Femme to me feels like pressure. Femme to me feels like loss. Femme to me feels like victory. Femme to me feels like drowning in the deep salt sea.

I found myself avoiding last month's writing prompt until I was forced to admit to myself that I was intentionally ignoring it. My femme inspirations were fragile. They were mortal. They were flawed. Most of my femme inspirations looked beautiful but were sad inside. They were all glamourous but many died early deaths. The Dorothy Dandriges, Nina Simones, Marilyn Monroes, Eartha Kitts, ZsaZsa Gabors, Ella Fitzgeralds, Josephine Bakers, Rue McClanahans, Eva Perons, Marie Antoinettes were all fighters who saw every inch of what it means to be feminine in this world... and they are all dead. Which one the universe might take next terrifies me. Dolly Pardon? David Bowie? What worries me is that my life is like theirs, too much spotlight and not enough rest. Too much pressure and not enough floating. I want to be weightless. I want to be air. I do not always want to be heavy, weighed down by rhinestones and platform heels. I want to explode, disintegrate, dissipate like sequins, like glitter, like gold dust. I want to be the sharp, shiny flecks of sea shells that wash up on shore and turn the sand into mosaic.

Femme to me feels like fighting. Femme to me feels like coming home. Femme to me is chilly. Femme to me is cozy. Femme to me is what it would feel like to wrap yourself in dough and be baked into a loaf of your favorite bread. It would suffocate you. It would nourish you to death.

When I think of those I have lost, I also think of what they accomplished. While the world did have my femme icons, we had art, music, political activism, and fabulous outfits. We had personality up the wazoo. We had a fierceness that came in every style from intentionally flighty to gentle to a vicious thunderstorm-- and they were all a force to be reckoned with. I am all of these things, in one way or another, and I know that I learned from the best. My femme icons changed the world. These public women, and yes, a few brave public men, gave me everything they had, and I took it, and I held it, and I molded it. And what's more, I know there are countless, nameless others, and I want to know their names, I want to remember each and every one that has changed me. But I'm horrible with names. So to all of them I say-- I see you. I love you. I thank you. Everyday I am still learning from you.

Femme is the eye of a hurricane. Femme is the highest thread-count of sheet you can buy. Femme hugs you fierce like the last friend you have left just when you need it most. Femme is smoke and mirrors. Femme is what happens when you stop trying for it. Femme slips through your fingers like grains of sand but leaves a fine layer of grit. Femme is consensual violence. Femme is the sudden rainstorm that ruins your hairstyle but turns it into something so much sexier. Femme is a cowgirl bursting into a honkytonk fists first. Femme is a Sunday dinner with all the trimmings. Femme is fresh air. Femme is clean, fresh air. Femme is breathing.

It is often said that, "No man is an island," but I've noticed that a lot of femmes seem to be lonely and solitary structures; islands inhabited by only one; or peacefully orbiting planets comfortable keeping just to themselves. I've come across a great number of reasons for this-- all of them legitimate, most of them intensely painful. I've heard everything from femmes being kicked out of their lesbian communities for either being too "femmey" (don't even get me started on that word) or not 100% homosexual (or both all at once) to femmes not feeling they are "femme enough" to compete with other femmes (or simply feeling sick of all the pressure, competition, and cattiness in general). Many of the femmes I know have grown content to be their own sphere of specifically branded queer femininity. They've grown thick skins by choice or by force and are used to walking in the world as if they are the last of their kinds... but others seek community and either find that it doesn't readily exist in their area or are repeatedly rejected for not looking or acting enough of the prescribed part.

I have not always lived in the Bay Area. I come from small communities, small towns-- I know what it's like to be the only femme in an entire gay bar. I know what it's like to spend a night only speaking to drag queens, because nobody else will even look at you. I know what it's like to look for others who look like me and come up empty time and again. I know what kind of pressure it is to be told or, in so many ways, shown that if only I'd look and act differently, I'd be more attractive and more accepted. Conversely, having also lived in large cities for a many years, I know what it is to be given the stink eye from other femmes when you enter a room. I know what it is to be excluded from friendship with local femmes because you're not _______ enough or far too _______ to be allowed into their inner femme circles. I know the pressure (and ultimately, the disappointment) in knowing that some femmes will be competing with everything you do from your hair to your shoes even if you'd rather not play that game with them.

