Card Carrying Lesbian … What’s in your wallet?

Lesbian Housewives

Posted on 14. Feb, 2009 by Sasha.

I’m sure some of you have seen some of the comments a few readers have left me, indecent proposals I suppose. If I were single I’d be flattered, maybe a little worried since some of them have a bit of a stalker feel to them. But still flattering non the less.

Let’s take a look at some of the comments from my greatest hits list, shall we? [...]

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Butch By Association

Posted on 08. Feb, 2009 by Sasha.

I find it endlessly interesting, the way that us lesbians feel the need to categorize ourselves and each other into these limiting roles of femme, butch, tomboi, androgynous and futch (right in the middle between femme and butch). I’m sure I’m missing some, but these are the ones I hear most often. Actually, I usually just hear femme and butch. But we all know that there’s a million shades of gray between those two extremes.

Even though I know better then to stereotype and label people, I find myself doing it all the time. If for no other reason then as a means of describing someone to someone else in a casual conversation. Or while people watching at a lesbian club. Last night, Remi and I went to Club Eleven in WeHo and could have been overheard saying any version of, “Look at that butch checking out the femme in blue.” Or, “Whoa, is that some butch on butch action?!” Not that there’s anything wrong with that.

But that’s sort of my point. Why is it considered taboo in some circles for two butch women to date? [...]

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Damsel in Distress seeks Hero on White Steed

Posted on 05. Feb, 2009 by Sasha.

Last night after the lights went out, my gf and I started having one of those deep conversations that only come from being a little drunk or so tired you’re almost delusional. We were both exhausted, which translated into being too tired to hit the edit button on our brains. There’s also something about talking in the dark that’s a lot like talking on the phone. It gives you a feeling of being unobserved, allowing you to pause and ponder what the other just said, unafraid that your partner will misinterpret the trepid look on your face.

If any of you read the comments left on my last blog you could see how I may have felt a little targeted yesterday. And like a good girlfriend, Remi came to my defense. I didn’t ask her too, I never would. Not that I would ever have to. While mild mannered in most ways, she’s always too happy to come to my rescue.

Which is what we were talking about last night …. my apparent need of the occasional Knight in Shining Armor and her need to be that for me. I started to worry recently with some other things that have been going on in my life that Remi would soon tire of having to always “save me” even though it’s usually from myself. [...]

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Butch/Femme relationships versus lesbian relationships

Posted on 24. Aug, 2008 by Sasha.

Now before you go and bite my head off yelling at me that butch/femme relationships are lesbian relationships let me tell you that I am well aware of that fact.

Having been involved in a butch/femme dynamic I am still wheeling from the stark differences between what it’s like to date a butch and what it’s like to simply date a self-identified lesbian.

I couldn’t help but notice all the similarities between a straight relationship and a butch/femme relationship. The pseudo gender roles of the fifties were strictly enforced under the guise of chivalry and these roles extended well into the bedroom. As the femme, I was supposed to know my place and in my place I wasn’t supposed to be able to open a jar of peanut butter or touch my lover anywhere other than where she said. Which by the way, was basically no where except to grab her hair when screaming her name or to lie in her arms afterwards.

Don’t get me wrong. I love butch women. I absolutely adore them! But in some ways, while dating them, I feel a bit cheated out of being a lesbian. I don’t get to please her, touch her, kiss her when I want to or buy her dinner once in a while. There are plenty of wonderful things that come along with dating butch girls. Men of today should take lessons from our butch sisters in how to treat a woman. There’s just something about having doors opened for you and generally being taken care of that gives me a warm, ummm ….. nice feeling if you get my drift. But in exchange for that, there is a price. To me that price was falling into a box where my role was “femme” and her role was “butch” and anything that threatened that delicate balance was grounds for a fight.

It’s been a while since I dated a woman that let me touch her, kiss her and walk her to her door. I forgot how nice it is to feel a woman, to taste her. I forgot how good it feels to make a girl weak in the knees when I kiss her neck or touch her just so. I recently started dating a girl that lets me kiss her goodnight and pay for a round of drinks. When I look at her body I’m reminded of how unbelievably gay I am and how glad I am that she’s okay with that! There aren’t any rules on who’s allowed to do what and when. We’re equal and both fully capable of taking care of ourselves and each other. So we sort of take turns being the dominant one or the girly one.

