Pingy-Dingy Wednesday – Brown Girl Surf

One of the many lessons I learned from my mother was about how our natural environment feeds us and nurtures us. She also taught me that we must also take care of our precious earth. I remember one time in particular when there was a lot of trash kicking around the trail where we were hiking. I immediately went to “People are so inconsiderate and such assholes and now we have to clean up their mess!” but my mom just murmured, “This trash is unsightly; let’s clean it up so the next people to come along won’t have to deal with it.” A wise woman, my mom!

The ocean is a great healer as well as a primal force. It is our birthright as earth’s creatures to derive spiritual, mental, and physical fulfillment from interacting with the ocean as well as to care for and respect it. Brown Girl Surf, you get one pingy-dingy! Thank you for you enriching surf culture with your gorgeous presence, your environmental reverence, and your pure joy.

https://www.browngirlsurf.com/

I’m a typewriter whompin’, card catalogue lovin’ white girl from back in the day, and I yearn for a time before the covers of trade paperbacks were all squidgy, so you can imagine that I don’t actually understand what a pingback is. I do know that it can in some way be part of spreading the love, and since that’s what I’m all about at The Total Femme… every Wednesday, I pay homage to the laughter and inspiration to be had elsewhere online.

At the Total Femme, my intention is to post three times a week: Meditations for Queer Femmes on Monday, Pingy-Dingy Wednesday on Wednesday and Femme Friday on Friday. Rather than play catch-up in a stressful fashion on those weeks when life prevents posting, I have decided to just move gaily forward: if I miss a Monday, the next post will be on Wednesday, and so on. Thank you, little bottle of antibiotics for inspiring me in this! (“…if it’s almost time for the next dose, skip the missed dose and continue your regular dosing schedule. Don’t take a double dose to make up for a missed one.”)

 

 

Published in: on January 31, 2018 at 3:22 PM  Comments (2)  
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Meditations for Queer Femmes — Eye Candy

I just returned from the 2018 Creating Change conference, a gathering of 4000 queer activists, organizers, educators, public policy makers and more, all of us congregating in one place. The 5-day hooptie begins with a day-long racial justice institute on Wednesday and culminates in a Sunday brunch. It is something else.

There are so many things I want to talk about, so many things I learned, so many profound truths discovered and rediscovered, but this Monday I want to talk about eye candy.

Girl.

There were some butches. There were a lot of butches. From stern and soft Sue Hyde, the Creating Change conference director who is retiring after 30 years and with whom I shared office-space when I volunteered for OutWrite a million years ago and I was just a wee baby femme and she was courting her wife, endless lovey phone calls full of “baby” and sex voice to which I listened, mesmerized and turned on; to Eddie Clement Swan and Carmen Vazquez, two old-school, suit-wearing butches; Eddie, gentlemanly and sweet and community minded, proprietor of the LRoom in Durham, NC; Carmen, director of the LGBT Health and Human Services Unit at the New York State Department of Health who was on the panels of both “Histories of Activism in Times of Tyranny” and “Sexversations: Pussy Politics & Top/Bottom/Switch Culture,” and who is wise and open-hearted and HOT.

We femmes who love butches are always running on a deficit, ‘cause when do you ever get to see enough butches, a variety of butches, a bouquet of butches in all their sexy glory? Most about never! And even if you do see a butch out in public, how often do they even notice you, smiling away and saying, “Hey, there, mister!” with your eyes? At Creating Change, there was a lot of mutual smiling, and a lot of noticing.

I know that “eye candy” usually refers to people who typify folks to whom you are sexually attracted, and I adored my butch eye candy at Creating Change. In addition, however, I realized how profound it was to be surrounded by such a mind-blowing variety of queers. The coterie of gorgeous trans women who attended Miss Major Griffin-Gracy, the black, transgender elder who received the Susan J. Hyde award for longevity in the movement. The femmes, shy and a little mousy like me, flirty and put together like Gabbi Boyle, presenter of the workshop, “Dance/Movement: A Tool for Self-Care and Social Justice”. Gay men, swishy or more butch; the young ones with their dashing outfits, the older ones rocking comfortable shoes and greying mustaches. Bisexual elders like Loraine Hutchins, co-editor of Bi Any Other Name: Bisexual People Speak Out, her hair died the colors of the bi flag, passing by on her scooter; lesbians of all flavors, gender fluid folks, trans men and so many more filled that DC hotel with their style, energy, spirit and beauty.

