[imperfect_cupcake]

When I was in college, a local elder of the river community came to talk to us about the anthropology field study we had just completed. He talked to us about privilege. He said that we were privileged to have had that education and experience. That we had the time and means (student loan) to do so and many of us have the privilege of being white or being a respected member or a group who can speak with authority. Or both. Use that privilege to influence change for balance, so others can have that privilege.

One thing I have really learned from living in many different places in this world is that the privileges I have in Vancouver are not the same when I live somewhere else. I lose some and gain others when I move.
In some places I just lose some.
People forget that there is a giant subtext to talking about privilege and hierarchies. Its experiences are local.
I did not have any of the problems that I had as a femme in the community in London that I have here. And there were even more when I lived/stayed in seattle and NY.
The atmosphere of fear of the gay is what drives femme invisibility. When that lessens, I find there are fewer problems for people within the community itself.
Before I left I would have agreed there was a hierarchy. Now I just think there are fuckwits I don't want to know or bother with.
Invisibility is real but when I exchange my visibility for lesbianism with perceived heterosexuality and availability to men I get all kinds of fucked up shit in return that I DONT have when I'm visible. Yes there are privileges to passing. I can go into the B&B and book a room when my partner gets told there's no rooms left. I get a job when someone else does not (I may have to be in the closet, but I got hired). But this is not about how I shouldn't have those rights - and these are rights, and everyone should have them, not have them taken away as a privilege I don't deserve.
But I would like the privilege that I won't be considered to be stupid, shallow, submissive, superfluous, silly, an item that can't understand complex conversations like a pretty plant, no capable, helpless, greedy, insecure, need a cock in my mouth to shut me up, a gossip, weak, meddling... I can go on... Because I am feminine. Even in the feminist circles of the just me hippy types my age, when I asked one of them, as we were in a group and having a drink and I could feel that old tension between being found attractive and being hated - and it felt like being around men - why didn't she put that she wanted to date femmes in her profile online her answer was: because she thought she's get responses from girls who were fluffy and shallow.

That sort of says it all right there really. My local lezzo community wants to fuck femininity but they don't want to talk to it.

Its deeply sexist. And it comes from feminists.

As a feminist I find this disgusting.

As a human it feels fucking debasing.

And it is really hard to get back into the zen mindset of "wanker bell end I don't want to talk to, and so are your friends" and not colour every single non-queer IDing lesbian in Vancouver with the same brush of "ignorant sexist wank rag" and despair.

My invisibility allows me access to RIGHTS we should ALL have. And its my job to use any privileges to ensure others have access to rights too.

However, if I want to bitch and moan about the rampant sexist fucking ass cheese about the basis of invisibility I goddamn well will. If you don't want to hear it, piss off then, I'm not making you stay and listen.

If you have issues of invisibility that are different than mine, open your big gob and tell me what they are. You have a brain and a mouth and I have ears and a brain.