Even though I am now blessed and lucky enough to live in an amazing queer community with an astounding number of diverse, wonderful, beautiful, and amazing femmes, I still often find myself looking to the internet for solace and solidarity just as I did in my earlier femme days. It's amazing where I end up finding it some of the time. For example, very recently a large online community I belong to (FetLife, a kink-based social networking site) decided to add "butch" and "femme" as gender identities. When this decision was announced, there was an immediate public outcry complete with a full range of internet-based painful stupidity. New wounds were created by those who did not identify as butch or femme dismissively stating that femme and butch were not valid gender identities and then further complaining that adding them to the website as gender options was only serving to be divisive and confusing. Old wounds were reopened when friends of mine wanted to list the gender identity as "femme" but were hesitant, remembering all those times they'd been told they weren't queer enough or femme enough to claim such an identity. And many folks, myself included, were somewhat annoyed that "femme" had been randomly shortened to "FE" (as the abbreviation "F" had already been taken for "female") while "butch" was inexplicably shortened to "BU". In short, the entire affair very quickly turned into a hot mess. I was getting irritated, it was getting late, and the more reactions I read on the website, the more rapidly I began to lose my faith in queer community (again).

The things that settled me down in the end were so simple, and they were the following. First and foremost, I turned my computer off for the night. Yes, they have an off-switch, and I like to make use of it and be among real people for awhile when the electronic personalities of actual human beings are upsetting me. My girlfriend and I had a nice, intelligent chat and then went to bed. The second thing happened this afternoon when I was finally ready to turn the computer back on. I logged onto the site to re-read a post I'd made complaining about "FE" being the new shorthand for "femme", when I saw that a friend of mine had pointed out, in passing, that Fe is the symbol for iron on the periodic table. This stopped me dead in my tracks.

My brain started spinning in an entirely new series of directions. This statement knocked me out of the virtual and back into the literal. Femme is forged and tough like iron. Femme can be purified or left dirty; molded or natural; sculpted, shaped, re-shaped, made into art; used for tough mechanics; liquefied into something hot and fluid; formed into its own protecting locks and gates; a magnet; simple and useful; complex and decorous, necessary for health and wellness... and when mixed with carbon, the end-all, be-all, femme(FE) can be made into steel. Such a beautiful, but at the same time simple, redefinition of femme had never occurred to me and it all of a sudden made me very, very happy. Every time I am knocked back down to the brass (or in this case, iron!) tacks of things and go back to the basics, I always manage to learn something new. Femme is elemental. It's so simple, it's right there. We are a building block of queer life. Our element is iron(Fe), which can be just about anything it chooses, given the right circumstances.

Following this revelation, came another stunning comment from a different friend of mine. As a joke, she began to make light, science-based humor about my femme(FE) identity and ended up saying the following:

"I wish your outer electron shell happiness in attracting and combining with any other elements you desire."

She meant it to be taken lightly, but I found it to be absolutely beautiful. She is absolutely right. Our outer shell, our femme presentation can be anything it likes, but it should be happy. We should be happy. We are allowed to be happy. And we are allowed to attract and combine with any other elements we desire. It's so easy. It's such a simple equation: femme = femme. The unknown is its own solution. We all know ourselves, we are all femme, if the specifics are unknown to others, that's fine. If we are each, every day, defining "femme" and femme always equals femme, then what is there left to argue about? How can you create a fraction from that equation? Why would there need to be IF/THEN statements? What about femme = femme could ever be unclear?

The simple fact is, femme community shouldn't be complicated. Loving each other and enjoying each others presence shouldn't be hard. Planets in their own orbit can come together without colliding and form a entire solar system. Femme love for each other can be our iron-based, plasma sun; the peace of acceptance can be our slow-burning, glittering stars-- one for every single one of us, with still an infinite number more that are yet to be named; and those constant, steady lights can guide all of us, new femmes and old, back home if ever we are lost. That is, if we let it.

Here is my contribution to the theme of defining femme. This is a poem I started many years ago. It's gone through countless edits and will probably never be fully finished. I welcome you all to add your own stanza(s) and see what magic can come from a collective effort!

