i'm not sure when exactly i started identifying as femme. as long as i can remember, i've always been very femme and queer, and i came out when i was really young, but i didn't have a strong queer community around me. i didn't really know a lot about butch/femme culture or about femme identity until i found my queer disabled poc community/virtual home, a lot of whom are femmes. i've often felt excluded from queer community and disconnected from butch/femme because i have been read as straight for so long (i also used to cover my hair - i'm muslim - and that is a pretty big barrier to being seen as queer unless i'm around other queer muslims). being disabled and dressing differently because of that (no spike heels :() and my faith also left me with the feeling of not being 'femme enough.' anyway, once i found queer disabled poc community who i felt 'saw' me, i knew i was a femme and i started id'ing as femme.

i've always been attracted to butches but i am usually read as straight by them so i've never really been around butches a lot in a flirty/romantic sense, more in an acquaintance/friendship sense...getting to know my partner (we were acquaintances in the queer community/local activism stuff where we lived, and i was usually treated as an ally/straight person, before we started dating) was the first time i really felt 'seen' by a butch. he was like, "duh, i knew you were queer from a mile away." :)

I knew I was a Lesbian when I told my friend at 13 that she's beautiful.

When I was a kid/teenager I always looked for the most Butch looking women when driving through the 'Gayborhood'.

I tried to impress girls and look more like a dyke by dressing the part of butch... which lasted all of 3 months. And then the cargo shorts and oversized tshirts had to go.

I had flings with women who were not Butch... and it was just that flings.

I started dating women that were tomboys. When the L word came out I had a crush on Shane and then even more on the Butches.

Finally in my midtwenties a Butch picked me up and took me home. It was only after several relationships with Butches/AGs/Studs... that I learned what a Femme is.

And I went, 'Oh, I guess I must be a Femme'.


I feel that I am Femme because my main attraction is to Butch and because I am a lesbian.

I started noticing that I'm most attracted to masculine women. I don't see myself as a girly girl, but in relation to what I'm attracted to, I guess that makes me a femme.

When I was 14 and I saw a beautiful butch woman up close and I said, "I want that with a cherry on top!"

OK, so I didn't know the double meaning of cherry, but you get my drift….

I was 22 and had recently broken up with my ex of 4 years who was a woman. I never really considered myself gay, I just figured I was In love with my ex because of them as a person, nothing to do with my sexuality. I dated a few guys after the relationship ended but it just didn't feel right. One day I decided to try chatting online and the first person I messaged was a really handsome butch. After chatting I was opened to this whole new world of butches and femmes which I didn't even know existed. "Gay" was not just one cookie cutter type of relationship. I was so completely consumed by the butch femme dynamics and I knew I loved being a femme as much as I loved having a butch. Now when I see a handsome butch I get all flushed and butterflies in my tummy and its like a 13 yr old girls crush. But nothing has ever made me feel as flustered and intense as that first butch. I'm so happy I met them and was opened to this part of my life.

I knew in 2nd grade...but took the long way around...

My first little "girlfriend" liked to be called Davey...and I wouldn't THINK of wearing a dress unless it twirled.... (I STILL take a "spin" when I pick out skirts and dresses!)

Me too! Dresses really should pass the twirl factor before I get them (unless they wriggle of course).

And to answer the question, I dont really know. I'm not entirely sure what femme even means, everytime I look it up I get even more confusing descriptions. But I do know I like to be feminine and wear feminine things and I also know I'm attracted to masculine women so I guess that makes me femme? I remember when I was 15 I knew a girl who was very masculine and we used to tease each other and kind of treat each other in a traditional masculine/feminine way. I know she isnt gay or anything, but I think that was the first time I really started to notice women with that certain energy.

I knew I was a femme when....
 

