Visible: A Femmethology, Volumes One and Two

This is probably as close to a book review as you're going to ever find in this space. I can write a lot of stuff, but book reviews have never been high on my list. Too stuffy and presumptuous for me. You're expected to read symbolism into shit. I don't do that. I read stuff and tell you if I like and why. Here goes.

Title: Visible: A Femmethology, Volumes One and Two
Edited by Jennifer Clare Burke
Published by Homofactus Press
ISBN: 978-0-9785973-4-4

Somehow, this great gal named Maria who works for the publishing company (I think) found me and asked if I would review a couple volumes of collected writings by and about femmes and what makes them femme.

What this butch girl can say about femmes is really pretty limited. I have dated one or two, slept with a couple, and ogled my fair share. This latter bit probably marks me as a tool of the patriarchy, but oh well. I like the way women look. And some of them happen to be femme. Is it wrong for me to ogle the cute butch with the swagger and brush cut? God, I hope not.

I also have to confess my own ignorance of femme politics. Only in recent years have I opened my eyes to the concept that a femme identity might be something more than passing for straight. Only in recent months have I begun to try to learn more about femme identity politics and what it means for me, for our culture, and for the queer liberation movement.

For a very long time - indeed my whole life - the mysterious art of make-up, hair, nails and fashion have been foreign to me. Much like I view people who have amazing technical skills with computers or the visual arts, I have tended to view femmes, high femmes in particular, with a certain degree of suspicion. Their art is beyond my comprehension. It was something to be feared, or perhaps ridiculed. Girly girls. Feh. Who could take them seriously?

My internal sexism was stronger than I had ever imagined. It took me over 40 years to recognize it. I am now working on that. Perhaps the fates saw fit to put me here to read this collection to help in that effort. Wise and witty women, those fates.

So anyway, there is the two-volume TOME of writing edited by Jennifer Clare Burke and published by Homofactus Press, LLC. It contains the thoughts and musings of something like 50 writers. They are femmes and not-femmes, old and young, some schooled in the language and dogma of feminist theory, some radical and outrageous. Their brilliance and wordcraft are impressive.

As I paged through the volumes, a couple pieces jumped out at me as instantly attractive to my butch bottom sensibilities. Femme Fuck Revolution by Hadassah Hill was one that really appealed to me. Hill flings a stiletto in the face of old-school, Dworkin-style feminism and keeps marching. Damn. Gives me shivers.

The piece that moved me the most, that kept my eyes riveted to the page, that wrenched my heart and made me think harder about what it means to have an identity of any kind, butch or femme, was A Decade Later - Still Femme? by Sharon Wachsler. This piece is a revision of an original essay by Wachsler called Still, Femme, first published in the 1990s. Wachsler has a chronic and debilitating illness that has changed her life enormously from her early, carefree, younger years. She describes her life as a young "power femme," dressed to the nines in skirts and heels, makeup just so, hair perfect, striding with confidence and attitude everywhere she went. Then disease struck, something called Chronic Fatigue Immune Dysfunction Syndrome (CFIDS) and Multiple Chemical Sensitivity (MCS) laid her low. Confined indoors, safe from the chemicals of nature (pollen, dust, mold) and the chemicals of man (pollution, smog), she had to vastly adjust her behaviors, her daily rituals.

The makeup and lipstick that had once been her war paint, that wonderful empowering battle-garb now became her undoing. A day wearing makeup meant a week of increased medicine and rest. Her body could no longer do the things she used to enjoy. Muscles lost tone. Movement of any kind is an exhausting effort. One of the paragraphs that gripped me most was this:

I realized that most of my femme identity was bound up in those narrow social contexts - getting dressed up, going out, being among other queer women - and in the "props" of those contexts. Now that I could no longer enter those surroundings or wear the clothing, makeup, and accessories that went with them, was I still femme? Where is the meaning in being femme if I am absent from the queer women's community? My hair tangled, my body limp and sore, my skin splotchy, I wondered if I would ever look good again. Was there any point in being femme if I were unattractive and inert?

What point, indeed? How much of our identity is what we show the world? If suddenly I were incapacitated in such a way and could no longer do the things that I do that make me feel butch - fixing my truck, building things, wearing jeans and work boots - the things that make me feel powerful and competent, for indeed that is how she described her "power femme" identity, what would that mean to my identity as butch?

Wachsler describes how she has transformed the power femme she once offered into something softer, gentler, something she once held in low regard. She now asks for assistance when she needs it. But not in a plaintive way - she asks with grace and dignity, much like a lady of a certain era might be expected to ask for assistance.