I am femme like steel heels
Stiletto
Staccato
Pointed toes
Hard lines
Sharp edges
Acute angles
Punching out rhythm
Down the hall
Across the floor
On your chest.

Femme like sculpted nails
Painted baby-pink
Playing innocent
Stained dangerous
Fuck-me-red
Scoring
Sharp pain
Raged scratches
Ridges down your back.

Femme like complications
Constrictions
Corsets
Tightened
Cinched
Restrained
Holding me back from you.

Femme like perfection
Persuasion
Scarlet lips
Smoldering eyes
Hours spent
Pulling it together
Only to be dismantled.

I am femme like destruction
Disheveled
Disrupted
Smeared mascara
Hair falling damp and undone
Patterns of teeth
Glowing
Circled in lipstick.

I am femme like brevity
Breathless
Slurs
Sentences shortened:
Ma'am
Sweet
Diva
Bitch
Goddess
Cunt
Mistress
Girl
Princess
Dyke
Scorpio
Switch
Doll
Slut
Mommy
Whore.

Old school butches always feel like coming home to me. I can spot them in a crowd from a mile away. When they think they're being stealth or when most people are conspicuously ignoring them, I'll be the girl making eyes at them from across grocery store check-out lines or giving them the knowing "family" smile as we pass on the street.

I am thinking of this today because I just met a butch called Sugar and when I first laid eyes on her my body and my brain literally just settled right down. I don't know very much about her, and honestly, with a name like Sugar, I wasn't expecting our visitor to the house to be butch, but as soon as I saw her through the peephole, I opened the door without even stopping to verify who it was. She just looked like family.

As soon as she stepped into our apartment, I could tell that she had some of those intangible qualities I nearly always find in a big, country butch-- an unsophisticated, unpretentious charm-- a simplicity that I so need in my life (at least from time to time) to balance out all my high-maintenance, high-octane, ultra-glittered, calculated crazy. All of this came with Sugar, without her saying more than few casual, passing words, this entire, effortlessly calming circle of butch energy that made me want to sigh out all my air and lay down for a bit to relax.

It's a hard thing in this world to get me to settle. I am always on the go, and this is absolutely purposeful. One of my favorite Kimya Dawson songs, "Tire Swing" has the lyric, "If I stay in one place I lose my mind. I'm a pretty impossible lady to be with," and this is very, very true of me. I'm like a whirlwind, or a very sparkly hurricane that often leaves brownies or hard-earned bruises in its wake. So, when I come across someone that, effortlessly, makes me want to stop moving, it's fairly impressive. As one could only imagine, it's even more difficult to get me to go to sleep. Sleep, to me, feels like quitting, like my body demanding I clock out of life for a few hours, and I always resent it-- I really never lost the feeling that small children have that they're missing something when they're asleep. So, if I meet someone and immediately feel strongly compelled to relax and float in their energy or, even more surprisingly, sleep in their presence, then that's pretty dang special and I'm most probably standing in the energy of a big ole butch from the South or the Desert, the Midwest or a small town in upstate New York, a ranch in one of the Dakotas, or an orchard in rural California. It was a really grounding moment when I learned this about myself, because now it doesn't take me by such surprise. It's still somewhat unexpected at times, but at least I can recognize the triggers!

And it is an ingrained set of triggers. It's part of who I am by location, by personal history, by traditional, not simply a preference. It's a reaction that I can't control, this bouncing of old school butch/high femme energy, but how I act on it may vary. Today, for example, Sugar was only in my home all of 10 minutes to pick up my roommate, so I just enjoyed the rush of endorphins to my brain and let that be that. Other times, if sparks start to fly, I may inquire after said butch to see where the possibilities could go. And still other times, it's so unintentional and excruciatingly brief, like two souls passing in an airport terminal, that it just feels like a little jolt of electricity that leaves you wondering "What if...?" Every time, though, it reminds this fiercely independent, busy, and bossy femme that this is a kill-switch to her relentless brain and that sometimes, even just for a few moments, some time off is necessary and healthy.

...Okay, this peaceful moment is now over. Time to go attack the rest of my day!!!

