The First of the Birthday Heels

Posted on April 4, 2010 in eye candy | 2 Comments


Strappy birthday heels and fishnets by Femme is my Gender

2 Comments | Category: eye candy | Tags: , , , ,

On Femme Invisibility

Posted on November 23, 2009 in in praise of femmes | 53 Comments

G at “Can I Help You, Sir?” asked about femme invisibility recently, and the topic has gone around the gender/queer blogs a bit, with some great posts and thoughts.

First, and probably most obviously: I am not femme. So I am writing from a perspective of having dated and known many femmes in my life, but I do not experience visibility directed at me, but through stories and my witnessing. I am only an indirect, at best, expert on this. But these are my thoughts on femme invisibility, i.e. femmes not being recognized as queer because of their gender presentation.

This is a real thing. Femmes everywhere and from all parts of my life have told me this. One of my first femme mentors, Tara Hardy, has multiple poems about femme identity, one of which quotes: “I no longer get sad if they ask me at the door if I know it’s dyke night: I get mad. I mean, how much pussy do I have to eat before you let me in the club?”

And early on, I knew I was attracted to femininity, knew I wanted to date femmes (though I wasn’t quite sure how). The revelation that there are gay women who like to be feminine, and that I don’t have to chase straight women who will, probably, by definition, leave me to date men, was a relief. But I know that that’s not so easy to grasp for many people.

At the Femme Conference in 2008, Leah Lakshmi Piepzna-Samarasinha said in her keynote address, “Femme invisibility is bullshit. You just don’t know how to look.” And I wanted to stand up and scream FUCK YEAH, because sometimes when femmes say “I feel so invisible” I want to say, but I SEE YOU! But I know I don’t always, not every single time, and I know I don’t make up for the other thousands of people who don’t see you, or for the discrimination and rejection from the queer communities that seems to continue, despite that femmes are a very significant part of queer communities.

One of the bottom-line issues about femme in/visibility, for me, is that it is a form of gender discrimination. When someone refuses to recognize a femme as queer, that person is saying, straight women are feminine, dykes are not, therefore your gender presentation trumps anything that might come out of your mouth about how you identify or who you are, and I am more right than you are about your identity. The sex-gender assumption is too strong and too fundamental for many people to be allowed to be overridden.

And gawd if that doesn’t get my boxers in a twist.

Especially since, let’s be honest, I fetishize the theorization of gender a little bit (or, um, maybe a lot), so the verbal explanation of gender and sexuality that femmes are pretty much required to do (because the sex-gender assumption is so strong) is all the more hot to me, and even sometimes MORE valid than the androgynous or rejection of femininity presentation of many other dykes and queers. Because, I mean, your strappy sandals are really hot, don’t get me wrong, but if you can’t use words to talk about femininity and sexuality and dykeness and a claim to queer culture and an acknowledgment of the complications of living in a culture which heteronormatizes femininity, are you going to get my blood pumping? Probably not. The femininity without the intention behind it is less appealing – to me, personally – than the ability to explain it.

From what I can tell, the issue of femme invisibility is at least threefold: visibility to straight folks, visibility to queer folks, and visibility to femmes themselves.

Passing: In/visibility to the Straight World

Not being seen as queer and recognized as radical by straight folks is a common complaint I hear from femmes. There is an added burden of constantly having to come out verbally, constantly having to remind the folks around you that you are queer, constantly having to deflect and defend yourselves against unwanted straight male attractions, since in this culture the display of femininity is presumed to be for the attraction of men, men’s gaze, men’s sexual advancement. It is seen as an invitation to being hit on, in fact. A girl out on the town and all dressed up in heels, dresses, lipstick, must be trying to “catch a man.” Of course, this isn’t true. Whoever this girl is, she could be wearing those things for all kinds of reasons, for her boyfriend, for her friends, for herself, for her wife.

And this is constant. Walking down the street, catching a cab, on the subway, at work, at a party, at a play, at a concert, in a bar – everywhere a femme goes, her femininity is assumed to be for men and to attract a man.

(This is also, in fact, one of the reasons femme-ness is subversive, and feminist: it re-creates femininity not as a tool to catch men, but as an authentic mode of expression for onesself and for queerness, disrupting this idea that femininity is “natural” for women.)

This is also called “passing,” and though I have had femmes tell me they like that they get to hear what people say when they don’t know someone gay is listening, I think generally passing carries with it a great burden, not privilege. The burden is that of constantly coming out, constantly having to argue with folks, constantly having to defend one’s orientation as gay when the sex-gender assumption does not line up.