....when every butch I met told me so. :p



Seriously, I remember the moment so vividly. It was the summer I would turn nine. My best friend was eleven. We were spending our last day together before we would spend two weeks apart. I was to visit my grandparents and she would spend her time productively picking blueberries to earn spending money. We had spent all morning hiking the trails on Sumas Mountain. By noon I started watching her face for any sign that she might be thinking about lunch. We kept ascending the mountain. I was tired but I didn't complain. I never did. I never would. We approached a fallen tree that blocked our path. I started to clamber over the barrier when suddenly I heard her voice, "I'm hungry." Finally, I thought. "Aren't you hungry?" she asked. "You never want to stop for lunch." I looked at her shyly (I know it was shyly, because I was shy). "I don't get tired," I lied. She grabbed my knapsack and pulled out our usual cucumber sandwiches. From her knapsack she retrieved two cans of grape pop...I grinned...my mom never bought pop. We gobbled our lunch. I tried not to. I always liked to save half my sandwich for her. We talked about bikes and how she would teach me to catch a baseball. We talked about friends and siblings. We sat for a long time it seemed. I waited for her to reach for my hand. She always did. She always would. Her tall body and short dark curly hair was a contrast to my smaller body and long blonde hair. Her dark tanned skin gave her substance. I was so blonde I was almost not there. She reached for my hand. I stared at our hands. Clasped. My clean white hand wrapped in her scratched dark hand. I don't know how long we sat there. But we had stopped chattering. We sat in silence. I looked up at her face. She was staring at our hands. She saw what I saw. I kissed her cheek. She tugged my pony tail and said, "We won't get to the top just sitting here." I got up. I felt good inside. We were the same. We were different. We fit.

I realised when I was 26/27 when after being bisexual since I was 14, a butch from italy took me to bed. OOOooohhhhh... oh I'm NOT bisexual. I just like a female who is both a boy and a gal. at the same time. with sex. ohhhhhhhhh... right.

That nailed my sexuality. My gender was that being with her made it totally safe to be who I wanted to. Unlike being around cis men and bisexually curious heterflexible women, I was a massive tomboy, dressed boyish, acted boyish - except for lounge evenings when I would shine like a glittering drag queen.

She made it safe to be one all the time. I didn't have to compete with her like I did cis men and the tomboy heteroflexible gals. Suddenly, I could be girly and not put down for it. Not feel vulnerable, not be attacked for it, with her.

I had to unpack a whole heap of shit. It was really hard work. But I got to speak with a gender accent that suited me. I got to own glitter and dragonflies and butterflies and a pink lunch box and 60's mini dresses and wigs and... anything I wanted. And not have to worry about it anymore.

well. With her. Outside of that, the world still sucked. But at least with her my femininity was respected as capable, independant and valuable. It was lovely.

My femme id
 

For me my identity as femme came in pieces. I have always known that I was and still am a very feminine woman. Even as a child playing with all of the local boys - hiking, swimming, having a great time - I was ultra feminine. I was 15 when I knew for sure that I was a lesbian. For the next 5 years, all of my experiences were with feminine bi or straight women. I was at the end of my rope with these girls. There did not seem to be any lesbians out there that were what I really was looking for. I was bored. Then I met her, the one that would be my first long term relationship. Only the 2 nd butch woman that I had ever laid eyes on ( yes I was from a very small town).. And the world was finally right. Everything seemed to fall in place with her. Finally a piece of the butch- femme dynamics.

As a side note, all of these years later and in a much more gay friendly area I am still seen as an ultra feminine straight woman. One of the drawbacks of being my type of femme. Damn, why doesn't everyone see this blinking neon sign sbove my head?

I knew I was femme from the first memory I had of my childhood. I remember standing beside a row of Barbie dolls in fake plastic high heels and a tiara with a wand. I naturally gravitate to dominate butches/FTM guys and it's always been that way. My happiness comes from getting my nails done, being obsessed with purses and making my hair as big as possible. I've become very Scarlett O'Hara in my 20's and it suits me.

It's great to come back after a long time away and see this thread still going strong. :)

I'm just now beginning to be brave enough to refer to myself as femme, and even that I'm only comfortable with here on bfp. I don't know why it takes feeling brave about it.

Anyway! For me it wasn't a single aha moment. It was gradual, and had a great deal to do with finding BFP and being able to connect with a lot of what femmes here shared. It kind of helped me sort out my own feelings, to read about what other people had sorted out for their own, if that makes any sense.

It's a little about outward stuff - if I could afford it, I'd have mani-pedis all the time, the cutest clothes ev-ar, all that sort of stuff. Femme doesn't specifically mean that, in my opinion, but if I had my druther's I'd be one heck of a cute pinup type.