Being able to gaze upon butches for five days certainly boosted my spirits and my libido, but being surrounded by all the flavors of fabulous was the larger gift. Queers from 18 to 80 were mingling and congregating, smiling at each other, greeting each other, and checking in with each other in the elevators and in the hallways. The term “eye candy” is hardly enough to describe the impact of this kind of gift: I’d say it was more like soul nourishment.

There is so much more to say about the complex, flawed, gorgeous, unwieldy, amazing, chaotic, loving and utterly queer explosion that is Creating Change, but for today I just want to say thank you. Thank you for the eye candy. Thank you for nourishing my queer femme soul.

Every Monday, I offer a Meditation for Queer Femmes in the spirit of my maternal grandmother, Mimi, who was fabulous, and from whom I inherited her Meditations for Women.

At the Total Femme, my intention is to post three times a week: Meditations for Queer Femmes on Monday, Pingy-Dingy Wednesday on Wednesday and Femme Friday on Friday. Rather than play catch-up in a stressful fashion on those weeks when life prevents posting, I have decided to just move gaily forward: if I miss a Monday, the next post will be on Wednesday, and so on. Thank you, little bottle of antibiotics for inspiring me in this! (“…if it’s almost time for the next dose, skip the missed dose and continue your regular dosing schedule. Don’t take a double dose to make up for a missed one.”)

 

 

Published in: on January 29, 2018 at 4:08 PM  Comments (8)  
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Femme Friday – Nairne Holtz and Femme Confidential

I don’t know about you, queer femme sisters, but have been known to slump about the house moaning about the lack of novels about femmes. I’m not sure what the problem is, or rather, I’m quite sure it’s a much longer discussion, so for today, I just want to give a huge THANK YOU to Nairne Holtz for writing Femme Confidential, published by Insomniac Press in 2017. It just showed up in my mailbox and I’m only a few pages in, so I can’t tell you much, but I have to write about it because I’m so excited to be reading an honest-to-goodness, really-o, truly-o actual FEMME NOVEL!

Deep gratitude to Nairne Holtz for loving Femme Confidential into existence and giving us queer femmes a novel of our own.

Femme Confidential is a wry look at sexual freedom and finding yourself, your queer tribe, and the not-so-perfect girlfriend. Beautiful and charismatic Veronika, whose primary dating criteria is hotness, embraces the role of mean girl – until she has a baby. Liberty, the daughter of leftist Quaker hippies, is quick to judge but discovers some butches make it hard for a femme to do the right thing. Dana, a trans woman, struggles to find her place in the lesbian community where masculinity, something she wants to irradiate from her being, is embraced by the femmes she desires.

–from the back cover of Femme Confidential by Nairne Holtz, who “lives in Hamilton, Ontario with her wife and miniature dogs.”

Every Friday, I showcase a queer femme goddess. I want to feature you! Write to me at thetotalfemme@gmail.com and let me shine a spotlight on your beautiful, unique, femme story!

At the Total Femme, my intention is to post three times a week: Meditations for Queer Femmes on Monday, Pingy-Dingy Wednesday on Wednesday and Femme Friday on Friday. Rather than play catch-up in a stressful fashion on those weeks when life prevents posting, I have decided to just move gaily forward: if I miss a Monday, the next post will be on Wednesday, and so on. Thank you, little bottle of antibiotics for inspiring me in this! (“…if it’s almost time for the next dose, skip the missed dose and continue your regular dosing schedule. Don’t take a double dose to make up for a missed one.”)

