**The femme visibility challenge will return next month**

Three weeks ago, I got into a serious bike accident. (Yes, on my beloved Bikey! RIP Bikey! *pout*) When the front fender broke, the wheel jammed up instantly, and I was thrown face-first onto the road in about a quarter-second. I didn’t even have time to put my hands out to break my fall, so I landed right on my face. Ouch. I came away with a broken nose, road rash, two black eyes, a fat lip, numb teeth, an injured knee, five stitches…and my life, thank goodness.

I wasn’t wearing a helmet (I know, I know), but all that yoga and dance came back to me in an instant—apparently I fell perfectly. At first, the ER staff didn’t believe that I had hit so hard and hadn’t sustained any permanent injuries. My nose even stayed in the exact same position after it broke. They kept expecting to find a vertebral fracture or spinal cord damage or a brain bleed, so they did a CT scan and took about 14 x-rays of my neck and ribs and back and hips. While I was out in the hall waiting for the brain scan, I had a scary moment. A man on a gurney rolled by with a caved-in skull—literally, you could see his brain through the hole. My heart leapt into my throat: “That could have been me!” After the ER doc stitched me up and wrote out my prescriptions, he confided: “You know…if you had fallen differently, you would be dead.” I could see that he was absolutely serious. Guh. You would be dead. It’s like a broken record in my head. (It didn’t happen, but it could have happened, but it didn’t happen, but it *COULD* have...)

I feel incredibly, blissfully lucky that I didn’t die. But something in me has changed since the accident. There’s this intense feeling of vulnerability. It’s not just because of the injuries, though I’ve definitely felt fearful about being around lots of people in case they knock into my crutches or accidentally bump my nose. But, mostly, it’s that I’m sitting with the knowledge that I live in a body that can break and die. Before this, death was like a distant fairy tale…something that might happen to me one day. But now, it whispers in my ear at every turn. When will I die? Maybe now. Or now. Or now. That bus, that man, that food. Any of it might kill me. I’m moving through my days like I’m getting away with something just by being alive. Like death made a mistake back there at the accident scene, and it’s only a matter of time before it catches up with me.

For the first few days after the accident, I was just trying to pull myself together and heal. There was so much pain and swelling and vulnerability and fear. It wasn’t until I went to a specialist about my knee that I realized this accident had dredged up something big from the past…

This woman, maybe in her mid-sixties, is shuffling through the waiting room with her walker. She stops on the spot when she sees me (my leg was in a brace, and my face was still a mess). She says, “Now what did you do?” I tell her what happened, and she winces in a motherly way. She tells me about a car accident her sister-in-law is recovering from and assures me that these things sometimes take months. “How long has it been?” she asks. I say five days. She says, “Well, well! I thought it had been a few weeks, or something! You’re a survivor, my dear. You keep that up.”

Besides really needing to hear that, it made something clear to me about this mistrust of my body that I had been feeling since the accident. I am a survivor. Of sexual abuse. Thus the echoes from the past and the all-encompassing fear that felt way bigger than the accident. My body has betrayed me, so it’s a delicate relationship to begin with—orgasming while being molested, shutting down when I needed to feel, keeping out the good stuff because of the bad, and now all the breaking and swelling and pain.

When I went to another clinic to get my stitches out a few days later, I was getting looks. You know the looks I mean? The he-beat-the-hell-out-of-you-didn’t-he-and-I’m-sad-and-embarrassed-that-I-have-to-see-the-evidence looks. It’s part staring, part patronizing sympathy and part trying not to look. Ahh, the hetero-feminization of injuries. When a woman’s face is bruised and messy, it must have been the work of her boyfriend. I thought back to the night of the accident and remembered that there was a man whose chest puffed up protectively outside the ER when the kind, lovely man who had volunteered to drive me to the hospital helped me out of the car and into a wheelchair. The guy with the puffed up chest gave a look that said, “What has this fucker done to you?” These women’s bodies of ours. Acted upon. Not active. When these injuries were cross-referenced with my femininity, I automatically read as a victim.

As femmes, we’re steeping in these awful assumptions all the time. How easy it is to believe that I occupy this woman’s body passively. That I’m a body that things happen to. A victim. When the nurse came to get me to take out my stitches she asked, with a knowing look, what had happened. “Bike accident,” I said. She sighed with relief, “Oh! I thought some man beat you!” she said. She laughed like she shouldn’t have been so dramatic about the whole thing. How silly of her!

