rather enjoy this), and also when my girlfriend is there. I probably don’t look at it much though…
How has your relation with and attitude toward your body and the size of your body changed over time?
Though I am bigger now, I am more comfortable with my body size now than as a teenager, when I would hide it more deliberately. I look at photos from the time and can only laugh at what I thought about it then -didn’t like it!-, and I’d love to come even close to the size I then was!
I have recently (3 yrs or so) done some sporadic yoga practice, and partly through this I have stopped thinking of myself and my body as two separate things. I hadn’t realised how I was doing this! I am trying to treat my body better.
How important is sexuality to your life?
Sexuality is very important right now. I have since my teenage years been very aware of my sensuality (my body’s!) and enjoyed that aspect very much, although not consistently, rather on and off (I have also gone through very, very nerdy, ultra-intellectual phases).
How has your relation with and attitude toward your sexuality changed over time?
This has also changed, it used to be that if I didn’t have a sexual partner I would try not to think about sex (but would seize any occasion to express this!). Nowadays I fell a lot more sexual and am exploring this intensely.
How comfortable are you with expressing yourself and your body sexually?
I am extremely comfortable – in the privacy of my home or my partner’s, on my own or with her. But not outside. I can be very self-conscious. I often don’t wear prettier, more striking clothes for feeling that dressing up a lot looks ridiculous on my body. I go for neutral, trying not to stand out. I am also shy by nature but my size has never helped… If I am considering approaching a girl I find attractive, it never occurs to me that she might not reject me because of my body, since that is the reaction I expect from everyone; I assume only after they get to know me there might be a chance that they decide to overlook the fact that I am fat… and so, unless I am already desperately in love, or maybe if I’m very very drunk, I never approach anyone.
How comfortable is society with the idea of viewing your body as sexual?
I am very aware of the anorexic role-models in today’s society and all the pressure put on women through them. I always comment on -and am comforted by- how famous paintings depict women with nice round bellies and hips as sexual, eg in famous artistic nudes. Look at the first bikinis and the girls who modelled them – they all had a belly and a nice round bottom! So I am aware that the extreme rejection of body fat is a circumstantial, prejudiced view of our times, and cannot be accepted as objective. I rebel against it; however, I still feel the enormous pressure out there and I hate it. – I also realise I am much bigger than the female figures I mentioned, but it is in this society where I will be furthest from the touted ideal. I also feel it is unfair that men are not rejected immediately for their size, at least if they are intelligent or succesful, and women don’t have that luxury. This I find particularly harrowing: I am successful on an intellectual level, but will stay a social pariah.
Through answering these questions and/or thinking about your relation to your body and your sexuality, have you noticed any links or similarities between the two? If so, what?
Of course! I have slowly come to terms with my body, but the outside obstacles to expressing my sexuality remain. This excludes my girlfriend, but they would reappear if I were single again, or when I consider whether or how to actively seek fuckingbuddies withing my open relationship. It’s not just a stupid hang-up: first impressions are extremely important, and I can’t help my body size (or stupid social obsessions) from playing a big part in them.
Anything else you would like to add?
I do feel very lucky to be lesbian, though, because the pressure on straight women is so much greater. Until I fell madly in love with a girl and realised I was a lesbian, I used to date men, and I felt even more inadequate. Either growing old or lesbian relationships or both have helped immensely in the positive changes I described in earlier answers.
This week’s HNT was Marla’s idea. We’ve been doing a lot of gender play since she got here in many different forms, and that combined with my newly cut hair, walking through this park a couple days ago and wanting to take pictures in front of the waterfalls, and the dress she’s wearing (which I was wearing yesterday) all gave her the idea for these shots.
I set up and took the pictures with my tripod and little camera remote (so handy!).
We got a little naughty in the park, it’s rare I’m on the other side of the skirt and I took full advantage of the fact she wasn’t wearing panties. Luckily there weren’t too many people around. You can see a hint of that in a couple of the pictures below.
Click any picture for a larger version of the same.
First a little of me…
One of her…
Then a little of us…
Check out Marla’s HNT for some of the same and some different photos!
Cross-posted on The Femme’s Guide here.
Femme–an identity that has caused controversy, celebration and ridicule–is now the topic of a two-volume set from Homofactus Press and editor Jennifer Clare Burke titled Visible: A Femmethology. Femmethology calls the LGBTQI community on its own prejudice and celebrates the diversity of individual femmes. Award-winning authors, spoken-word artists, and totally new voices come together to challenge conventional ideas of how disability, class, nationality, race, aesthetics, sexual orientation, gender identity and body type intersect with each contributor’s concrete notion of femmedom. – from femmethology.com
This month of April marks something I’ve been waiting for quite some time: the Femmethology virtual blog tour! Today is lucky enough to be my day, and so I’m sharing some of my feelings and insights related to the Femmethology. Visit Daphne Gottlieb tomorrow for her day, and all the sites at the bottom of the post on their days.