 

 

 

 

Published in: on January 26, 2018 at 7:44 AM  Comments (2)  
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Pingy-Dingy Wednesday – Princess Daazhraii Johnson and “What’s Missing from #MeToo and #TimesUp: One Indigenous Woman’s Perspective”

It can be such an uphill battle to convince colleagues to spend just a little more time to take into account what many still consider to be separate issues. For example, do we really need to sell bottled water at our queer event? “Just this once!” or “It’s good for our cause!” just don’t cut it when we all know, or should, that justice for one must encompass justice for all, including Mother Earth and all her creatures.

Princess Daazhraii Johnson, you get one pingy-dingy! Thank you for writing so eloquently about the connections between social justice and environmental justice and for reminding us to ask, “How can we be of service?”.

https://medium.com/@Daazhraii/whats-missing-from-metoo-and-timesup-one-indigenous-woman-s-perspective-14a8d9d8cecd

I’m a typewriter whompin’, card catalogue lovin’ white girl from back in the day, and I yearn for a time before the covers of trade paperbacks were all squidgy, so you can imagine that I don’t actually understand what a pingback is. I do know that it can in some way be part of spreading the love, and since that’s what I’m all about at The Total Femme… every Wednesday, I pay homage to the laughter and inspiration to be had elsewhere online.

At the Total Femme, my intention is to post three times a week: Meditations for Queer Femmes on Monday, Pingy-Dingy Wednesday on Wednesday and Femme Friday on Friday. Rather than play catch-up in a stressful fashion on those weeks when life prevents posting, I have decided to just move gaily forward: if I miss a Monday, the next post will be on Wednesday, and so on. Thank you, little bottle of antibiotics for inspiring me in this! (“…if it’s almost time for the next dose, skip the missed dose and continue your regular dosing schedule. Don’t take a double dose to make up for a missed one.”)

 

Published in: on January 24, 2018 at 7:26 AM  Leave a Comment  
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Meditations for Queer Femmes — The Dean of Femme

In one of those rather wonderful lesbian twists of fate, the Dean of Student Life at our younger son’s college is one of Tex’s ex-girlfriends. When we first figured this out, Tex remarked to me, “I’m into deans,” because another of her exes was a dean, too. I experienced a pang of loss at this, given that I abandoned my academic career many years ago. Angrily, I stomped my foot and hollered, “Well, I’m the DEAN OF FEMME!”

I was groomed my entire life to be an academic. Both my parents are full professors, as are my aunt and uncle; most of my relatives were teachers and educators of some kind or another. It took me years to recover when I ended up fleeing from the toxic atmosphere of my PhD program, as I thought I’d completely flopped in terms of family expectations. Happily, now I see how teaching manifests itself differently in my life – I am, after all, a tutor – and how my organizing is informed by what I know about academia. They weren’t a complete loss, after all, all those years of higher education, the end result was just a little different from what I’d been taught to believe was where I’d find the most satisfaction.

Queer femmes have also defied straight people’s expectations of them. We present feminine but we have removed ourselves from heteronormative society and behaviors. We are foreign bodies wrapped up in what might look like familiar trappings. We do not act like straight women because we are not straight. What we do with our feminine is nothing at all like what is expected. We have veered right off the straight path, the one we were taught would lead us to the most satisfaction.

Today, take a moment to think about all the places and times you disappointed your family or yourself by not doing what you thought you were supposed to do. Were your actions actually a way of saving your own life? Of taking yourself out of a toxic situation, where continuing would have smothered your awakening queer self? Stopped your femme from fully blossoming? Kept you from finding your own true queer femme path?

As painful as these times are, given that it’s never fun to disappoint those who love you, they are also the turning points where we choose our own integrity. Today, celebrate how far you’ve come and how strong you are. Rest for a moment in the fact that, even if you don’t know them personally, there are so many other queer femmes who are rooting for you and who also celebrate your queer femme journey.

I know I am and do.

Every Monday, I offer a Meditation for Queer Femmes, in the spirit of my maternal grandmother, Mimi, who was fabulous, and from whom I inherited her Meditations for Women.