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I was so excited this week when one of my most dear femme friends Ms. Lola Sunshine got in touch with me with this fantastic piece of writing that I knew right away needed to be posted here on Femmes Guide. Lola is one of my dearest high femme friends  and I was so excited that she so graciously agreed to let me post her writing here. Give a grand Femmes Guide welcome to Lola!

Spectacular Glitter Explosions: On Femme as a Gender Problem
by: Miss Lola Sunshine

So here’s the thing about my gender identity: It’s simultaneously subversive and also really radical (in the true sense of the word). It is historical and traditional. It is constructed yet innate. It is both true and false, performance and person, art and self. This would seem like a paradox to some, but this is who I am everyday— this is marked on my body; etched into my brain. It comes out of my mouth in soft-structured sentences, high-pitched angry tones, low growls, and gasps of pleasure. At times I really wish I could be something else, other than, either look more queer or be more straight… or maybe I wish that I were born 50 years ago, when high femme was understood and accepted as a valid lesbian gender identity and came with a clear set of rules and boundaries, but for a myriad of reasons these fantasies are simply not a possibility (and not even actually desired, really they are just the product of exhausted escapism) and so I am to remain stuck in the liminal, possibly forever.

This is not how I meant to start off a description of my gender identity. I meant to say that high femme is fun and playful and colorful and fabulous… but honestly I’m just not there today. There are some days where I’m just not feeling grounded enough for the willful shallow cheerfulness that is needed to reduce myself to shopping, make-up, and shoes. For if gender is indeed a complex spectrum that cannot be easily explained or reduced, then I am so far over on the “feminine” side that I am about to fall right over the edge into uncharted waters. There are simply no maps for where I am going, so clearly this is dangerous territory. As James Baldwin once said, “Here there be dragons.” There is nothing but uncertainty ahead, the sort of thing that second and even third guessing yourself will not solve, so there is nothing to do but press on. Sometimes, I am very afraid.

Don’t get me wrong, I love reading gender theory, I love questioning things… but the more I question myself, admit that my gender is heavily performative, constructed around a societal idea, etc. the more I also feel that my high femme gender presentation is absolutely, in this and each moment, innate. By “innate” here, I do not mean that it is in any way connected to my birth sex, which is female. “Innate”, in this case, means that it is inextricably linked to my person and, beyond being inescapable, is something I have no desire to ever escape.  “Innate” means that the closest thing to a “self” that I know is high femme at all times. I am high femme from the time I wake up until the time I go to sleep, and even in my subconscious while dreaming. It is not a costume, it is not drag, it is not a game that I’m playing, and I do not always make up all the rules.

For example, on a snowy night in Chicago several years ago, I had to borrow a pair of Doc Martens boots from a butch friend of mine to walk several blocks from her house to a party in icy weather. Obviously it was dangerously impractical to do anything other than accept the boots and carry my strappy black heels, but I was really quite upset about having to wear them—and not on a “these don’t match my outfit!” level, but on a deeply terrifying internal level that I really didn’t feel I could express without sounding somewhat insane. As often I’ve told several of my friends and lovers, the only time I ever encounter any of the sorts of body and gender dysphoria that some of my transgender friends describe feeling so deeply is when I am in drag. Having to wear those boots was a form of drag to me, and it was drag I didn’t choose or prepare myself to encounter and therefore I could not remove them quickly enough.

This seems to go against every theoretical example I’ve read by authors and academics like Borenstein, Butler, and Halberstam that gender and all its trappings is something that is fun to put on and take off—it goes against decades of feminist teachings that women are not meant to wear shoes that pinch their feet and clothes that truss them up to uncomfortable levels, so where does this leave me? It creates me as a wrench in the queer and feminist gears. It makes me into an overly-educated Barbie-girl that cannot be explained away and refuses to let herself be covered up, dismissed, and ignored. Do you want to know why so many femmes are so incredibly strong? It’s because we have to be. Nobody has our backs. Not straight people, not queer people, nobody. Half the time, due to femme-competition, we don’t even have each other. You want to know how we all learned to fight in those shoes? Go out to a lesbian bar in heels someday and then take the public transit alone at two o’clock in the morning to get yourself back home.

