Open Letter: Dear Femme

[evolveme]

Originally Posted by apretty

how and in what ways have you allowed yourself to be silenced by femmes? sorry, i do feel like this is blaming the "femme", and as the "femme" i'm feeling curious about what this means, because so so so often i've heard women described as gossiping, catty, skank bitches--by MEN, so i would just like to make absolute sure that we're not perpetuating false stereotypes.

so i would love to look at specifics or maybe we could say, 'my expectations were xyz, and a femme friend did this....' or 'one time a femme did.....' because i truly believe this is painting femme with broad negative brush strokes when we say 'femmes did...' and don'tchaknow that keeps us all down in the misogyny muck(ery)

I love what you're saying here, and it's important to me too. I don't want to get caught in the trap of negative stereotyping, especially not of other feminine people.

But I posted earlier about how female and feminine people are socialized to "be good" (so that they are more easily controlled and thus more palatable to male/masculine others) and how this is so overwhelming that it forces natural tendencies to aggression into what is termed relational aggression.

You can witness these types of behaviors as early as kindergarten, even pre-school.

Girls will gather and isolate. They will shun and gossip. They will punish one another by way of social mechanisms (you can even see these behaviors displayed among certain gay male groups). It takes a strong sensibility and a compassionate heart to avoid these behaviors, because they too are heavily socialized.

ETA: I think it's much more useful to understand it than to rage about the tendency.