First, a little about the Femmethology:
Visible: A Femmethology
Femmethology is essential—a roadmap of Femme Nation, an index, an anthropology, a manifesto, and a googleology. – Dorothy Allison
Visible: a Femmethology is a two-volume anthology of essays revolving around femme identity.
I’ve been discovering and embracing my multigendered identity lately, but in that multigendered identity there is a solidly femme identity as well, which these books helped me remember.
Not that I had forgotten my femme identity, I just had been focusing more consciously on my fagette identity than my femme because it was new and in a way easier to focus on because it’s more visible (though only slightly). The identities in no way are opposites, they are complimentary, but they are also different. Reading through the Femmethology in a way re-connected me with my femme identity.
The biggest benefit of the Femmethology, in my opinion, is that it helps remind us that we are not alone as femmes. While some of us have many femme friends and a wonderful support system the rest of us do not and we have to navigate the world without much reassurance and reminders that there are so many of us out there feeling the same things. This is one of the reasons I started The Femme’s Guide in the first place, to emphasize that there are many of us out there, and while we’re all different we are also all the same.
I was moved many times throughout the two volumes. There were authors I knew well or moderately well, from various avenues such as Sinclair Sexsmith, Sassafras Lowrey, and Tara Hardy. There were many other authors that I didn’t know anything about, but I was able to get to know something about them through their stories.
Many stories touched me to the core, rocked me, and left me dazed and contemplating my own stories and my own identities.
I feel that Visible: A Femmethology is not just a book or anthology meant to be read, though it certainly is that as well, it’s also a look into each of these femme’s lives and voices, an adventure into different types of femme-ininity and different experiences that all somehow are similar because of this identity we all embrace and inhabit. It shows the vastness of femme while also showing what unites us.
It screamed “you are not alone” to me right when I needed it.
From the Introduction to the anthology: “Femme means I won’t compromise on complexity. … Above all, my femme is not your femme, which is the good news. … Femme means my sexuality, my partner choices, my definitions and my gender presentation might not match your labels.”
You can order Volume 1 and Volume 2 through the fabulous Homofactus Press.
You can also hear Sinclair Sexsmith reading his Love Letter to Femmes!
Check out the blogs below on the associated dates to learn more about the Femmethology volumes:
4/1. Sugarbutch Chronicles
4/2. Ellie Lumpesse
4/3. Queer-o-mat
4/4. CyDy Blog
4/6. Catalina Loves
4/7. cross-post: The Femme’s Guide and Femme Fagette
4/8. Daphne Gottlieb
4/9. Bilerico Project
4/10. Screaming Lemur: Femme-inism and Other Things
4/13. The Femme Hinterland
4/14. Bochinche Bilingüe: Borderlands Writing and The Vagina Adventures
4/15. Dorothy Surrenders
4/16. Miss Avarice Speaks Her Mind
4/17. The Femme Show
4/19. Sexuality Happens
4/20. Queer Fat Femme
4/21. Sublimefemme Unbound
4/22. Tina-cious.com and Jess I Am (butch-femme couple day!)
4/23. FemmeIsMyGender
4/24. The Lesbian Lifestyle
4/25. Femme Fluff
4/26. Weldable Cookies
4/27. The Verbosery
4/28. A Consuming Desire and Creative Xicana
4/29. Queercents
4/30. en|Gender
There are so many ways to play with and express gender and gender deviance, from subtle to in-your-face and everywhere in between. What I’ve been trying to figure out in the last few weeks is how to reconcile my femme and fagette identities into a conceivable whole. I’m often not sure it’s even possible, but I’m trying at least.
I was asked not too long ago on FetLife “how do you find the harmony of being both without being confused or feel like you’re betraying one half of yourself at the expense of expressing the other?”
Part of my response:
“Unfortunately, I don’t have a good answer for that question. I do often feel confused or like I am betraying parts of myself, but I can only realize that there is almost no way to not feel that way and in realizing try not to feel that betrayal. It’s difficult to almost never have my own gender perceived or acknowledged by those around me. I think that is one of the worst things about being gender-fluid, or any sort of multigendered, that it’s difficult or nearly impossible to get validation from others on your gender because there’s not an easy way to express gender fluidity, if it can be expressed at all in all it’s vastness. Since people want to categorize everyone they meet and since we are conditioned to view gender as binary it’s difficult to exist outside of that binary in the gender galaxy at large.”
My issue with this moves beyond being multigendered into the fact that not only am I multigendered but that due to my appearance I’m easily read by the outside world as cisgendered. It’s similar to femme invisibility, though the issue is gender invisibility rather than queer invisibility. While femme is a large part of my gender identity it is not all of it.