I am not in any way claiming that gender is innate for everyone, or even the majority of people. In fact, most femmes would probably not agree with all the “I” statements I just made. However, also I don’t feel like I should sit here and write a theoretically rich and masterfully dishonest piece about my gender identity as wholly constructed when this is now how I feel. It is constructed, of course, by myself, by society, by how I was raised, etc., and it is also chosen—but it isn’t at the same time. I don’t really care how others select, construct, and perform or present their gender, but when it comes down to me, I feel bound, quite literally. But the thing I’m trying to get at, what I’m trying to articulate with all these words, is that I enjoy being bound. You can take that statement literally if you wish, as it would still be true in my case, but metaphysically it is absolutely the most correct word for describing how I feel. My version of high femme is restrained and full of fancy knots that are often uncomfortable or outright painful. I find myself struggling against it sometimes, but I don’t know if it is because I want to be released or because I just enjoy the friction—I suspect it’s the latter. I’ve always been a big fan of friction.

In fact, I deliberately readjust my bindings every day, make sure the knots are still tight, change the color of the ropes, play with the tensions. I do this through hair, make-up, fashion, accessories, and, yes, shoes. I create an aesthetic that I feel matches who I am inside. It is intentional and I leave very little to chance. As a line in the film American Beauty says, “See the way the handle on her pruning shears matches her gardening clogs? That's not an accident.” I am relentless. These character traits that some call unstable, neurotic, or high maintenance are actually valuable tools for which I have great respect and find absolutely necessary.

While I often appear to be caricature of a heterosexual American female, I do not consider myself as such. A wide chasm of difference is created by awareness and intent. My style of being is not meant to perpetuate classism, racism, or heteronormativity although it often does. It is not meant attract attention from straight men. In fact, unless I deliberately consent to step into a specific gaze, it’s not actually meant to attract queer individuals, either. These are all just side effects of my high femme presentation. Some are unfortunate or unpleasant, and some can occasionally be enjoyed in a shot-reverse-shot sort of fashion, but none are directly intentional on my part. So, once again, where does this leave me? When I am seen at all, I am perceived as a female object of desire regardless of whether or not I have consented and without necessarily being fully understood. What does one do with this knowledge? I feel that I subvert gender and sexuality every day by merely existing in the form in which I am most comfortable and refusing to conform to its expectations.

It is my experience that high femmes are dually invisible in both queer and heterosexual spaces. We are like spies in worlds that never expect us, never see us coming, and don’t notice us when we’re already there. While hiding in plain sight, we have brilliant opportunities for subversion, disruption, sabotage, and general queer mayhem. I believe that if we are invisible, then we should have no expectations and cannot be held accountable for our actions. Conversely, if we are visible and yet constantly mystified or misinterpreted, then, again, all bets are off.  We can and should do whatever we please and thus force the communities around us to adjust and adapt to a new reality that sees us in it.

Years ago, when I first heard the popular feminist axiom quoted from Audre Lorde, “The master’s tool will never dismantle the master’s house,” I felt immediately uncomfortable.  It took a long cycle of self-reflection to fully discover why.  The truth is, I actually do believe that you can take up the master’s tools if you are first and always aware that you are using them. I feel that if you use the master’s tools to completely subvert, and in many ways thoroughly pervert, his original intentions, then his house will come crashing down in a spectacular, glittery explosion. It is also possible that the house itself doesn’t need to be destroyed. Maybe it would be just as exciting to repaint it hot pink with lavender edge-work. This would also clearly upset the balance of power. Perhaps it’s that I actually somewhat like living in the house—however I will only reside there under my terms and I would prefer it be filled with my friends, family, lovers, and allies. So, in essence, as a high femme I have stolen the master’s house. Maybe I’m squatting, maybe I’ve outright purchased it, or maybe the master is in pieces under the floorboards. The point is, I plan to reside in my refurbished hot pink house, which is full of silk chaise lounges, full length mirrors, walk-in closets, full sets of vintage glassware and, hopefully, some really sexy radical queers—and I’m going to blast girlie pop music out of all the bay windows for as long as I so choose. I invite all of you to come over and join me. There will be cookies. Come on. You know you love cookies.