There is also, as some femmes have mentioned to me, the problem that, after coming out verbally to someone (especially a man who is attempting to hit on you), you are sometimes in more danger than you were before, or than someone masculine- or androgynously-presenting is, because the person feels “tricked.” (I’ve written about this before, a little.) This defense is often cited in trans hate crimes, also – this notion that the trans person was presenting some other way than how they “really” are, therefore the hater was “duped” in some way.

Honestly, I don’t know what femmes can do about this particularly, aside from continue to come out. We – if I may speak for queer and gender and feminist activists – are trying to reach the straight world, we are trying to raise visibility and disrupt the idea that femininity is an invitation, but that is going to take some time. I hope there can be some assurance, regardless, that femme femininity is valid and not intended to be a tool of attraction for everyone, but for whomever it is you choose for it to be for. You can’t choose who sees you when you walk down the street – you put yourself out there in a semi-public domain and you can’t pick who you interact with on a daily basis. But you can choose what those interactions mean. And here, you just have a more advanced sense of this sex-gender assumption than they do. You are right. They are not.

Recognition: In/visibility to Queers

The second issue here is the visibility of femmes to queer communities. This, I think, is more personal and more of a vulnerable topic, since femininity (and expression of gender), to some degree, indicates desire and sexual signaling, and when those symbols of gender are not recognized as being symbols of attractiveness or attraction, that can be incredibly invalidating and disheartening.

It is a vulnerable process to put oneself out there, to make oneself available for rejection, to get dressed up for an event, to walk in and think, “my people!”, only to have them not recognize you as one of them. It hurts. It is a constant struggle.

It’s also frustrating to be hitting on people you are interested or attractive to and to have them not recognize what you’re doing as an invitation, or to resist or be skeptical of the validity of the invitation.

I understand the resistance, being on the other side of that equation, of a masculine-presenting person who has been taught over and over not to get caught up with straight women. I know a lot of butches and transmasculine folks who have a history of dating straight women, and the heartache of that inevitable loss is one we learn early. It is also dangerous – plenty of societal factors will jump in to police any attempts to “convert” a straight women to our lecherous queer ways, be it the girl’s boyfriend, friends, parents, or complete strangers, and because of the masculine presentation, the threat of violence is implicit or, sometimes, direct.

Not that this is an adequate excuse for the refusal to recognize femmes as queer, especially after a femme says “I’m queer” in some form or another.

I mean HELLO – butches and transmasculine folks and all of you queers and fucking everybody, while I’m on the subject – can we please just start to practice believing a feminine woman when she says she’s queer? Stop questioning her agency. Stop forcing her to defend herself. Stop being an ignorant idiot and realize that femmes exist and are real and valid queer identities. Any time you call a femme’s queerness into question, that is what you are doing.

Yeah so some of you might’ve had your heart smashed by a feminine straight girl in the past. I know. That sucks. You might be skeptical that you could get hurt again. Yep, okay, that’s valid. Entering into any relationship requires you to put yourself out there a little, and involves some risk. But regardless of her orientation, you might get hurt. Regardless of whether you marry this girl or date her for ten years or one year or just have a one night stand or just buy her a drink or walk away in one minute, she could hurt you. (No wait – she could reject you. You can choose whether or not that rejection is painful. But that’s a slightly different topic.)

Also: I’d like to put out there that, when in a queer space, it is okay to assume that the people in attendance are queer. Now, this does not mean that everyone is there for your own personal pleasure, and that it’s okay to blindly hit on anyone and everyone, so the “don’t be an asshole” rule obviously still applies. But if there’s a feminine person over by the jukebox at the dyke bar, it is more likely that she is gay than not. She still might not be – but if she’s in a dyke bar, and you are nice and thoughtful and polite and reasonable and respectful, it isn’t a problem to assume that she’s gay and to ask her if you can buy her a drink or tell her that you like her shoes. If she’s not gay, okay, depending on your goals of the evening (to pick someone up vs to converse with interesting people vs something else), be polite. If she is gay, that still doesn’t mean she’ll sleep with you. You might not be her type. She might be taken. You might be her type and she might not be taken, but she still might not sleep with you because for whatever reason, she doesn’t want to. Oh well! If you can, don’t take it personally, and move on.