Granted, I think I’m still the femme in this situation. She’s a little more tomboi than I am and I like that. But when it comes down to it, I get to be a lesbian again and not a 1950’s housewife.

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High femme vs Stone Femme: one interpretation

Posted on 23. Jun, 2008 by Sasha.

There are countless ways to define the femme identity/gender and as many ways for each woman to express it in her own way. But for the purpose of this single blog I will define these two versions as such:

High Femme: a femme lesbian who is ultra feminine in her appearance and behavior. May chose to only date butch women. Plays the passive role in the bedroom i.e., she is the one fucked, never the one doing the fucking.

Stone Femme: a femme lesbian that may appear to be an ultra femme in her appearance but expresses butch attributes in bed and may not allow her lovers to fuck her at all. Leaving all the seeming power securely in her capable hands.

Or she may allow herself to be fucked by her partners but never allows them to actually touch her where it counts. Emotionally, intimately, at her core, to break down the walls she’s so skillfully erected over time.

She’s figured out a way to expose her body and hide her heart in her nudity. Her sexuality has become a weapon, not a weakness. She understands that when they’re looking at her body they’re not really looking at her at all. So she’s able to hide in plain sight, to hide in full view, naked and aroused but untouched where it really counts.

A Stone Femme can wield her power over her lover and make her lover feel as if they’re the one in control. She’s strong enough to give up control of her body to someone else, because she knows that they’ll never control anything else about her.

Her lover may dominate her in bed but her lover will never really know her. She only sees what the Stone Femme allows her to see. Even tears are carefully placed props. What seemed like vulnerability was anything but.

Be careful if you know a Stone Femme. Chances are you do, but you don’t realize it. Stone Femmes are mistresses of disguise. Oscar worthy actresses and brilliant chameleons. They’ll be the girl of your dreams and your best friend. They’ll adapt to their environment without even trying, all those years of surviving have molded them into experts at blending in while standing out.

They can do and become anything you need them to be. Anything to keep you at arms distance, but no further. Tied to them through lust and desire but constantly pushing you away with ambiguity and neurosis.

There’s something about them you can’t get enough of. They’re addictive and dangerous yet something about them makes you want to save them. When you hold her body in your arms, the softness of her curves makes her feel vulnerable. When you look into her eyes, behind the long dark lashes you mistakenly think you see weakness. Something in her that needs to be protected.

You’re only half wrong. There’s no weakness left in her but she does need to be saved. From herself more than anything. But she’s made of stone and there’s no way you or anyone else can chip away at it. She’s a Stone Femme. It’s taken her whole life to make her that way. It’ll take a lot more than artful fucking to save her from herself. But that doesn’t mean you shouldn’t try.

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a femme in the streets but a butch in the sheets

Posted on 29. May, 2008 by Sasha.

I would say that I am a femme/top. Whoa. What? Is that possible? Hell yea it’s possible. Normally this is not a problem, especially when two femmes are dating. I mean, someone’s got to bring the strap-on! Or even sans strap-on, someone’s got to be the aggressor. That person is usually me. Or at least it used to be.

Apparently butch women are not big fans of aggressive femmes wielding dildos and handcuffs. Hahaha …. But seriously, I’ve been thinking about this. What’s an aggressive femme to do when she’s dating a butch who has some pretty strict rules on how the game is played in and outside of the bedroom?

Sure, I love being treated like I’m the only girl on the date. It’s wonderful having someone open the car door for you, court you like you’re in an old movie, be chivalrous and all that good stuff that comes with dating butch women. I love it.

But … and there’s always a but: I’m not what they call a high femme. A high femme for those of you who don’t know, is a woman who is so feminine she may even identify as straight, because all her relationships follow usual gender roles. She plays the woman and gets fucked but never fucks. While her partner will always be a stone butch who fucks her brains out, but will never disrobe or allow herself to be fucked by her girlfriend. So while this may be confusing to some, others will know what I’m talking about.

While I may be classified under the femme label, I am in no way a high femme. I like to be the aggressor sometimes, or more than sometimes if I’m telling the truth. But when dating butch women, I can’t be. So I find myself in a dilemma: How to reconcile the more aggressive parts of my personality with my desire to date butch women?

