June Cleaver : Femme Friend or Femme Foe

[aishah]

Originally Posted by JustJo

On straight women claiming Femme...

Like julieisafemme, I was very late coming out....as in a handful of years ago...and I spent a long time squashing down any self-knowledge about myself and my sexuality, refusing to look at what was missing. Once I finally figured it out, it was an incredibly freeing feeling....to be able to have a word for that part of who I am.

So...I don't want to share "femme" with straight women. I feel like they have plenty of other words they can use to describe themselves without co-opting ours.

That's really the only limit for me. I don't think femmes need to partner with butches, or anyone, to be femme. I have no problem with gay men claiming femme. For me, femme is a queer thing.

I get that maybe straight women admire something that we have or are, and want to claim femme...but that would be like me saying I admire Lady Snow and want to be like her...and claim Latina. It just doesn't work like that in my head.

Loving this conversation

i pretty much agree with this. but i tend to defer to people's self-identifications, so i don't think i'd ever say to someone YOU cannot claim femme...but if somebody asks me, that's my view on it. to me, femme is by definition queer (whether it's a queer man or woman claiming that id). and to me it is my gender. and i do believe one can be femme and in a relationship that looks straight. or in a relationship with a straight man. that doesn't necessarily make a femme less queer.

the thing that REALLY bothers me, way more than straight women claiming femme, is when other queer people (especially butches and transguys) identify straight women as femmes. my partner and i had a conversation about this because his roommate is a straight woman and she's sweet and we get along well but he's like "y'all femmes like to talk so much" and i'm like she is NOT a femme. she doesn't id as femme. she's a feminine straight (very heteronormative) woman. to me there is a world of difference. same for feminine lesbians who don't id as femme. one of the things that came up with me and my partner is his ex is a feminine lesbian who is adamantly NOT femme...and he definitely has pointed that out...and i am like, well, how can you turn around and start labeling all these straight women who definitely don't id as femme, as femme?

i can't explain why that bugs me so much, but it does. maybe it's the way it feels like it contributes to further making us invisible and erasing us. maybe it's just that i like being a special snowflake.