Proof: In/visibility to Oneself

In the post Alphafemme wrote about femme invisibility, she touched on something very interesting:

It starts with not being able to see myself. That must be at the very root of it. As a little girl … I loved tea parties and dollhouses and dresses and patent leather shoes, I loved American Girl dolls and dress-up and imagining my future wedding. I was obsessed with … figure skaters and ballerinas. I fit snugly into my gender box. No questions asked. … it took me quite a long time to come out to myself. … There was no way I was gay. It just didn’t make sense. I was a girl. I was supposed to like boys. That was that. … Understanding of sexuality is so, so so tied up with gender. That’s really what makes femmes so invisible. To ourselves as well as to others. There often aren’t any outward signs that we digress from the norm. They’re all inward. And society tells us (all of us, not just femmes) all the time that the inward things? Are figments of our imagination. … So unless you look different, unless there’s some physical proof of it (whatever it is), there’s plenty of room for people to doubt you. And judge you. And feel justified in doubting and judging.

What a complicated, heartbreaking, turning-ourselves-inside-out that coming to a new identity process is. And when it is not marked by physical proof, when someone looks the same, there is no particular indication that Something Big Has Changed, so how do we know? By speaking of it, by talking about it, by documenting it in some form. Still, so much of the data we take in is visual, so even when our minds take in that something is different, if we don’t see the physical proof, it might not register the same way. I think this is also partly why the process of coming out as a dyke often involves things like cutting one’s hair off – which is the rejection of femininity and the association that femininity is performed for the attraction of men, yes, but also a physical marker that something has changed.

These are just things that are “true,” according to our culture: femininity is a tool for the attraction of men; dykes reject this and therefore don’t have to perform femininity; if you are a dyke, you also come to a more androgynous gender identity as part of your dykeness. Sexual orientation and gender presentation are so tied together – that is the sex-gender assumption in a nutshell.

It is a radical and subversive thing to occupy an identity that disrupts these social “truths.” It is hard. It is a constant battle. I think it does change, though, in two ways: we come to a more accepting, understanding place about our own identities, with a lot more sovereignty, so we don’t have to constantly feel defensive and at war with the world; and culture is changing, too. Culture is not a static fixed thing. Queer culture is advancing like mad. We are pushing the edges of it, calling into question the sex-gender assumptions in big ways. I think society is getting more accepting and understanding, as time goes on, and we do come to more solid places within ourselves, and we do get to know more and more people who are like us the longer we explore these identities.

A few more things …

Femme invisibility is gender discrimination based on the sex-gender assumption. It is not about you, it is about a culture-wide unspoken societal rule that says femininity is for the attraction of men and feminine women are straight.

Don’t take it personally. I know that’s more easily said than done, but I still think it’s true. There is not some magic femme symbol that, if you were wearing it, or if you were more gay, or “really” gay, they would have recognized it. This is their problem, not yours. There are many, many of us who recognize femme as a completely legit queer identity, as one of the cutting edges of queer identity in fact, and who know how difficult it is and how deep it runs. Your experience is valid, your orientation is valid.

Of course, femmes don’t always go through the process of invisibility. Lady Brett wrote a piece about the relative newness of invisibility in her life, and growing up a tomboy. There are so many ways to experience femme-ness and queer community involvement and recognition, and while claims to overarching truths can be called into question, our own experiences are always valid and real.

Chime in on this conversation, if you like. What do you think about femme invisibility? What has your experience of it been? What’s it like for you? How do you transcend these frustrating moments of invisibility, both to other queers, the straight world, and yourself? What have you witnessed in your femme partners or lovers or friends? How do you give a secret nod or wink to other queers?

53 Comments | Category: in praise of femmes | Tags: , , , , , , , , , , , , ,

What’s On My Mind

Posted on September 29, 2009 in Kristen, stories to turn you on | 12 Comments

You in stockings and a garter, pussy bare, black bra, your lips and eyes darkened. Heels strapped around your ankles that I take off, or maybe not. Black and red silk ropes around your thighs, under your knees, around your ankles, around your wrists. Smooth ropes on the smooth stockings and I love the texture, run my hands all over you. I slip a blindfold over your eyes and kiss you. Smear the lipstick across your cheek and lips. You get still and quiet, waiting.

Your fist in me deep. Hard. The look on your face when you’re between my legs, that awe and desperate look I know I get too. Sweating. My hand on my clit, hard, rubbing hard, getting close until I grab you by the hair and push your mouth down on it, yeah, like that, suck it, don’t slow down, fuck me, until I’m hard and bursting in your mouth and I lift you by the hair again, take my clit in my fingers again to come, hard, around your fist. I wish I could squirt as easily as you do, I would, I would come in your mouth and watch you swallow it.