I don’t want to change who I am for anyone else and I won’t. Nor do I want to restrict who I date to femmes who appreciate my ability to take control of a situation. Because truth be told, other femmes just don’t catch my eye lately.

While I am more than happy to play the submissive role (strictly in the bedroom) once in a while, I still want to be able to be myself and switch it up sometimes. But I don’t want to make her uncomfortable, so I don’t.

Hence I find that being a femme/top with switch-hitter capabilities isn’t as easy as it sounds.

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Hard Femmes

Posted on 08. May, 2008 by Sasha.

Since butch women are my current obsession, so to speak I’ve been thinking about the differences between butch and femme. What those labels imply, what it means to be either or both or neither in many cases. I’ve heard from a lot of women on both sides of the table and I have to tell you that I feel as if I’ve fallen down a rabbit hole. This is a seemingly endless topic with offshoots that lead to unexpected places to ponder, discuss and in some cases cause oneself to totally rethink certain preconceived notions.

It’s impossible to blog just once on this topic. So I guess I’ll just take it one little step at a time.

Earlier today my mother, bless her heart, who is trying with all her might to be the most supportive and cool mom any dyke could ask for was questioning me about the topic on hand. The discussion got to a point where I heard myself saying, “From my own experience the women I know that identify as butch are actually the softest, most gentle women I know in a lot of ways. While on the other hand, the femme looking ones, myself included have a very hard side to our personalities.”

Which made me wonder about this and then I read a few emails and comments left by several butch women. They all expressed a similar feeling of just being born that way, not feeling as if they had too much choice in the matter. This was just the way they are, they didn’t know why and it hurts them that others sometimes discriminate against them for it.

It dawned on me that maybe the softness, for lack of a better word I see in the butch women I know comes from the fact that they live their lives in a very vulnerable state. They don’t really blend in, they either can’t or don’t hide who or what they are and they should never be made to feel that they should. But what I’m saying is that they just sort of put themselves out there. For better or worse, they’re more vulnerable in some ways than a femme.

Here, let me try to illustrate my point. As a femme woman myself I have grown up very aware of the affect my body and sexuality has on men. I grew up well aware that beautiful women get by easier in this world. So I played the game with the best of them. I learned how to feel comfortable with that and I think a lot of women do.

It’s almost like a femme woman gets up in the morning and she puts on makeup/warpaint. Like a woman preparing for war she puts on her armor/wonder bra. She dresses in whichever way will benefit her and throw her opponent off his game a bit. Maybe that means high heels, sexy business suits or whatever. But she knows there’s a game to play and even if she doesn’t like it, she’s still in the game the minute she walks out of her front door. So she dons her public persona …. a feminine ideal, carefully calculated to help her navigate her way through a male dominated world. If we can’t hide our feminine wiles, we might as well use them when it suits us.

Looking at myself and my friends I can see that we all have a very definite image we present to the world. While we are very feminine and attractive we like to think of ourselves as cold hearted and maybe even ruthless when necessary. It’s almost as if the softer a woman looks, the harder she’s become along the way.

A beautiful woman doesn’t go through life without constant sexual harassment coupled with being underestimated on a daily basis. This causes callouses of sorts that result in a very dangerous product: A beautiful woman that’s capable of anything to get what she wants.

So while femme women maybe able to hide parts of themselves behind the makeup and pretty clothes. Our butch counterparts could be seen as more exposed for who they really are. Femmes are able to “pass” in straight society, hardly having to face any prejudice from ignorant strangers. While perhaps other women do have to endure injustice and in some cases physical harm for what they look like.

All I’m saying is that whatever this whole “Butch/Femme” thing is, whether it’s about looks, style, gender or roles … it doesn’t really matter because when you get to the heart of it, what you’ll really find is the heart of a woman.

In my humble opinion the hearts of femmes may be harder than you might think so be careful of lip gloss wielding women, we’re more trouble than you might expect.

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Femme vs. Butch …. shouldn’t it be Butch + Femme?

Posted on 08. May, 2008 by Sasha.

What I’ve noticed when I talk to most lesbians is that they have a strong opinion on butch women. Maybe it’s just because we’re in LA, where the cultural idea of femininity is not only abundant, it’s extreme. If you doubt what I’m saying just look around at all the silicone walking around on two toothpicks and you’ll see my point.