Far from the shrinking violet that her physical body has become, Wachsler's mind and words are as intense and concentrated as they were in the early version of the essay. Carefully, she argues not to get disability politics mixed up with butch/femme stuff. She thoughtfully discusses the recent re-emergence of butch/femme identities in queer culture and the ongoing invisibility of femmes at queer events unless they tend to be on the arm of a butch or androgynous lesbian.

She writes passionately about ableism and her struggle to maintain her femme identity even as her body fails her. She has assistants do the grooming things that once were so much a part of her presentation to the world. Her identity has had to become more internalized. Her speaking voice is difficult to use and similarly difficult to understand. She must draw very clear lines around what kind of helping she allows her lover to do and what she allows her personal care assistants to do in order to be able to maintain some kind of autonomy of her sexual presence.

Her disability has required Wachsler to turn inward, to contemplate the meaning of identity and to consider its implications and expressions. Through that looking within, she seems to have come to a comfortable realization about who and what she is and how she relates to her now restricted world.

I'm in awe of the true power and beauty of my femme spirit's ability - when the rising tide of debility and loss threaten to engulf me - to keep my psyche afloat ... physically, I might be unable to swim, but psychologicaly, my femme nature has kept my head above water. In ways I never could have expected - in ways I couldn't understand, myself, until I started writing this essay - my inner femme has been reaching toward drifting water lilies within my grasp, and I've grabbed ahold, usually without knowing why. Often I shiver. I keep looking for a boat that hasn't yet come. Sometimes I think about just letting go and slipping below the surface. But femmes are fighters. Every once in a while, when I'm truly lucky, the light glints off the water, and I feel the sun on my face.

May I have half that kind of presence and poise as time moves on.

***

The rest of the two volumes is filled with more stuff than my brain could absorb. Much of it is very dense stuff the likes of which I have not read since leaving college and giving up on the quarterlies of intense papers that every academic seemed to want to get into. There was a lot of talk about how invisible femmes are, and I get that. No, I really do. Femmes are largely invisible in and out of the queer world UNLESS they are on the arm of a more-obvious lesbian.

There was a lot of writing that involved highly academic terms and footnotes and references. Those tended to feel like I was back in school doing research. There was a lot of talk about how being femme is part personal identity stuff and part performing for the world.

Then there were pieces like This Femme's User Guide by Alex Holding. It's in Volume 2. Turned my head and set me down upon it. The line that got me?

Femme isn't always intentionally performative. When I roll out of bed and down to the coffee pot after not enough sleep to find myself leaning against the kitchen counter, eye makeup smeared all over hell and slip askew, I can guarantee that I am not performing for even myself in that moment, but still, I feel femme as fuck.

Uh- huh. That's the femme I can understand and appreciate. The Queen Latifah kind of I'm-gonna-kick-your-ass-and-you're-gonna-love-it kind of femme. But then, I am attracted to those kinds of girls.

Sinclalir Sexsmith also has a beautiful piece in Volume 2, called Love Letter. Damn, but I wish I could write like that. Damn.

***

I haven't got the first clue if this is the kind of review anyone wanted for this project. I know that there was an awful lot of writing, and it was all excellent. There were as many styles as there were authors, and I don't think I know anyone who could not benefit or enjoy reading these volumes. I found myself curiously contemplative as I read, sometimes taking one paragraph at a time, closing my eyes to absorb it, making a note in the margin, and then reading on. Good stuff. Jennifer Clare Burke did a hell of a job compiling and editing these volumes. Very nice indeed.

Contradictions

Who would have thunk that the events of the past week, what with Darlene jumping on furniture and screaming at mice and me sewing her lace-hemmed pants as a kind of joke gift would lead to such serious thoughts as those currently swirling over there at the Slant.

At issue is Darlene's dilemma: should she leave the white lace ruffle on the hem or her cat-and-mouse pajamas or should she remove it. Initially, I had given my consent for her to remove the lace so that she would be more comfortable in the pants, but then a conversation ensued about comfort zones, expanding paradigms and breaking down stereotypes. All from a pair of pants with mousies on them. Good grief.

So here is the thing. Darlene and I are both what is considered butch in the queer world, which means a variety of things depending upon the person and the community. When I hear the term butch, it brings to mind a certain set of descriptors that are pretty cut and dried: masculine in appearance and attitude, certainly no make-up, perfume is more likely to be a men's cologne or not at all, a harsher, brasher demeanor than our more feminine sisters, and in some cases, less open to emotional expression. It all sounds very much like my dad.