Your new thigh high boots, your little black dress. I’d like you in an alley, maybe, a dirty one, street-lamp lit and bricked and you’re nervous about the dinginess but you want me, you trust me. I push you up against a wall, slam your shoulders back, bite your neck, suck your tongue. You’re wearing fencenets between your boots and the tight hem of your dress but nothing underneath; I get my fingers between the wide holes and into your tight one, and hold you there, until your knees buckle and your fencenets rip.

You coming in my mouth again. Last time your knees on either side of my head, dipping your pussy into my mouth while I licked and sucked, tongued your hole as deep as I could. “You want to do it?” “Yes.” Your fingers on your clit and I held your hips (how you like it) and watched you squirt all over my face, dripping down my chin and cheeks, into my ears, and I laughed, mouth filled.

Blindfolded, on your hands and knees, mouth stretched open, pussy, ass, holes stretched open farther than you thought they could go and you like it, you like being filled like this, you like taking me in. A gag maybe. Breathing tight around the edges. Touching your smooth skin in easy strokes and thrusting inside you, my mouth by your ear: no, don’t come yet, don’t come yet, let me do it first, don’t do it baby, just take it.

My hips are heavy this morning and I remember the weight and swing of my longest cock between my legs, the swagger of it, the thrill of filling it, the thrill of filling you, that squeeze and tightening and then the ease when we work into our rhythm and press, thrust, push against each other.

I’m biting at my lips, remembering yours, remembering the way you kissed me when I got off in bed earlier this week, we’d woken early to fuck but I hadn’t gotten off, pulled out and rolled beside you, annoyed. “What’s wrong?” “Frustrated. I want to … ” “I know.” So I did it, put my hands on me, slid my cock off and held you tight to me, wanted your body next to mine, the way you kiss me when I am not in charge of the kiss. That mouth of yours.

I am tempted to get out the little digital video camera and set it up in the corner to make a record of how we fuck. Would we be too self-conscious? Would we get into it like we usually do? Would we be loud enough to hear on the recording? I could tell you louder. Louder. Say that again. Say it louder. Say fuck me. Say fuck me, Daddy. Say I want your cock. Say fuck my little pussy. Say it. Say it. Take it. My sweet girl, my lovely little girl, my darling. What would we capture? What would we look like? Will we look back at this in ten years, wonder how we were ever that young, that in love, that passionate? Or will we look like amateurs compared to whatever we’d be doing then? I want to find out.

12 Comments | Category: Kristen, stories to turn you on | Tags: , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , ,

Answers to some questions

Posted on April 30, 2009 in omphaloskepsis | 2 Comments

Do you have a top five list of toys/accessories that you love and recommend?

People’s sexualities are so different, so what’s best for me might not be best for you, so this isn’t so much what I recommend as it is my personal favorites. My top 5 desert island toys – meaning the ones I would absolutely have to have if I was stuck on a desert island – are:

  • Hitachi – the lesbian grandmother of all vibrators. Because hey, if I’m going to have a vibrator, it may as well be the best. We’ll just have to pretend my desert island has power outlets.
  • Silky aka Mr Bendy – best & only cock on the market that you can pack with, then fuck with. Not sterilizable (always use a condom). A little small for hours & hours of fucking, though, so I need an upgrade.
  • Vixskin Maverick aka Rodeo Rick – The upgrade. This might be the most perfect cock ever made. (I do wish it had balls though … I think that’s the Bandit? But balls sometimes create distance between harness strap and my clit, which would make it harder for me to get off.) Silicone, realistic, excellent size.
  • Spartacus harness – my current favorite. Simple, versatile, comfortable. I removed one of the two straps to make it a one-strap instead (which makes it easier for me to get off).
  • Maximus lube – because my sex life is so cock-centric, and because I like to go for hours, lube is a necessity. Regardless of how wet she gets and stays, I use it, if only because then I won’t have to wonder or worry if she’s getting dryer. Maximus is thick, stays slick, comes in a pump bottle, is kind of gel-like and won’t slide around your hand while I’m getting it from the bottle to my cock.

Aside from the Hitachi (and the lube), those are toys for partner sex; so I’d also add one bonus, which would be a very hard, g-spot curved insertable, either glass or metal (Pure Wand, maybe – I’d put the Pure Wand on there in a second, except I don’t actually own one).

Why do you list fingernails as a ‘turn off’ for you?

