[christie]

I have been reading and rereading this thread, trying to wrap my head around some of the points of view and perspectives. Some things really hit home… others not so much, but I recognize that they are valid points of view.

What I am hearing is a majority consensus that we femmes are seen as supporting cast members rather than the headliners.

That we are seen as “less than” our masculine counterparts.

That we are seen as “less than” in our queer community.

That we have been silenced because our presenting energy isn’t masculine.

That we are the sum of our roles rather than an entity in our own right.

I also think that quite a bit of what is being spoken here is very generalized and vague. Perhaps it’s just that I am not in the majority in my experiences of navigating the world as a femme. Maybe it’s that like for some, femme is just another facet of me. If I start listing all that is Christie, femme, while important, is just an ingredient in the recipe of me.

While I can certainly understand all of these things, for the most part, they just don’t apply to me; or at least they don’t apply to the majority of my lived years. Is it that I feel like they don’t apply in my “real life” and that I see it happening more in online communities? Have we considered that the surge in BDSMers in the BF world might have something to do with the perceptions of being silenced, of being seen as less than and in a supportive role? It seems that the majority of kinksters in the Top realm of power exchange relationships are predominantly masculine and that most bottoms are feminine. That in M/s dynamics, the “s” is akin to chattel, without a voice or expected to have/use a brain, that in D/s, a submissive is consenting to the Dominant’s will.

I would hope that no one interprets my observation above about BDSM as anything but more in that I think as the subcultures of the queer world grow and expand, so does the coloring of our perceptions. I think that as a subculture within a subculture (BDSM within BF) becomes more highly visible and is the “chatter (latest, greatest new thing)” that “voice” or that image can be seen as the collective view.

In my early adulthood, yes, I tried to live the life my parents mapped out for me. It was very apparent to me that I could never be “that” woman. In the end, I had to give myself permission to live my own life. I think that all young adults, no matter gender or ID, have to move through this process.

Even in living that lie, I was still who I am today. Perhaps not as enhanced and evolved, but the core of who I am has always been there. Different qualities taking on more presence, or less presence, as I grew, matured and moved through the world.

There was a point made by evolveme about who we are outside our roles. For me, I think that even in shedding the labels, the attributes of that role are still present. For example, if I had not had the role of “mother”, I would still be a nurturer. I don’t think I would have quite the same depth of nurturing ability. For me, being a mother makes me be “better.” My perception of what being a mother means has meant those qualities, which I already possessed, were brought to the surface and utilized and challenged.

I don’t use males or masculinity as the scale by which I am measured, unless, of course, it’s to be superior. I never “threw a ball like a girl”; I always “threw a ball better than anyone else.”

I do think that my motherinlaw’s view of women has caused me to be more in “competition” with what she considers male superiority. When we were taking bids for floor refinishing, she said something about my crackhead, IQ of a piece of cardboard brotherinlaw and how she wanted to rent the equipment for him to refinish his own floors. I looked at Jess and said, “Oh fuck that. If he can do it, so can we.” Moral of the story, four weeks of backbreaking labor and love and we have amazing floors… all done at the hands of two women.

A man who inherited the business from his father employs me. Both are very staunch, conservative republicans with stay home wives and are both the walking, breathing epitome of male privilege. They had never had a woman in power at their company, in its entire 56 year history until I joined them 1.5 years ago. I could tell at the beginning that I would have to stand toe to toe with the elder so as to not be pigeonholed into what I felt his ideas of my role would be. The son, who is my age, has said that I have changed his father’s perceptions of women. Just last week, I was promoted and will be taking over the helm of the business in January. I am not so naïve as to think that I won’t have a struggle ahead of me just because I wasn’t born with a penis.

I am a strong, independent, intelligent, feminine, imperfectly perfect, simply complex, female entity. My relationship does not define me. My partnering with a beautifully exquisite masculine female does not define me. Demanding that my voice be heard does not make me less feminine. It does not make me more masculine. Running the world and being Queen of all I see doesn’t make me less feminine or more masculine. It just makes me intelligently strong. It’s just me.

For me, it’s not about letting the world chose my role within it… It’s about me choosing how I am viewed in the world.

Christie