The Femme Continuum: The "Highs" and "Lows" of Visibility

[Words]

Hated the article, not least of all because of the stereotyping inherent in the author's take on what constitutes femme.

For example...did she bother to ask the ten women whose photos were shown in the gallery if they consider themselves femme or did she simply assume that because they're pretty and wear dresses and make up that they couldn't possibly be anything but?

If anything, the article left me feeling even more invisible than I felt before.

Words

[stepfordfemme]

Originally Posted by Words

Hated the article, not least of all because of the stereotyping inherent in the author's take on what constitutes femme.

For example...did she bother to ask the ten women whose photos were shown in the gallery if they consider themselves femme or did she simply assume that because they're pretty and wear dresses and make up that they couldn't possibly be anything but?

If anything, the article left me feeling even more invisible than I felt before.

Words

Point well taken on the gallery (I hadn't even looked at the pictures)
Thank you for pointing that out.

Ironically in fact about half of them were tv characters that are played by straight (or not known to be out women). For example Santana from Glee, the girl from PLL, the two Grey's characters -Calizona

Blog style articles tend to be from an author's POV. And she also has started a submission project of pictures from self defined femmes on her blog.

Ladies, what experiences would you relay to the world if you were to write a Huff Post article on femme invisibility ?

[Ginger]

I guess I don't care if I'm invisible as a femme. I don't care what people I don't know, don't know about me.

And if people make assumptions about who I want to sleep with, I don't care about that, either. If they matter to me, I'll give them more information so they know me better. If they don't matter to me, I don't care if their assessment of me is inaccurate.

I can't relate to the pain of invisible femme-ness. And the way I feel about this, doesn't make me less of a femme, or a lesser femme. I'm just a femme who doesn't care if I'm the only one who knows it.

[starryeyes]

I could give 2 hoots if I am invisible in the straight world...though the reactions are interesting. It's in the gay world, I feel hurt. Our own community stereotypes us and can't recognize us. I hate being the "straight girl" with a butch partner, or an outsider of the community because "I'm not really gay". Bah!

But, when you do get recognized... It makes it so worth it!

[stepfordfemme]

Originally Posted by starryeyes

I could give 2 hoots if I am invisible in the straight world...though the reactions are interesting. It's in the gay world, I feel hurt. Our own community stereotypes us and can't recognize us. I hate being the "straight girl" with a butch partner, or an outsider of the community because "I'm not really gay". Bah!

But, when you do get recognized... It makes it so worth it!

I really want to echo this. I felt it most when I was coming out and was trying to find my place in the community. I never felt like I belonged and I felt like I stuck out. Gay boys thought I was just an unsure hag. Lesbians didn't welcome me because they thought I was either a straight girl, bi or experimenting

The "you're not really gay" used to hurt the most.

Now I just respond with "No, I'm just queer and fabulous." and flash a smile.

I own my femme. Visible or invisible

[femmeInterrupted]

Some interesting thoughts on this whole "femme invisibility" topic.
I'll speak from my own individual place, as a femme, and also, as I relate to this subject as a feminist.

So first of all, I'm about as invisible as a full blown super nova. I take up space. I have opinions, presence, and don't move through any space, queer or not, like some invisible wraith in a push up bra and a pair of heels.

It sits somewhere unpleasantly on the shelf next to 'reverse racism' for me. Issues of passing locate themselves importantly in the axis of power and privilege, of oppression and violence. Just like there is no such thing as 'reverse racism' against a dominant white body, the idea of a 'passing' as straight through the world is privilege, that is being spun now as the 'oppression' of not being seen. It's not an accusation to be read as 'straight' by a heteronormative world. It's simply an anatomical fiat: I have a gender, that gender is femme. I express that gender in ways that FIT me. Those expressions give me an undeserved, unwarranted privilege in passing.


Femme Invisibility: not so much.





I prefer this:

[femmeInterrupted]

Just came across this image on Pinterest. Thought of this thread.

[girl_dee]

Originally Posted by IslandScout

I guess I don't care if I'm invisible as a femme. I don't care what people I don't know, don't know about me.

And if people make assumptions about who I want to sleep with, I don't care about that, either. If they matter to me, I'll give them more information so they know me better. If they don't matter to me, I don't care if their assessment of me is inaccurate.