But it’s not. It happens all the time. These bodies of ours have been convinced of their weaknesses, their flaws, their availability and their perfect usefulness as an outlet for desire or rage or blame. And that baggage can sure make us look like victims.

Back at the bone specialist, while I was waiting for the doctor to come in, I got a chance to look at my x-rays up on the screen. Bones are so beautiful, you know? The sleek lines, the sculpted curves, the rounded joints. Everything fits together so perfectly. I looked at the images with genuine gratitude and awe. Look at all those places that aren’t broken, I thought. All the healthy, perfect bones. And I realized that I do live in a strong body. A body that has been stronger than the rest of me, at times. Its wisdom has helped me heal stunningly fast, and it helped me fall well to minimize my injuries. If my head had hit at another angle? Boom. Over. Broken neck and brain dead. But it didn’t. My body aligned into the strongest, most flexible position and braced for the hit. And maybe that’s all we can ask of ourselves in this fucked up society: the trust that our femme bodies will always bring forward our strengths in the smartest way possible.

When I talked to my partner Linz about the accident and filled her in on just how lucky I had been, she was unsurprised.

“You’re a survivor,” she said. “You always will be.”

A couple days later, a friend posted this link on my Facebook wall. “The chorus belongs to you,” she said.

It belongs to all of you, too, my lovely femmes.

Appreciate the beauty of your bones. Like community, they hold us together strong.
And that's a structure we can rely on.

The other day, I was talking to a straight friend of mine from out west about an essay I had written on femme identity. As I was about to dig into the subject matter, I realized that he might not know what femme was. I asked him if he did, and he said something along the lines of having heard the terms “butch” and “femme” before but had no real sense of what they meant. (Sidenote: We certainly need to do better than the crap-ass definition featured on the t-shirt at the top this post. Ugh. If you can't read it, it says, "Femme: A lesbian who takes a passive role in sex.")

Anyway, that’s when it occurred to me that we need to be more out there doing social canvassing to spread the word about femme—especially about the fact that femme stands on its own and doesn’t need to be linked with the common companion term “butch” in order to make sense as an identity. That’s not to say some of us don’t get hot for butch love. Some of us do. Some of us love femmes. Some of us love across the spectrum (like me). Some of us are asexual. Anyway, I digress!

Your mission this month, if you choose to accept it, is to take some time to sit down and define femme for yourself in a sentence or two. Seriously, only a sentence or two—that bit is important. Then (…and this is the fun part…), tell at least one different person each day that you’re femme and what that means about the way you walk through the world.

In order for this to be effective, you need to have what some people call an elevator speech: really clear, concise points that you’ve worked out in advance. Feel free to wing it if you’re the improvising type, but I think it’s safe to say that most of us don’t necessarily shine our brightest when we’re put on the spot and we haven’t thought things through ahead of time. This is a good exercise for visibility, but it’s also really awesome for clarifying your vision of yourself and the broader identity of femme. I can’t wait to see what your brilliant femme minds come up with!

If you need some inspiration to get your juices flowing, check out this, this, this, this, this, this or this. If none of that is good fodder for you, try reading (or re-reading?) Femmes of Power and Brazen Femme.

If you please, post your definitions of femme here so we can inspire each other, cross-pollinate our ideas and get some conversations going!

Hi wonderfuls.

First off, sorry for the long delay in posting this month’s femme visibility challenge! It’s been a whoa-bizzy time, what with one of my partners leaving for a year abroad and so many projects on the go. I hope it’s worth the wait!

This month, my challenge to you is to write a letter of thanks to a femme who has, knowingly or unknowingly, mentored you—helped to shape your identity, your politics, your concept of self, expanded your sexuality or gotten you to expand or change your notions of what “femme” means as a way of moving through the world. If the person is still living, please send the letter to them directly. I bet they’ll be *thrilled* to receive it. We need way more honouring of the trailblazers, my friends!

I know without a doubt who this person is for me. Annie Sprinkle. It’s interesting that I’m working on this post today, actually, because I just found out that my dream of sitting down and having a conversation with her is about to come true. I found out right as I was about to write all of this to you that I’ve been chosen to do an Xtra profile on her for the final(?) performance art wedding in her Love Art Lab project—amazing how things line up sometimes, isn’t it?! I'll be sure to post the article here when it's done. But before I even sit down and interview the dazzling Ms Sprinkle, I’m going to write her a letter of gratitude…it is, after all, long overdue.

