I think it may be weird if it is not a known TPE (Total Power Exchange) relationship. I've been in those (with bio males and butches). Giving up the power is freeing on one hand but there is a loss of self if you and your Dominant are not careful.

I've seen some seriously kick-ass strong femmes in these relationships. They are not doormats. As someone else said (Snow?) those submissives were some of the strongest women I've ever known.

And I have also seen what the negative side of that turns people into--grasping, clinging, whining, can't make a decision to pee or poop by themselves. It's ugly. And there's no saving those types from themselves. They will keep going back to that type of relationship until they wise up and grow the spine necessary.

I know. I used to be one.

EXACTLY.

In my world, Femme is neither what we wear nor what we do--nor whom we do. Femme is who and what we ARE. Nobody--N O B O D Y--can take it away from us.

Omg, you're kidding! They didn't get that?!

Well, I suppose the context might make a difference on that one, come to think of it.... if I said that to a Transman, I don't think it would necessarily sit well, cuz yanno, Man + Femme does not equal Queer unless the Transman himself already identifies as Queer. But anyone else I might sleep with? Hell YES it would make them Queer to sleep with me... that's the societal definition of Queer, two females having sex, and I am definitely female--so YEAH, if other female-bodied people sleep with me, it means they must be Queer, whether they were before or not.

I'm picking up this undercurrent in your post, June, please correct me if I'm wrong... but this statement about people being Queer because they sleep with you, it's about power, right? It's about the subtle perception that only Butches, being masculine, have the power to claim sexuality, to "make people Queer" through sex? Am I reading you right that people were angry because they saw you "usurping" that masculine power?

If I'm reading you right, THAT is most definitely not only masculine-centric but also male-centric, since it would be derived from the cultural idea that sex belongs to males and females must neither initiate nor enjoy it.

Overthrow that stereotype! Claim that power, Sister Femmes! Viva la toaster oven! :cheesy:

Cara, hon, I wanted to answer you specifically.
{{{{{{{{{{{{{{Cara}}}}}}}}}}}}}}}} I have been there, I have been there, I have been there. It is a most uncomfortable feeling for me, yanno? Usually it's a fear of offending people, although sometimes when a convo has been strongly academic I have thrown up my hands and walked away because I just haven't been able to muster up the energy to .......omg, I just almost said "compete" when I meant to say "participate"!!

That pretty much tells me about the threads where I have run into that--none on this site, btw--but oh, how telling!

Well, anyhow. What I mean to say to you is start slow. Take baby steps. Your post here is a marvelous start, very courageous. Speak from your heart, darlin, and the more you do it, the easier it will get.

Sometimes a person just has to break through that fear barrier one step at a time. Soon enough, you won't be silencing yourself any longer. :bouquet:

I love y'all, and I think I understand why some of you share this conceptualization around queering others by virtue of fucking them, but it doesn't work for me, and here's why: Although I hold an identity as queer lesbian (femme is my gender) my sexual orientation is more accurately pansexual. It would not work for me whatsoever if by having sex with a straight leaning male-identified fella, a straight heterosexual transman, or a straight bio male that any of these folks decide I were "straightened out" by the act of sex with them.

I think we have the capacity to affect one another on all kinds of levels when we engage this way, but never in the way that we identify, unless that mechanism is not held consciously by us.

See, if it's an act of taking back power for us to say that anyone who fucks me is queered by me, then I feel that power was artificial in the first place because it cannot work both ways. If it only works for me, and not him, then it's a lesser power. He'd think of it as trite, possibly.

I don't want a trite power. I want a whole one.

:stillheart:

I feel one hundred percent whole in my power because the act of queering for *me* has always been consensual. Every. Single. Time.

I discuss before I leap, because I am sick and fucking tired of the world at large identifying me by whom I fuck. Nobody gets to do that to me.

Now I must confess I have had dialogue with those who would not consent with me, nor I with them. No clothes were removed after the dialogue.

The power within me is to remain Queer because it is who I am.

This rather relates to what y'all were discussing before in the way a femme's (and I would say, a feminine person's) agency shifts when she is single. Aspersions are cast, rumors are flung, assumptions run like flood waters. She is identified by both who she is fucking and who she isn't (i.e., who it is assumed she is fucking).

I love that you've made your queer a conscious conversation. This is so important, perhaps especially for women. Sometimes, this has been true for me as well. But either way, it can never be negated. I don't need it to be true for anyone else. I don't have to make it true for them for it to remain true for me. Queer has less, these days, to do with who or how I've fucked than how I think.

I believe we're more alike that way, and in most ways, probably, than we could ever be different. And that is the reason, after all, that I found a home in femme. Why my queer is centered here.

:heartbeat:

Taking two steps back in the conversation...
 

Yeah, we've all had those experiences, but that doesn't make me throw the baby out with the bathwater. If anyone was ever surly with me, that would be the last time they were allowed to open a door for me, yanno?