But mostly, and really, it's about the inside stuff. I don't know how to explain it except that once I began to have a grasp on what "femme" kind of meant, it was just a calm sort of "yes. that means me." kind of feeling, as if I already knew that about myself and I was just learning the word for it is all. Which is sort of the way it was, I guess. I feel like the type of energy/power/whatever I have in me, it's feminine in nature. This is remarkably hard to explain! Hopefully/probably a lot of you know what I mean, anyway.

So for me, it's about that energy, and what happens to that energy in response to someone who's butch to some degree.

I always knew I was a feminine woman, but it wasn't until later in life that I realized (accepted) that I am best matched with a butch. I was remodeling a room and was getting estimates from contractors. Was waiting for someone to come by and give me a bid. I knew I was a femme when I looked through the peep hole, saw a woman who could have easily been mistaken for a man by someone with a less discerning eye, and the first thing I thought was thank goodness I put on some lipstick. She came in, sat down, and we talked for three hours. My life hasn't been the same since then.

I should add that I had been with a butch years before. When we started our relationship she was a soft butch but she grew into a stone butch. We were both young, didn't have any role models, and didn't understand the body issues stone butches sometimes have. That, coupled with my own insecurities was a recipe for a disaster. After that relationship, the last person I wanted to meet was a butch ... My heart aches for those two young women who were trying to find love and understand ourselves when the odds were against us (at the time, among other things, homosexuality was considered a mental illness by the American Psychiatric Association and our friends and families most certainly thought the same).

Anyway, the day I looked through the peephole was the day I stopped fighting it and re-assessed my life. Haven't looked back.

A gradual process
 

Sooo...

I don't really have any stories about always being a girly-girl (I wasn't and still am not...). Growing up, I was always actually a bit of a tomboy and hated wearing dresses or playing with baby dolls. At three, I'm told, I promptly kicked a newly gifted doll down a flight of stairs and, apparently insulted, huffily went back to my LEGOs and dinosaur books. I favoured action figures, climbing trees, and wrestling with the boys, and thought frilly pink tutus and those little play kitchens were stupid. I probably have a lot more in common with the butches growing up than a lot of the femmes. Up until puberty when everyone started acting funny around each other, most of my friends were boys and the girl friends I had were mostly the spunky, mouthy, smoking-behind-the-school, bad influence types (okay, most of my girl friends still are, but I digress...). :p

I was raised in a family with somewhat feminist-y second wavers who eschewed over the top displays of femininity as frivolous or capitulation or desperation to get a man. Being feminine was a negative. The men in my family never really enforced the boundaries either and to dress feminine in a cold environment like Atlantic Canada was seen as impractical.

I then flirted with the goth and punk subcultures as an adolescent and donned the frilliest lace dresses, pointiest boots, most femme-y shirts, and tonnes of makeup but it was okay because it was mostly black and "edgy" and it didn't feel feminine to me. It was "counter-cultural" and to be conventionally feminine meant, to me, giving in and giving up, conforming and also, frankly, as a girl who was always chestier than most of the others my age, it meant making myself a target. If I could distract or deflect some of the attention off of my body by wearing equally distracting clothes, then win-win. I won't lie and say that I didn't also get positive reinforcement from the teachers and some of the adults in my life who, through their own internalized sexism, saw me and the other girls like me as girls they were more willing to take seriously than some of the just-as-smart teenage girls in designer gear with perfect hair. I won't say it didn't happen because it did and I played into it.

To be frank, I did buy into a lot of the sexist messaging which said to be feminine meant a lack of intelligence (and as a girl growing up who was always pegged as "the brain" wherever I went, I certainly didn't want that). I thought it was frivolous. I thought that to show my sensitive or feminine side was to show weakness and as often the only girl in a group of boys (and eventually one of only a handful of girls and women in school and university partaking in male-dominated environments and debates, that was definitely something I didn't feel like I could do). I was already a soft-spoken, quiet, sensitive introvert. To allow myself to be seen as (more) feminine, I felt, would have been intellectual suicide. So, I didn't allow myself to explore that side of who I was and I certainly never felt safe doing so.

There were, however, little blips along the way.