Dear Annie,

Can I call you Annie? You don’t know me yet, but I have a lot to thank you for. There was a time in my life, before I encountered your work, when I thought that certainty, hardness, strong opinions, right answers and unwavering strength were where power came from. Unquestioningly I thought this. And femininity? The worst of the world’s problems! To me, femininity was a question of buying what the world was selling and playing into the hands of men who were unwilling to see my selfhood and my gender beyond a certain suffocating framework. And the idea of enjoying sex and my body, of wearing the clothes I wanted? I thought these were the things that got women into trouble; what caused the bad behaviour of men. The story went something like this: “There are looming exploitations that this particular body, this particular self is responsible for. I must try to stop that.”

If I could just be more like a guy—bathe myself in masculinity, blend in more, wear baggier clothes and sneakers and hang out with men, then *somehow* my femininity, the source of men’s desire that I thought had caused the sexual and emotional violence in my life—would just go away, along with all its hassles. The catcalls, the staring, the deer-in-headlights moments where I didn’t know what to say, the men calling me dear and honey and sweetie and shortie and toots and ho and babe and hun and sweet-cheeks and babydoll and pretty girl and broad and bitch. I could wave bye-bye to the avalanche of sleazy comments on my nice dress, my nice ass, my nice face, my nice hair, my nice tits, my nice smile, my nice hands, my nice eyes, my nice legs…well, you get the idea. I thought I had found *the* way to end what I call the shop-and-chop: when passersby parse my body into breast and leg and ass and face for their desirous digestion. I was angry about that, sure, but I didn’t want to be angry. I just wanted a solution. I figured that the anger was too big to take on, anyway...it was like a bouncer I had no hope of getting past. But if I turned off the femininity tap, that would end the bullshit once and for all, right?

The thing is (and you may have seen this coming), it didn’t work. It didn’t change a thing. My six facial piercings, my short, spiky hair, my unpleasant scowl and my tough, manly walk in tough, manly shoes changed nothing about the way I was treated. For lots of reasons we already know, but the most revelatory one was that denying who I was would not change the world because it’s not an action of strength. It’s one of dilution. What I needed was becoming, not unbecoming. My body needed to be a home for the me that I am. So I set off to find the centre of my bare soul. My essence.

Like any woman who delves into the project of learning how to come home to her body, I had no idea just how much would need to change in my heart and my mind before there would be space enough to live. The detoxifying, the clarifying, the listening. The silence. The biggest block I found? I never trusted the feminine as a place of potential power. Certainly not the straight feminine, (“Those silly, teetering girls! Don’t they know better?”), but the feeling was the same in a queer context. The artifice, the adornment. I saw it as false and fundamentally flawed because of how feminine people were treated. No matter who they wanted to fuck. I didn’t know yet how to separate expression and perception. So I picketed my identity...which is to say I stood against the (fem)me I wanted to be.

Enter your book, Post-Porn Modernist. I had no idea before opening this book that the denial and distrust of my body was at the root of so much suffering and dislocation. I was afraid of my body. I was afraid of men. I was afraid of desire. I was afraid that there was something fundamental about me that caused in others an urge to exploit. I was afraid that I caused it all by being a feminine woman. I was afraid that I couldn’t present as myself and be powerful. But as I read the dulcet tones of this book—really, it was like music spilling over me—I saw such tender appreciation for what the body is and can do, for what pleasure and strength we can find together in the freedom of our bodies. Your straightforward sense of freedom, the seeming absence of judgment and sexual fear and shame. Wow, it made me weep. By the end of the book, I was actually weeping. Why? Well, I’ve felt and said and tried a lot of “no” in my life. What broke open when I read your book was a yes. A great, big beautiful yes. To life, I suppose. To my body. To curiosity. To openness.

I started writing you a letter that night. I was trying to jot down the symphony you had started in me, to track the movement. It’s just that all I had were the first five notes. So I tucked the beginning of the letter away, which I had pounded out on my Brother typewriter after rolling in a stray brown paper bag that was laying nearby on my art table. It felt that urgent. I was still crying as I plunked out the letters. The ink was all dotted with ploppy tears. But I didn't have the words yet. I promised myself that I would, one day, finish that letter—when I knew what the notes to the song were. That was 12 years ago. Your words and work—everything from your crygasms to your Love Art Lab weddings—has continued to inspire me to open and open and open again. Like my skin is being turned inward and my core turned out. In the best possible way.