Femme gender and queerness is what is invisible, what people have trouble seeing or what people gloss over. Because my primary gender presentation is femme I have the same issues but with the added fagette twist. This isn’t to say that my invisibility is more than that of femmes because it’s not, it’s just a slightly different kind of the same invisibility.
Of course, it doesn’t help that I’m involved with a cisgendered male. I’m used to people not seeing my queerness especially when we’re together, and I’m used to people not seeing my fagette side because it can also look very femme.
It’s human nature to look for recognition in others, and look for others like you. Even while I’m used to people not seeing these things in me that doesn’t mean I still don’t want them to. I am slowly coming to embrace the fact that it doesn’t matter as much what other people see as long as I know how I feel and am being me to the best of my ability. It’s difficult, but it’s something I’m trying to do.
A few butches on twitter were talking about cross-dressing a while ago, I know Kyle and Sinclair were among them and don’t remember who else, but they said that when asked if they cross-dress daily they would say no because cross-dressing to them would be wearing a skirt. I began to question my own cross-dressing, and part of me thinks I do cross-dress daily.
I think clothes for me are cross-dressing, clothes for me are drag. Sometimes I think I’ve just internalized pomo rhetoric to the extent that I really don’t feel like I have an inherent draw to some gender or another. I know that even though all gender is drag that doesn’t mean that people don’t have a pull to some sort of gender expression or another. I do have a pull to gender expression, but I don’t know what gender expression is pulling me to it.
I wear skirts. I don’t wear pants. Honestly, I don’t wear pants because they are confining and uncomfortable. Although I can’t say that has nothing to do with the meaning of pants in our society since that is so ingrained in us and I’m sure it’s still ingrained in me, but I can say that my conscious reasoning behind it doesn’t have to do with that.
My only issue with skirt wearing is that it’s difficult to be androgynous in a skirt. Or, let me rephrase: it’s difficult to be perceived as androgynous in a skirt. If I were male in a skirt that would be clear, but female in a skirt seems to be perceived as nothing but feminine. Since cutting my hair short I’ve gotten a few more double-takes, a few more curious looks, but I’m generally dismissed as a short-haired girl regardless of how much I try to play with my femme fagette expression.
There are nights I feel more like a femme and nights I feel more like a fagette, and nights where I’m not sure what the fuck I am. The only harmony I can find is by overanalyzing, exploring, and allowing myself and my gender to grow and evolve.
Recently I’ve been thinking about and exploring the idea of packing. Somehow packing has come up quite a bit in the last few weeks, both in the form of reviews (both Holden and Erin Leone have reviewed packies recently) and pictures (Kyle shared some with us for HNT). I’d been thinking about packing in a peripheral way before these all came out, but they definitely brought it to the forefront for me.
I just recently received Silky in the mail, just yesterday actually. A almost flesh-colored cock that has a bendable spine in the middle enabling the user to bend it to any shape the six inches of shaft can bend to. I enjoy making it S shaped and such just to see how well it bends. Because Silky is so bendable it’s also great for hard packing (as opposed to soft packing). One of the main reasons I got Silky is to see how it works for packing.
I packed with Silky for a while last night, though I did it just around the house. It was unusual, but I definitely liked it. The thing about packing isn’t about wanting to have a penis, at least not for me and not for the people I’ve talked about packing with, it’s more of a focal point for gendered energy. It was a reminder more than anything else, something to draw my attention and to bring my consciousness to my gender.
While I was packing I was wearing a dress. My Silky was not really noticeable under the dress at all, unless I sat cross-legged and the dress draped over Silky, but even when that happened it wouldn’t have been apparent unless one was looking for it. It isn’t meant to be obvious, though, and just the fact that I’m packing under a skirt is genderfucky enough for me. The glaring gender “contradiction” is where I thrive. It’s where I find my harmony, even if no one else knows about it.
For the HNT this week we’re supposed to choose our favorite HNT from the year. I’ve done 18 since I started participating in Half-Nekkid Thursdays back at the end of July. I can’t just decide on one, so I’m going to show a few that I particularly loved.
Here’s a snippit of my latest post on The Femme’s Guide, though you’ll have to go there to finish it.
Much by accident I just came across this quote:
Marilyn was revered as a tigress, but she was loved (and pitied) as a kitten. In that sense her sexuality did not present a challenge; vulnerability made her manageable–it guaranteed her femininity.