I can't relate to the pain of invisible femme-ness. And the way I feel about this, doesn't make me less of a femme, or a lesser femme. I'm just a femme who doesn't care if I'm the only one who knows it.

i read this and i hear you. A while back i would have agreed 100%.

i don't agree. i want to be visible but more as a whole. We are a huge part of the gay population and the gay rights movement, i don't see myself as much of an individual as i do as a community among sisters in a big gay world. Our presence shows people that gays aren't so bad and we live and breathe among the rest of the world. The shock effect, i love the shock effect.

i feel the more visible we are, the more knowledge we bring to people, like at my current job which i just spoke of. My job as a gay woman is not to convert people but i feel when we educate people about assumptions and hatred, and how we are not all deviants trying to convert their children, the easier it will become for those coming up behind us to live in this world. i know it's getting better but i am reminded daily that we have a long way to go.

i used to feel like *fuck em*.. it's not my job to educate the world. Now i feel like it is, i wish someone had gotten thru to my father, maybe my life would be a lot different. Being gay was not an option. i feel like if by using my invisibility helps change the mind of a couple people, like the ones i work with, maybe life will be better for their children.


i guarantee you if i had walked in for my interview being visible, i would not have gotten this job. Privilege at its finest. A month later and we have all had a great time and bonded a bit, being gay isn't such a big deal.

[Ginger]

Originally Posted by girl_dee

i read this and i hear you. A while back i would have agreed 100%.

i don't agree. i want to be visible but more as a whole. We are a huge part of the gay population and the gay rights movement, i don't see myself as much of an individual as i do as a community among sisters in a big gay world. Our presence shows people that gays aren't so bad and we live and breathe among the rest of the world. The shock effect, i love the shock effect.

i feel the more visible we are, the more knowledge we bring to people, like at my current job which i just spoke of. My job as a gay woman is not to convert people but i feel when we educate people about assumptions and hatred, and how we are not all deviants trying to convert their children, the easier it will become for those coming up behind us to live in this world. i know it's getting better but i am reminded daily that we have a long way to go.

i used to feel like *fuck em*.. it's not my job to educate the world. Now i feel like it is, i wish someone had gotten thru to my father, maybe my life would be a lot different. Being gay was not an option. i feel like if by using my invisibility helps change the mind of a couple people, like the ones i work with, maybe life will be better for their children.


i guarantee you if i had walked in for my interview being visible, i would not have gotten this job. Privilege at its finest. A month later and we have all had a great time and bonded a bit, being gay isn't such a big deal.

I really hear you on the employment issues, Dee. I never judge people who are not out at work. We all pretend at our jobs in one way or another, or most do anyway.

I'm out at work, but I wasn't for the first few months.

Being out at work usually doesn't have an impact on how it feels to be there but this past week I had a meeting with the chair of a department at my college, and it came up.

He was commenting about a guy in my department who is regarded as a kind of "womanizer." I said I "don't get" the appeal of the guy, but I'm gay, and since the only way he relates to women is by flirting, I don't even notice he's there most of the time.

The department chair looked kind of startled. Then he told me his daughter is gay and she's about to marry her partner of ten years. He said it was hard for him at first; he kept asking her, "Are you sure?" but now, he's happy for her. He looked at me differently when I left. He walked me all the way to the exit, past all the other offices.

I don't think I'm out at work to change the world. I just don't have the energy to constantly reinvent myself to make others comfortable.

It's also personal for me and not about being gay. I recently left my partner and felt invisible in her house for a lot of reasons that were amplified once I withdrew from the twice-weekly family dinners where her mother glared hatefully at me and jumped in to invalidate everything I said. I went everywhere by myself and never felt so alone in my own home and life when I was in that relationship. That kind of invisibility damaged me in ways that are going to take a while to heal.

Maybe that's why I also, lately, stepped out as a gay person at work (I'm already out at work and it doesn't usually come up but there is a certain subtext in place when I make a comment about gay stuff as opposed to a straight person making it), and laughed at my boss when he said he didn't want to write an article about a queer lit professor because "it's not his thing." He seemed really uncomfortable that we even have a queer lit class at the college.

And I laughed out loud at him, which he didn't like. I said, "I've just never heard a manager be so open with his homophobia." Then I said, "Just don't make comments like that at Cabinet!" and laughed more.

The guy was embarrassed and back-pedaled strenuously to justify his comments. I said look, what if I say I don't want to cover a Jewish history class because "it's not my thing." (I'm not Jewish, but my boss is, and anti-Semitism is the only "ism" that gets to him, IMO.) I was playing devil's advocate, of course. To his credit he didn't play the "boss" card, and we just moved on.

I work in a very politically correct environment with a lot of institutional protections in place for gays and people of color but it doesn't sound like you do. I can say those things because I have protections in place.

But did I "change the world" as you describe that act of being out in the world?

I don't know. I enjoyed the exchange. And guess what, he has changed. He's much cooler now about this gay guy that works in another department that he used to make unkind remarks about, for one thing. I wonder if it's related.

[girl_dee]

Originally Posted by IslandScout

I really hear you on the employment issues, Dee. I never judge people who are not out at work. We all pretend at our jobs in one way or another, or most do anyway.

I'm out at work, but I wasn't for the first few months.

Being out at work usually doesn't have an impact on how it feels to be there but this past week I had a meeting with the chair of a department at my college, and it came up.

He was commenting about a guy in my department who is regarded as a kind of "womanizer." I said I "don't get" the appeal of the guy, but I'm gay, and since the only way he relates to women is by flirting, I don't even notice he's there most of the time.