You started my life engine all those years ago. Or at least inspired me to start it for myself by modeling a freedom that I wanted to know was possible long before I was willing to try it. A joy and calm in being a sexy, loving woman who embraces her body as a trustworthy home and a site of natural wonder. I look to you in your poise and humour and openness, and I see how much trust is there as the foundation of it all. Trust in life, in goodness, in mystery—what I see in you isn’t believing, it’s knowing. And there’s a big difference. Trust is a slowly-turned garden, and it’s a total miracle.

There’s probably much change still to come for all of us...the big, overhaul changes. Changes big enough to know that more change needs to happen. Learning how to see this world change because of eyes that are changing. Our side-by-side becoming. The rolling and shifting and breaking of ground. The tools we share.

Amidst all this turbulent change we're undergoing, I want to tell you that I am so grateful that you were born to help other people be born. Thank you. For all you’ve done and all that you’ve said so open-heartedly, thank you. You have profoundly changed my life, and the lives of so many people through your work. So I’m going to raise my voice in praise of the rising sap of strong-ass femmes in this world and bless your part in that.

Thank you thank you thank you, and may you always leap!

Big Femme Love,
Luna

***Some of you may be wondering where the “visibility” aspect comes in with this assignment? Well, sometimes visibility is about holding up a mirror to someone else—showing each other who we are and some of things we’ve accomplished. I feel an especially strong need these days to honour people who have gone before. Elders, teachers and other kinds of smarty-pantses who really get the essence of what it is we’re doing here and the leaps we need to make in order to continue in the right direction. Think deeply. Really find your words and pull out the essence of what you gained from this wonderfemme who helped to shape you. (One of the benefits of winter is the deep, quiet thinky time.)

If you do want to make this challenge more literal, share your letter in the comments section of this post, or as a note on Facebook and tag all your femme friends—or turn it into a tribute song and put it up on Myspace. Whatever you like! Just get the femme praise flowing!

I love biking. LOVE IT. I live in Ottawa, Canadia and ride all year round. Some might call that crazy, but me and Bikey have a bond. I have this fabulous red 50s-era single speed that lived for almost four decades in someone's shed before they brought it to Recycle Bicycle in Montreal to be cycled back into my loving arms about 7 years ago. She couldn't wait to be back on the road, I could tell. This bike and I have been through a hell of a lot together. Lost jobs, lost loves, oooh!! art idea! moments, endless postering for shows, elated post-date rides home, beautiful rainstorms, an accident or two and sun-soaked riot-grrl-singing. I ride her in high heels and mini-skirts and hallowe'en costumes and formal dresses and my long leather trenchcoat that flaps in the breeze.

I suppose I don't treat biking like most people do. I don't think of biking as something that limits me or my wardrobe, which admittedly turns some heads - but when has that ever been a bad thing? Sticking out is a reminder that we have more freedom than we think. Biking tells me all about that *every* single day. That said, I've noticed that people tend to have really constrained imaginations when it comes to what you can wear while biking, and what weather precludes biking as a way of getting around. Winter is *not* a no bike zone! For reals.

Take yesterday, for example. We were in the middle of a crazy snowstorm. Big fluffy volcanic ash-sized snowflakes falling everywhere. It was gorgeous, and it's some of my favourite weather to ride in because the snow falls all around you like rain in slow motion and the light glitters on every flake. Beautiful, right? But when you try to share your appreciation with mere mortals, they freak out about your impending doom and call you brave in a way that is, perhaps, supposed to mean crazy or dumb? I mean, it can be slippery, sure, but I only bike on major streets that have been cleared, and I take my time. I make sure I'm riding at a low speed so I can brake to a full stop pretty quick if I need to. I also take up all the space I need in the main lane where the cars are rather than riding through the gross slush at the edge. This is key. Drivers may honk, but never you mind. Just think of it as an opportunity for them to practice non-attachment. Non-attachment to what? Who knows. But I'm pretty sure that it's a growth opportunity.

A friend of mine at our city's monthly femme gathering called this femme biking, and I'm inclined to agree. Don't you love the ring of that?

I've decided there are a few rules to femme biking:
1. Choose a bike you love and feels like you.
2. No ugly rain gear or sensible shoes.
3. Treat your bike like the vehicle it is. Take up space!
4. Fenders are necessary for the preservation of awesome outfits.

The moral of this story? Don't believe the hype. You can be as femme as you wanna be on your kick-ass bike, no matter the season. Have fun out there, my pretties! And share resources here if you know of any fun bike tips or accessories!

Bikesexually yours,
Mz Luna Loo

Oh January…you are hell. You are when the cold takes itself most seriously, when the sun calls it a day before even government employees. There is that new beginning thing at the start of the year, but when that wears off it’s just damn cold...