The threat of other lustful man-killers is diminished by intimations of their androgyny. Mae West looked all girl but her style was decidedly butch. “It’s [men’s] game,” she says with trademark smarminess of her multiple, casual seductions in She Done Him Wrong. “I happen to be smart enough to play it their way.” Marlene Dietrich in tux and top hat is also both hyperfeminine and faux homme, a man in drag in drag. –My Enemy, My Love By Judith Levine p. 92
It goes on to talk about the book’s real point in bringing this up: the antipode to the Seducer or femme fatale, The Slave. But, that’s not really what intrigued me about it. I especially love this line: Mae West looked all girl but her style was decidedly butch. It is an angle I hadn’t really contemplated before, but basically Mae West as femme. It’s pretty damn obvious now that I’m thinking about it, but it just wasn’t a connection I’d made before. Though she wasn’t queer in the sense of sleeping with women, but she did have an affinity toward gay men and wrote The Drag.
The two ways used to describe Mae West and Marlene Dietrich are both incredibly queer, while Marilyn Monroe is more of an archetype for traditional femininity. Mae West was femme in look, butch in action, or simply a description of a type of queer femininity, or simply femmeininity. Marlene Dietrich was a man in drag in drag, a queer masculinity on a female body so that it is not the same as masculine because it is also overtly feminine.
Each time I start writing this review of Good Dyke Porn I have to stop and start over, because I keep on not being able to convey just how much I’ve enjoyed this site, and how wonderful I believe this site and these videos are. Not only does every video look like real dykes having real dyke sex (interpret that as you wish) and actually genuinely enjoying themselves, they are doing it in a way that is incredibly enjoyable to watch as well.
The only negative I can say about the site at all is that I found myself getting so turned on by it that I got turned around on it, unsure of how to get back to a page I was on before without the back button or scrolling through multiple pages. Part of that was me forgetting how I got to a page after watching a video, cumming, and being generally brain-addled from that.
Even with the slightly confusing navigation videos aren’t at all difficult to find, just getting back to a specific video or page was difficult for me, and I enjoy the general layout and the way each video is laid out, with the ability to watch or save each clip from each scenario. Another nice thing about the way it’s set up is that you can choose get a general membership to the site or just buy individual clips that pique your interest, which is extremely handy because not everyone is into all the same things, so you can just pick and choose what you want to watch and what you don’t. Of course, the more clips you buy the more you would save by just buying a membership.
I’ve watched a number of different clips and different scenarios, from a familiar pizza boy scenario to a femme circle jerk to a femmed up male-bodied dyke and his lover engaging in play, and many more! Each one was strikingly different but they all were exactly what the title indicates: good (or great) dyke porn. I loved the feeling that I got from watching these, not just the turned on feeling but like I was peeking in on what these dykes normally did with each other, not that I was watching some elaborately staged visual adult entertainment that was trying to be anything other than real dykes getting it on.
I especially loved that everyone looked like they were real people, with all different breast sizes, body types, and skin tones. Like I said, every scenario is different, with a variety of tones, toys, and activities. Some have strap-ons and other toys introduced into the mix, some are just dyke-on-dyke fingers and mouth on cunt action, some have restraints and BDSM or D/s overtones, some have all three. They are all in various locations both outdoors (hot!) and indoors and each one of them is extremely fun to watch.
Some of the videos even have extra ‘behind the scenes’ clips as a seperate clip after the hot action, where you get to talk with those involved in the scene and learn a little more about them. I loved this, almost more than the actual videos (though not quite–I did say almost!) because it just emphasizes that these are real people that you’re watching having sex and having fun. Hearing the participants explain what made them want to do porn and how they were feeling post-scene was a wonderful experience that I really appreciated being able to see.
I also love that there is a male-bodied individual in one of the scenarios. I noticed a post on the forum about this as well (another great feature to have on a sex-positive very women-friendly porn site, the ability to converse with other members about the porn and just about anything). The forum post had the title “Do men belong in dyke porn?” It wasn’t someone complaining, just wanting to know what the others there thought. There were quite a few responses, including this one from Bren Ryder the creator of GDP:
“Women like different things and some may argue that there shouldn’t be a dildo or there shouldn’t be cake or there shouldn’t be young beautiful femme women with perfect bodies or there shouldn’t be a scene where a bio-guy is dressed up like a woman and then gets fucked in the ass.
I say there absolutely should be all of those things and MORE. Anything that serves our queer fantasies. ”
The majority of others on the forum agreed with her and I couldn’t agree with her more. I was extremely surprised and excited to see a femmed-up male-bodied person in dyke porn! If you’ve been reading me for a while you know that I’ve been talking a lot recently about the queer ways in which males and females can interact sexually, so I love having a video on a dyke site to point to exactly that!
I think Good Dyke Porn is an amazing site full of wonderful videos enjoyable to everyone even remotely queer (and in my world that’s just about everyone). If you haven’t, I highly recommend you go check out the site, look at the samples, sign up for the forums, and maybe even buy some clips. You know you want to.
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