The department chair looked kind of startled. Then he told me his daughter is gay and she's about to marry her partner of ten years. He said it was hard for him at first; he kept asking her, "Are you sure?" but now, he's happy for her. He looked at me differently when I left. He walked me all the way to the exit, past all the other offices.

I don't think I'm out at work to change the world. I just don't have the energy to constantly reinvent myself to make others comfortable.

It's also personal for me and not about being gay. I recently left my partner and felt invisible in her house for a lot of reasons that were amplified once I withdrew from the twice-weekly family dinners where her mother glared hatefully at me and jumped in to invalidate everything I said. I went everywhere by myself and never felt so alone in my own home and life when I was in that relationship. That kind of invisibility damaged me in ways that are going to take a while to heal.

Maybe that's why I also, lately, stepped out as a gay person at work (I'm already out at work and it doesn't usually come up but there is a certain subtext in place when I make a comment about gay stuff as opposed to a straight person making it), and laughed at my boss when he said he didn't want to write an article about a queer lit professor because "it's not his thing." He seemed really uncomfortable that we even have a queer lit class at the college.

And I laughed out loud at him, which he didn't like. I said, "I've just never heard a manager be so open with his homophobia." Then I said, "Just don't make comments like that at Cabinet!" and laughed more.

The guy was embarrassed and back-pedaled strenuously to justify his comments. I said look, what if I say I don't want to cover a Jewish history class because "it's not my thing." (I'm not Jewish, but my boss is, and anti-Semitism is the only "ism" that gets to him, IMO.) I was playing devil's advocate, of course. To his credit he didn't play the "boss" card, and we just moved on.

I work in a very politically correct environment with a lot of institutional protections in place for gays and people of color but it doesn't sound like you do. I can say those things because I have protections in place.

But did I "change the world" as you describe that act of being out in the world?

I don't know. I enjoyed the exchange. And guess what, he has changed. He's much cooler now about this gay guy that works in another department that he used to make unkind remarks about, for one thing. I wonder if it's related.

i <3 you fellow sister.

that last line is what i am relating to right now in my life.

Part of my standpoint is my own selfishness, i want this job. If i make waves and start bucking the powers that be, its over for me there. As i got to know my co-worker (who is leaving the company this summer) i was saddened by her, for her children. i am not out to change the world i don't think, (exploring my own thoughts here) i am out to change my corner of it, and hopefully as you have done, make someone who probably has not had exposure to anyone gay because of their own walls, that we are not monster and have been operating in society since the beginning of time. In being part of my fellow femme sister community, i do think we as a whole have an important presence in the gay community. We show people gay is not always visible.

Now, that being said, i will not work in a hostile or toxic environment. So far it is not like that, but my knee jerk, cajun hot head reaction to the first few comments were to say take this job and shove it.

i think i made the right choice.

[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.

[Soon]

Originally Posted by IslandScout

Maybe that's why I also, lately, stepped out as a gay person at work (I'm already out at work and it doesn't usually come up but there is a certain subtext in place when I make a comment about gay stuff as opposed to a straight person making it), and laughed at my boss when he said he didn't want to write an article about a queer lit professor because "it's not his thing." He seemed really uncomfortable that we even have a queer lit class at the college.

And I laughed out loud at him, which he didn't like. I said, "I've just never heard a manager be so open with his homophobia." Then I said, "Just don't make comments like that at Cabinet!" and laughed more.

The guy was embarrassed and back-pedaled strenuously to justify his comments. I said look, what if I say I don't want to cover a Jewish history class because "it's not my thing." (I'm not Jewish, but my boss is, and anti-Semitism is the only "ism" that gets to him, IMO.) I was playing devil's advocate, of course. To his credit he didn't play the "boss" card, and we just moved on.

Your whole post is awesome, but this anecdote is fucking fantastic. Seriously perfect way to handle that situation. I'd usually freeze up and say nothing, walk away, bitch about it to others, THEN think of the perfect retort!


Also, I'm loving reading all smart responses from all you fabulous femmes on this topic of invisibility--thank you!

[imperfect_cupcake]

Coming back to date in Vancouver after easy access to community has being unbelievably triggering of old shit. Of the being told I'm a cocksucker, and all other kinds of things by my peers in my own community. The younger ones are better. The ones under 35 seem to have a better grip. But I can't hang out with lezzos my own age without the constant conversation that makes me wish I was back in London. So I've stopped. I've stopped trying because it fucks me up. In the head I mean. I can't cope with the constant trying to defend being feminine.

In London the way I present is consider bog standard. In Vancouver the local dykes think I am OTT feminine. And that is about local perception and not a hierarchy. I don't think I am more femme than my flatmate who dress in jeans and t-shirts and no make up. If anything she's probably more girly than I am!

But I am interested about issues is someone wants to talk a about them, as long as they don't tell me to shut up about mine.