Gender Wars - A Femme's Perspective

[adorable]

Originally Posted by MsMerrick

But of course it is.. When someone asks for the butch perspective, and I go and post, although in all honesty I tend to refrain..But let's just say I do.. People do ask why ..
Well first of all, I repeat, no on asked you not to post
That has been repeated, nicely several times, and its also very clear in the original post. Why you keep repeating it, I don't know.
But to answer the first part, this zone is no different, the OP, specifically asked for a Femme Perspective,m and that make sit different from other Threads, that don't state that in their Opening Post. But again I say, No One has Asked you, NOT TO POST
ok ?
Does yelling it help ? I prefer not to yell but I also prefer for people to actually read what I said. And I don't like it when people read in something, that wasn't there, nor even thought.


Good grief, a perspective, is a exactly that ! Not a Truth with a capital T. And yes, ones experience, ones identification, all those things color our perspective.

Yeah well but you see..None of that..actually happened ..
Do you write scripts for faux News or something ?

LOL! I would never write for faux news....but I have always kind of wanted to write for Anderson Cooper. Admit that he tugged at your heart strings during Katrina....anyway...please do not read my posts as hysteria, but rather with annoyance.

I'm not sure if I've had a change of heart or if it's the drinks...

My post in this thread, I still argue wasn't a perspective but an observation. So to be asked or as I see it as being called out specifically because I don't ID as femme is a double standard that I haven't found in other threads. Perhaps it's there....in the thread on this topic on the butch zone, plenty of femmes posted and not once did anyone ask for clarification. I doubt the ID of femme alone means that someone has a clarity on perspective. Femmes are not the same, anymore then all butches are the same, anymore then all trans are the same.......

Not IDing as a Femme or a Butch for me personally is about how the words are used HERE. Where I live in real time, they are not used in the same way that so many people use them in online. My real time community and I use the words in the same way. My experience online has taught me that people absolutely freak out in the way I use the words....and I know that is because of for many they consider it their gender. Gender is something that I am VERY respectful of on many levels and embrace for all people. How people feel on the inside is not a joke or something I want to be seen as dismissive of... ever. It has happened to me in real time and online.
So I don't use the term butch or femme as an ID in here.
I am most aligned with Kiki in a historical sense. I don't embrace it entirely. I am both butch and FEM which is not short for femme, rather feminine....which is how we use the words here... Kiki was used as a disparaging term during the 1950s which does trouble me for that reason. I don't consider myself a switch sexually - so to me Kiki doesn't equal switch and why I prefer use it for myself.
I love the 1950s version of BF that I have read (I wish there were more) I tend to romanticize it....
I am a feminine woman who is seen as straight in my day to day life. I tell everyone I am queer because I am lucky enough to live where I do....it takes far less bravery then it does for many of you. Location, location, location.
I belong to all and nothing. In my head and with people who know me in real time I am understood or at the very least respected. Translating that online is very difficult. I can say that my experiences are very similar as a woman with many on this site. Exactly the same? None are exactly the same. But I am a woman. I am queer. I am a mother and a daughter. I work. I cry. I feel. I love....

[Gayla]

Originally Posted by adorable

So I don't use the term butch or femme as an ID in here.
I am most aligned with Kiki in a historical sense. I don't embrace it entirely. I am both butch and FEM which is not short for femme, rather feminine....which is how we use the words here... Kiki was used as a disparaging term during the 1950s which does trouble me for that reason. I don't consider myself a switch sexually - so to me Kiki doesn't equal switch and why I prefer use it for myself.

This is the second time in, I believe, as many days that I've seen someone say this. No *sigh* not the exact same quote, not using the same words, etc. etc. but a similar concept.

I have no issues with what people call themselves and where people fall along the butch-femme line as it is constantly changing for most all of us on some level. I also have no issue with people who do not identify as butch or femme participating on the site.

I do have problems when someone speaks from "the place of" a specific ID that they do not own. This is what it has felt like when reading your posts in various threads over the last few days.

[adorable]

Originally Posted by gayla

This is the second time in, I believe, as many days that I've seen someone say this. No *sigh* not the exact same quote, not using the same words, etc. etc. but a similar concept.