But as lesbian women shouldn’t we be able to see beyond the standards that pop culture sets out for us? Shouldn’t we be able to define and than embody whatever ideal we see fit for our lives and if we wish to say that it fits under the umbrella of femininity, than so be it. Who’s to say otherwise?

Until recently all of the women that I’ve dated have been very typical “lipstick femme” as far as appearance goes. But as I continue to learn about myself , who I want to be and in turn who I want to be with, I’ve noticed myself noticing a lot more women who didn’t really fit into the “femme” category. They were more tombois, sporty, butch.

What surprised me wasn’t that I was attracted to them, it was some of my friends comments about it. No one said anything overtly critical but it was the way they said it, “You like butch women?”

Their reaction was always strong enough that I’m ashamed to say the first few times this happened I didn’t stand up for myself. But instead shrank back, afraid that my preferences might get me ousted from the inner circle. I found myself back peddling, “Um …. no … I don’t know …. well … um …. I mean, she’s not really butch, she’s sporty.” Looking at my friends faces for their approval or disapproval at my obvious digression from the groups norm I was relieved when they would just drop it and move on.

But the more I think about it and the more women I meet, I realize that yes, I am attracted to women that others may classify as butch. I still find certain femmes attractive but I take each person on an individual basis.

Armed with this recent self-realization I spoke to one of my closest friends about it. To my surprise and relief she was completely supportive and not the least bit judgmental. Which leads me to wonder if I overreacted to my friends earlier comments. Maybe what I perceived as judgment and disapproval was simply surprise for my breaking from routine.

So while I may have underestimated my friends and their ability to accept others. I stand by my earlier statement that overall there seems to be a bit of stigma, or prejudice against the butch identity from a lot of femmes here in LA. I’m working on a theory about it and so far all I have is this: I think that a lot of femmes have preconceived ideas about butch women and there’s a lot they don’t understand.

I also think that there’s a lot those girls may be missing by overlooking our strong, butch counterparts. Don’t get me wrong, taste is just about as individual as it gets. I’m all for going for whatever rocks your boat and if that happens to be two femmes rowing than cool beans. But there’s also something to be said for reaching outside of your comfort zone and seeing what happens. Exciting things have been known to happen out there.

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Do you choose the femme identity or does it choose you?

Posted on 03. May, 2008 by Sasha.

I was looking on Amazon for a book about the butch/femme dynamic and I saw a book called “Brazen Femme: Queering Femininity” and I was struck by something a reviewer wrote. What she said that caught my attention was:

“My femme friends who are also in their 30’s and I have discussed whether or not we are just jealous of femmes who are coming out now, as queer and femme all at once, whereas we mostly came out as queer and learned about femme later” (Melissa K. Heckman)

Before I even realized how gay I was, the few lesbian friends I did have had already classified me as a lipstick femme. So for me, coming out as a lesbian was simultaneous to coming out as a femme. But something about that label didn’t feel that accurate to me. Sure I wear lipstick and high heels. But I also fight train, love guns and take a total of 15 minutes or less to get ready for a night out.

To me, “Lipstick Femme” sounds like a high maintenance, girly girl who loves shopping and squeals at the sight of spiders. That is not me. I hate shopping unless it’s online or for ammo. I’m not afraid of spiders and I’m not the least bit high maintenance … despite what my ex’s may say.

I happen to be talking to a butch woman right now and while she does have some feminine traits, she’s definitely butch. In comparison to her I totally feel like I get pushed into the lipstick femme category. Not that she pushes me, it just sort of happens.

Lesbian relationships tend to be very fluid. My so called “role” will vary from girl to girl. If I date a femme who’s more femme than I am, than I tend to take the masculine role on instinctually. Which I’m not always comfortable with. But when dating a butch I find myself falling back to pre-feminist days and blushing when she wants to fight for my honor.

So my question is this: Do you choose your label or do others choose it for you? Fight as we may against labels and categories, you can’t deny that sometimes you find yourself using them, if as nothing more than convenient adjectives.

I’m of the opinion that while we may not be able to control how others label us, we can control how we define it for ourselves. So for me, at this moment in time? I’ll define a lipstick femme as a woman who is secure in her feminine sexuality, enjoys all the finer things in life but can still get down and dirty when she needs to … or wants to.

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