we all met around the same time, and right off one of them started calling me the scraggle femme. i'll gladly take that, and if you ask my gender identity/presentation, that's what i'll say.

i identify as femme, and damn if i'm not a sucker for antique silk lingerie and 1940s dresses. but it's almost more about attitude, about being gracious and tough and knowing how to receive attention. i like to think of femme as a superpower. here's the deal- i fix bikes, ride trains, grow food, and while i love to be taken on a date and get my dress dirty running through alleys or fucking in the park, i'm more likely to be in greasy work pants, black boots, and big hoop earrings, trying to get you to ask me to come over and have a beer. i like to put my hand on the small of a pretty girl's back and have her look at me under smoky eyelids. i'll open the door for you, maybe especially if my heels are higher than yours, and i want to be courted. scraggle femme. it can get confusing sometimes, wondering if i'm femme enough, or if i'm using an empty word that's betrayed by how i look. visibility becomes key here in claiming hardworking femme from the grasping tentacles of androgyny.

i could go on and maybe render this more compellingly. for brevity's sake i won't. so let's push it, my brilliant extended community. i think we've got some really good tools for figuring out this gender stuff. let's start getting our hands dirty in the messy complexity of femme and butch and every other queer gender. let's talk about femme chivalry, about coy butches, about topping from the bottom and all of those glorious possiblities.

I think I might have some defenses up still from having grown up being inundated in GIRLS LOVE TO COOK AND CLEAN messages and wanting to buck that system like nothing else. My queer identity has helped immensely. I realized I was bi last year, and the friendships and sex partners (and friendly sex partners) that I found through my local community were amazing and sometimes life-changing. But now that I am with a straight man, I feel like I am denying myself a part of my identity somehow, and that's uncomfortable. So now a feminine-ness that might have come out otherwise is being stifled because I am in a traditional hetero relationship.

This is more than I can really pick apart in one comment on someone else's blog (haha), so I am going to stop here. But suffice to say, this woke me up to some of the feminine things I tend to do and just pretend that I don't necessarily like them, and I am hoping that this is the first step to becoming more comfortable with those things. (Thanks, too, to Feminatrix up there!)

I was pretty feminine (not overtly) until I realised I was bisexual. Downgraded the girliness a little. A few years later I realised I am a lesbian, and girliness began to feel downright uncomfortable. It is, I believe, not exactly the same as what Alphafemme went through but in a similar vein. Instead of not accepting the idea of myself being a lesbian because I was feminine, I didn't accept the idea of myself being feminine because I'm a lesbian. (Being burned by a girly girl who turned out to be straight didn't help, that's for sure.)

It was helpful to read this article, truly, especially since my (femme) GF has expressed her opinion on the situation, i.e. she likes her girls as girls – not trying to insult anyone here – and I've no problem with that because, honestly? I quite like myself as a girl, too. (By saying 'girl', I mean 'girly girl, not butch'.) Your text made me realise that it's okay to be gay – and a girl. Talk about cultural conditioning…

And as for the secret wink, I reckon the rainbow badge with two high-heeled boots in it that's visible on my bag will be enough of a hint to other queer people. ;)