There was this girl when I was in high school, a friend of mine, the only out lesbian in our grade (there were three in the whole school) who had a lovely, punky, baby dyke spike and who played the drums in her own punk band. We got along really well and she was funny, smart, and sweet. She made me feel a little strange inside and the way she looked at me made me uncomfortable and squirm in my pointy boots. I can remember feeling also a little unnerved when in her presence. I can only describe it as feeling naked. I turned into a giggly mess with her. I told the most stupid jokes just to see her laugh. We wrote the worst teenaged poetry and shared it with each other. Hers made me blush. Sometimes I would attend some of her practices after school in the band room and remember feeling transfixed and flustered when she'd take off her button-down shirt or jacket to reveal her athletic shirt and drummer's arms. After class I would gush and go on and on about the latest band or skirt or pair of boots I'd found and would gab her ear off excitedly before realizing that 10, 15, 20 minutes had passed and she'd barely said a word. I would say sheepishly, "I'm rambling again, aren't I?" She would just grin. There was never any judgment and, butterflies aside, it was an easy yin-yang friendship. I would often sneak glances at her in class to see how she had done her hair that day or if she had worn that shirt with that steel necklace and those clunky boots which announced her presence before she appeared around the corner. I thought at the time that I was just admiring her teenage counter-cultural style instead of admiring the butchy figure she struck. I was so far in the closet to even myself at that point that I dismissed the idea of being attracted to her as anything more than a friend. I knew there was something different about the two of us when we were together but I stuffed it down and pushed it away along with my own femininity. For the first time, though, I felt feminine with someone and also felt beautiful.

I thought it was a fluke.

And then I met a few more like my drummer friend along the way and gradually, over a process of years, I noticed two things: one, I was really, really attracted to these unconventional, masculine, butchy women and two, I felt safe to be feminine in their presence. This second point was key for me. Butch women helped me to see femininity in a positive light. They helped create a space in which it was safe to explore that. Butches helped me see that feminine could be smart, could be fun, could be desired by someone without in the same breath being hated and denigrated by that very same someone. They helped me see it was okay and helped break down some of the ugliness and misogyny surrounding it which had attached itself to it via heteronormative society. Frankly, I never would have claimed femme as mine if it weren't for those who claimed butch as their own.

I really relate to what honeybarbara and others have said about it feeling emotionally and physically safe to be feminine around a butch. That's something that I don't think more masculine/butch people quite fully get. It's not always safe or desirable or easy to be feminine. Frankly, it takes just as much courage and fortitude and thick skin to present as an overtly feminine woman as it does to present as a masculine one. There's a lot of shaming and baggage and a huge culturally prescriptive narrative that goes along with that and sometimes against the din of all that messaging it's hard to separate the "I am's" from the "therefore I should's." Even with that backdrop, though, it feels safe to be a feminine woman around a butch when it really doesn't feel safe in any other place. The energy between us is quiet and it's gentle and there's a kind of reverence there that I haven't found anywhere else.

And it feels like finally being able to let down the armour. Sometimes it feels like I've had the armour on for so long that I'm surprised myself by what I find underneath of it.

The ability to be feminine and be seen for it, to be appreciated or, perhaps, even loved for it, and not have to couch it or qualify it, be sheepish or self-deprecating about it, that to me is what it means to claim femme. It's still a process for me and in many ways, I feel like I'm playing catch up with other women... but at least I'm finally here.

I knew I was femme when I met my first butch. It just took me years to find the words and a lifetime to finally say it.

That’s where the magic of this pairing is for me. The way that two people, so hugely different, can combine to give themselves a new level of meaning through their interaction. They are both perfectly valid and whole in their own right, just as a sculptor is still a sculptor when walking down the street. Put them together though and, like giving the sculptor clay, a deeply authentic part of their true selves can be expressed.

For what it’s worth, I see feminine as beautiful, as something to be respected and cherished. I seek it in a partner but also value it in society at large. If my butchness can help provide a context for a femme, to let her know that despite any societal judgement her natural instincts are appealing in their own right, then I take extra pride in my own differences.

This. Exactly.

A yup. For the first time I wasn't told I was silly, surperlfous, fluffy, insipid and that "I must like shopping"

(Later I found out this happens too with many butches, but it wasn't always an automatic)

I found that some lovers liked watching me put on make up.
For the first time in my life I was safe enough to be a submissive. To be a Papa's girl. To be totally feminine and not try so hard to be a tomboy to compete with men. I suddenly didn't have to prove anything because I was smart and capable.