Now, I identify as butch. OK. To me this evokes a lot of what I just mentioned. But, I do lots of things that are considered to be among the "feminine arts" like cooking and sewing. I have a little side business selling cookies to a local coffee shop that keeps me in pin money through the summer. Somehow people don't have a huge problem with the idea that I might cook. Women cook all the time, but it is not unusual for men to cook either. In fact, look at the Food Network sometime and see how many shows there are hosted by men. Scads of 'em! To the point where volumes have been written about women chefs trying to break into the business. So people are ok with a butch woman like me cooking.

But then they learn that I know how to sew, and that I make some kind of neat things when I do sew, it gets stuck sideways in their brains. It is true, though. I make all my own Hawaiian shirts, for example, and all of L's and my pajamas, for summer and winter. I make aprons to use in the kitchen, and i have even sold a few. I also do easy stuff like little rice pillows to stick in the microwave and use as heating pads - utterly wonderful!

Usually by this time, people's eyes start to glaze over, or they begin to look for an escape. Because nobody wants to deal with the apparent contradiction that is me. I am a butch woman who likes to weld and build things and cook and sew things. Why is that weird? Why is that upsetting to what people understand of the world?

Because I straddle the realms of what are classically considered to be men's and women's roles and behaviors. I challenge people's perceptions of what is appropriate and acceptable.

To the straight world, I am a woman who behaves and dresses often in very mannish ways, and who is a contractor who builds things and welds things and generally gets along at the hardware store like one of the boys. The fact that I sew and cook does not seem that unusual to them because they see me first as a woman who is rebelling in this other realm, but behaving like I am "supposed to" over here with the kitchen and the sewing machine.

To the lesbian world, I am a big butch gal who drives a truck and uses tools and generally does all kinds of butchly things and then I throw a wrench into the works by announcing that I can sew and cook. The queer community sees me first as butch, then as a woman, never considering that I might be comfortable in some areas of both.

I have to say that I generally get more grief from lesbians, particularly butch ones, for my sewing and cooking than I ever get from the straight world for welding and carpentry.

And I find that to be both fascinating and sad.

Did not our forbears in this movement march and die for our right to express ourselves in whatever way makes us happy? How is it then that the queer community wants so desperately (broad brush, blanket statements, I know - work with me here) to pigeonhole us all into little categories from which we cannot escape. An effeminate man is destined forever to be labeled as a sissy boy or queen, or as he ages, as an old auntie. Perhaps he is comfortable in those roles and within that set of behaviors and circumstances, but woe to him if he is not. If he decides to take a beginning carpentry class at the local adult ed program, he's going to get grief from his community for "trying to be all butch. Do you think he can get a hammer in pink?"

Why is this? I think it has to do with pecking order, with power, and with insecurities. Gay men are emasculated by the straight world for being queer and then again by the queer world for being "too queer" which in my mind really translates into "too female" which brings us into our own internalized sexism.

We (and this goes for many gay men as well as lesbians) don't want to be weak, so we cast aside all of the vestiges of femininity. We avoid the kitchen save for trips in for pizza and beer. We eschew skirts and dresses and lace and frilly things because they remind us of our place and role in society as second-class citizens. We loathe that stuff with the passion of a sixteen-year-old-boy. We become the sexist pigs we fought so long and hard against.

I confess I do not know much about femme politics, but I am learning a little bit here and there. I understand that the girly girls have as much trouble within the gay community as nearly any other sub-set because they seem to assimilate in straight culture by day and sleep with women by night. But I understand that assimilation is not the idea here. They are as comfortable in skirts and heels as I am in work jeans and boots. And who am I to tell them they're selling out or "passing" when to do so would be to judge them with the same sexist brush that so many men use to paint women as inferior.

So all of this came about as a result of an inch of lace and satin at the bottom of a pair of pajama pants that I sewed for another butch girl. Which is funny, because I added the lace as a dig, an attack, if you will, upon her butch status. As if by adding a thing generally associated with femininity it could reduce her status somehow. It was a joke, but it has raised some very serious thoughts.

So now, to keep it or leave it? Well, I have argued for leaving it. I think it would be good to reach a little outside of our comfort zones, to expand a paradigm or put a few chinks into the old stereotype. How insecure are we if an inch of lace hem is going to threaten the integrity of our inner most identifying features. I have not asked her to march down Congress Street in the things, merely to wear them around the house and maybe listen to what her inner self has to say about the whole experience. They were made with affection and care, and I think that might counter some of the weirdness associated with the image they offer. If the inner self really chafes that much at the lace, then take it off. It's only single-stitched and the rest of the garment is double-stitched. But for a while, why not try on something to challenge us and to see what we can learn from the experience. If this butch girl can cook and sew without jeopardizing my status, then certainly another can wear the products of my labors without doing so either.