I think this month’s challenge has got to be something that keeps you all warm out there – and what’s more heart-warming than hanging out with femmes?! So here’s the challenge: this month, organize at least one gathering (or more if you’re a keener) where the femmes of your community get to hang out with each other in public. If it's a book discussion, you could call it Reading While Fabulous. If it's a forum on loving your fat femme bod, you could call it Muffintop Love. If it's a fancy hat tea party, you could call it Queer to the Brim. Other ideas: a dinner out, an accessory trade-off at a local cafe, a karaoke night, a sparkly femme dance-off somewhere lesbionic. Put out a sign on your table that says Queer, Femme and Fabulous. Wear something that makes you feel hot, bring books to trade and drink fancy beverages with a side of rad shoes.

I’ve just recently started hosting the monthly femme family gatherings in my city (If you click the link, you can catch a glimpse of me in the green dress and white cardigan at the top left of the page.) We’re meeting this Saturday afternoon for a discussion on femme flight and winter femme fashion. This time around, I’ll be sure to make a pretty sign to make sure all the world knows exactly who we are.

Have fun keeping each other warm!

Queerly yours,
Mz Luna Loo

Thanks to everyone who wrote me over the past month about their experiences with the first visibility challenge - I had responses that ranged from "That sounds dangerous." to "I've been looking to do something like this - thanks!" I'm glad that so many of you tried it, and thanks to The SexGeek, Andrea Zanin and various other queer friends for cross-posting and tweeting about the challenge, or posting about it here.

Now, *cracks knuckles* it's time for femme visibility challenge #2!

'Tis the season to be crafty and consumerism is in hyper-overdrive, so this month's challenge will be all about femme visibility stickers. It's simple: just make hot, fun, wonderful stickers that read: "A queer femme likes this." And then stick them on whatever you like - clothes, sex toys, books, shoes, people, food a certain bathroom stall where you like to make out...the possibilities are endless!

The stickers could be done on printer labels if you want. If you have a colourless printer, print 'em up and colour 'em in. If you're not computer-savvy or don't have access to a printer, make them by hand with markers or carve a potato stamp and dip it in ink like when you were a kid. There are a million ways to go about it! But, whatever you do, remember to take some stickers with you each day so you're always ready to point out the wonderful things that make your femme heart smile.

My guess is this challenge will be a little easier for the shy folks than the flirting assignment was The cool thing is that, by individualizing the stickers and making ones that represent how *you* do femme, we'll also get to see the diversity of femmeness amongst us.

Post pics if you can! I know I will!

Queerly yours,
Mz Luna Loo

Hi fierce friendlies,

I’m the new kid here at the Femme’s Guide, so I wanted to take a minute to introduce myself before diving into my first post. I very much appreciate the precision and premeditation of bios, so I’ll drop mine in here as a start:

Luna Allison is a relentlessly mouthy queer poly femmeinist living in the urban wilds of Canadia with her butch and femme cats. She splits her time between queer journalism, spoken word, yummy D/s and thinking about femme. Luna enjoys glitter, eloquence, flirty summer dresses, fierce femmeinism, fun shoe/bag combinations, pants-free dance parties, inventive cooking, overwhelmingly large houseplants, shy bois, nightswimming and your bare ass. www.lunaallison.com.

I first connected with the lovelies at the Femme’s Guide after publishing this article on femme with Xtra Toronto, which was then cross-posted here.

I’m thrilled to bits to be writing for TFG, and I look forward to much awesomeness and fun. Keep your eye on this space for an upcoming series of femme interviews by yours truly... (so excited to get started on these!) But in the meantime, here’s a little femme visibility action prompt for the month of November.

Femme Visibility Challenge #1:
This month, choose to get into the habit of assuming every feminine, woman-identified person you encounter is queer. i.e.: Look at someone who fits the bill and say to yourself, "Total queer." Putting effort into this simple mental shift can have massive implications in your day-to-day life, so it’s enough to just train your brain on this exercise and see what happens for you. But! If you’re feeling bold, move on up to Level #2: Try flirting heavily with a feminine, woman-identified person that you encounter and admire. If she refuses your attentions on the basis of being straight, you might try a line like, “Oh, wow…it’s just that you look so queer. Your ___________ and your ___________ and the way you walk and everything. My mistake.”

Pretty please, post the results? I’d love to hear all about your adventures!

Queerly yours,
Mz Luna Loo

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