Perhaps I should explain, so thanks for asking. I like painted fingernails, I like the classics (of course) of red and pink and French tips. I love them femme-length, as short as they can be and a little squared off. I like how it enhances someone’s hands, so delicate and feminine. The part I don’t like is if they’re long. I don’t like scratching, I can’t stand it when someone taps their nails on a desk or counter, that tick-tick-tick sound makes me cringe. Maybe it’s from being in New York City where everyone’s are fake and thick and long, or maybe it’s just too much of a straight association.

How, exactly, do you determine what makes a bathroom in a bar “fuckable”?

  • Privacy of stalls – are they ceiling-to-floor? Huge gaps under the door? Short doors that a tall person could see over?
  • Strength of walls in the stalls – are they all hinged to each other in one unit, or are they individual? Would they shake if you knocked into them?
  • Size of the stalls – are they wide enough for two people to stand comfortably side-by-side, or is it hard to walk past each other and open the door?
  • General ambiance – is it harsh bright florescent lights, or recessed lighting? Are the stalls plastic, or hardwood? Is there some particular accents of decor, or is it as plain as a public park bathroom?
  • Cleanliness – in general, how is it kept?
  • Whether or not it’s monitored – some (many) gay boy bar bathrooms have signs – “one at a time ONLY” – or people who will actually knock if you manage to slip a 2nd person past them.

Personally, I like the bathrooms that are clean, with some slightly unusual ambiance, good lighting, nice décor, wide stalls so I can navigate, privacy … but others might prefer it to be more seedy, hinges loose and grubby floors, perhaps the naughtiness of the dirty scene would be their preference.

While I’m at it, here’s three amazing bathrooms to fuck in New York City:

  1. Therapy, gay boy bar in midtown east. Hands down the best bar bathrooms I’ve ever fucked in. gay boy bar, fantastic décor, good drinks, great snacks. If you date me, I will probably fuck you here at some point. Tricky to get past the bathroom guards, but it’s possible.
  2. Song, thai restaurant in Brooklyn. Not always super clean (especially during dinner, they are very busy) but the restaurant is incredibly loud and the bathrooms are shadowy and kind of swanky.
  3. Whiskeytown, east village. Straight bar, not my favorite clientele, but fantastic drinks. Bathrooms are private with the sink outside, good lighting.

Got any other recommendations?

Have you ever entertained the possibility of breathplay? (I’m NOT talking autoasphyxia, but the choking/restraining your loved one kind of breathplay.)

Sure. I don’t have much experience with it, which is why I have never written about it in my fiction. I’ve never come across a lover who said she was interested in playing with it, and as a top it seems like the kind of thing that I wouldn’t necessarily impose on someone else, since it isn’t an act that is ‘for me’ the same way other toppy things are (fucking, cocksucking). I’ve noticed that Kristen often holds her breath while she’s about to come, though, so maybe eventually we’ll get to more breathplay between us – but she doesn’t seem into it when we’ve seen it in porn we’ve watched. So, it’s not something I would probably seek out without someone else being into it, but I’m GGG, if it came up and someone was interested I would give it a try.

Since 2003, have you ever heard anyone utter the words, “Do you…(fill in the blank)?” and not thought of Cher? If so, how is this possible?

Maybe not “Do you…”, but “Do you believe in … “ yes certainly, the only way to end that sentence is “life after love.” And, not that you asked, but yes, I do believe in life after love.

2 Comments | Category: omphaloskepsis | Tags: , , , , , ,

Bare legs.

Posted on April 24, 2009 in eye candy | 2 Comments

zofia

Being out of the country was a good excuse to send a (very) late birthday photo. And of course, the bare legs help make up for it, too. Mmmmmm.

2 Comments | Category: eye candy | Tags: , , , , ,

The only thing she wore …

Posted on April 24, 2009 in eye candy | 3 Comments

roxy

“There’s something about hotel rooms that make even the sweetest pair of shoes seem just a bit naughty.” – Roxy

3 Comments | Category: eye candy | Tags: , , , , , ,

Stockings.

Posted on April 15, 2009 in eye candy | 2 Comments


Stockings & heels from Polly

2 Comments | Category: eye candy | Tags: , , , , , , ,

Functional headboard

Posted on April 15, 2009 in eye candy | 1 Comment


Sexy headboard & heels from Green-eyed Girl

1 Comment | Category: eye candy | Tags: , , , , , , ,

Feathers

Posted on April 15, 2009 in eye candy | No Comments

minameow
from Mina Meow

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Black & white femme

Posted on April 7, 2009 in eye candy | No Comments


sexy J. from Toronto sent me three different versions of this lovely card … I think this is my favorite. And I think I might just keep the other two for myself.

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