I have no issues with what people call themselves and where people fall along the butch-femme line as it is constantly changing for most all of us on some level. I also have no issue with people who do not identify as butch or femme participating on the site.

I do have problems when someone speaks from "the place of" a specific ID that they do not own. This is what it has felt like when reading your posts in various threads over the last few days.

I apologize. If I have to own an ID to post how I feel about certain things I'm not sure what to do about that. Perhaps I don't belong?

ETA: I didn't speak in this particular thread in that way if you look at my OP either. I was simply agreeing with two femme's perspectives and an observation that I had made. It was something I wanted to add and I personally thought had value to the current discussion. I didn't take the OP and answer all the questions as if I was a femme....

[Nat]

Adorable - if you are here you belong. The interest in your Id (for me) has been more "how do I read your words" than any determination about whether or not you belong or have a right to speak. Anyway thank you for being kind enough to indulge the questions.

My gf does not identify as either butch or femme and she is total awesomeness in my world. She doesn't post here partially because of that and partially because she's not a huge fan of Internet forums, but I do hope she would feel welcomed here if she ever did decide to join.

[adorable]

Originally Posted by Nat

Adorable - if you are here you belong. The interest in your Id (for me) has been more "how do I read your words" than any determination about whether or not you belong or have a right to speak. Anyway thank you for being kind enough to indulge the questions.

My gf does not identify as either butch or femme and she is total awesomeness in my world. She doesn't post here partially because of that and partially because she's not a huge fan of Internet forums, but I do hope she would feel welcomed here if she ever did decide to join.

Thank you.

My ID will not help you read my words any more then anyone else's ID helps you read their words. Words themselves help you understand where someone is coming from. Words and who someone is helps you understand perspective.

All people in general have different perspectives based on where they live, how they were raised, what has happened in their lives, who they are partnered with, who they have been partnered with in the past, where they work and in some cases how they fuck.

To say that somehow knowing or understanding my ID will help you read my words doesn't make anymore sense to me then if I said I was a purple goat. In order for my ID to help you read my words we would all have to agree on the same definition of particular IDs which will never happen. If anyone starts saying that Femmes do this and Butches do this - well, that isn't true is it?
So for me people that claim femme or butch (or any other ID) doesn't have anything to do with their perspective on a particular topic.

Someone isn't saying something because they are a certain ID, they are saying something based on the whole of their experiences.

[Nat]

I disagree with you like 90%.

[SassyLeo]

Originally Posted by adorable

Thank you.

My ID will not help you read my words any more then anyone else's ID helps you read their words. Words themselves help you understand where someone is coming from. Words and who someone is helps you understand perspective.

All people in general have different perspectives based on where they live, how they were raised, what has happened in their lives, who they are partnered with, who they have been partnered with in the past, where they work and in some cases how they fuck.

To say that somehow knowing or understanding my ID will help you read my words doesn't make anymore sense to me then if I said I was a purple goat. In order for my ID to help you read my words we would all have to agree on the same definition of particular IDs which will never happen. If anyone starts saying that Femmes do this and Butches do this - well, that isn't true is it?
So for me people that claim femme or butch (or any other ID) doesn't have anything to do with their perspective on a particular topic.

Someone isn't saying something because they are a certain ID, they are saying something based on the whole of their experiences.

Originally Posted by Nat

I disagree with you like 90%.

I disagree also...

Here is why.

"All people in general have different perspectives based on where they live, how they were raised, what has happened in their lives, who they are partnered with, who they have been partnered with in the past, where they work and in some cases how they fuck."

And ID'ing as Femme, Butch, Trans, a Dyke, a Lesbian, a Man, etc... all are figured out from one's own "soul searching" of course but even that is influenced by what has happened in folks likes and who they are partnered with, what communities they are involved in, what they learned from other Queers, communities, etc.

How I speak and how my words are heard and read are absolutely influenced by how by my Femme identity and how I figured it out...through friends, experiences, communities, whom I dated, etc. BECAUSE I learned and discovered this from all those things.

How you/I/we came to figure out/decide the ID that suits us is a product of living, experience, environment, etc.

So, I'm not sure how those things can be separate. We are products of our lives' experiences.