Open Letter: Dear Femme

[Bit]

Originally Posted by evolveme

..... 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.

.......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.

Julie, these are my first thoughts and I'm not sure I answered everything you said in this post.... heck, this might even be a tangent, but it's what came to me.

Femme is at the bedrock for me. It's what kind of energy flows through this body to express this soul. It's NOT my sexuality--it's my gender.

Queer is my sexuality as well as my community. So yes, if I have sex with another female-bodied person, the very act of two females having sex together is Queer and it doesn't matter what the other person claims, Straight, Bisexual, Lesbian---if they're sleeping with ME, a Queer Femme (dating, or in a relationship--not talking about the merely curious straight woman who dabbles and is gone), then they're Queer in some way. If they weren't before, well guess what, they are now.... just as I was when I started sleeping with my first partner, even though I insisted LOUDLY I was still straight.

NOT, I say to that long-ago girly. NOT. *wry smile*

I'm not creating this Queerness in another person, yanno? It's already there or they wouldn't be having sex with me, just as it was already there in me or I wouldn't have been so wildly in lust with my ex. BUT what I responded to in June's post was the community reaction to the idea that a Femme might--or even could--own the power of sexuality enough to Queer someone. That's the Butch's province according to the unthinking assumptions prevalent in our society; Butches get to claim the toaster ovens for converting/Queering other females, because Butches are most like men and sexuality belongs to men. According to this unconscious idea, Femmes have no right to claim such things--and June ran smack up against that wall.

It was that unthinking masculine/male-centrism in the community that I was responding to.

Does that explain my point better?