At the Total Femme, my intention is to post three times a week: Meditations for Queer Femmes on Monday, Pingy-Dingy Wednesday on Wednesday and Femme Friday on Friday. Rather than play catch-up in a stressful fashion on those weeks when life prevents posting, I have decided to just move gaily forward: if I miss a Monday, the next post will be on Wednesday, and so on. Thank you, little bottle of antibiotics for inspiring me in this! (“…if it’s almost time for the next dose, skip the missed dose and continue your regular dosing schedule. Don’t take a double dose to make up for a missed one.”)

Published in: on January 22, 2018 at 3:13 PM  Comments (5)  
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Femme Friday – YOU, Gosh Darn It!

Ok, people, how many times do I have to say it? I WANT TO FEATURE YOU!

I want to share the love by introducing as many femmes as possible here, so there is a place for us to celebrate and honor each other. So that other femmes out there have a place to go when they start to wonder: What does it look like to live a femme life? Who are the other femmes alive right now? Who are the femmes from history? Who are my younger and elder sisters, aunts, grandmothers, foremothers?

I don’t want to guilt you, I want to invite you: if you are willing and able to introduce yourself just a little, and maybe offer a few thoughts for a Femme Friday post, that would be so fucking femmetastic!

Below is a step-by-step, but you can send whatever you’d like, as long as you’re centering it on Being Femme. Living Femme. Loving Femme. Femme Love Heal World!

Deep gratitude to all the femmes in the world, and that includes YOU!

For Femme Friday:

Very short bio. This could be anything!  Example: The Total Femme is a typewriter whompin’, card catalogue lovin’ white girl from back in the day, and I yearn for a time before the covers of trade paperbacks were all squidgy.

Answer one or more of the following questions (these are just examples – anything you’d like to talk about is fine, as long as it has to do with being femme!):

How did you come out as femme?

What does femme mean to you?

Who are your femme role models and why?

Do you feel invisible? Why or why not?

What do you do to nourish your femme?

Is femme a role or lifestyle? Why or why not?

Do you have femme friends? Do you all agree on what “femme” means?

What is your favorite femme art or literature?

Who or what inspires you?

AND/OR

Include artwork, prose, poetry or anything else you’d like to share with an audience of other femmes for our edification, celebration, amusement, etc.

Email me with questions or just send your contribution right along to: thetotalfemme@gmail.com. I can’t wait to hear from you! Oh! You could also recommend other femmes to me, both real people and characters in literature or the media. That would be fun!! Thank you, sweet sisters!

Every Friday, I showcase a queer femme goddess. I want to feature you! Write to me at thetotalfemme@gmail.com and let me shine a spotlight on your beautiful, unique, femme story!

At the Total Femme, my intention is to post three times a week: Meditations for Queer Femmes on Monday, Pingy-Dingy Wednesday on Wednesday and Femme Friday on Friday. Rather than play catch-up in a stressful fashion on those weeks when life prevents posting, I have decided to just move gaily forward: if I miss a Monday, the next post will be on Wednesday, and so on. Thank you, little bottle of antibiotics for inspiring me in this! (“…if it’s almost time for the next dose, skip the missed dose and continue your regular dosing schedule. Don’t take a double dose to make up for a missed one.”)

Published in: on January 19, 2018 at 7:05 AM  Leave a Comment  
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Pingy-Dingy Wednesday –Nikkita Oliver and Last Real Indians, “Black and Native Lives Need Each Other to Matter”

I live in a town that has an image of an American Indian as town symbol, but because it is modeled on a sculpture by a revered (white) town son, most people don’t put it in the same category as, say, the mascot of a neighboring town whose high school team is called the Sachems. Our town has a lot of Black Lives Matter signs, but almost no awareness of its complicity in racism towards American Indians.

Nikkita Oliver and Last Real Indians, you get one pingy-dingy! Thank you for discussing this issue so wisely and with such compassion. The more articles like this I read, the better prepared I am to raise awareness and have meaningful discussions with other white people, discussions that hopefully lead to action about my and their part in the shared resistance.

https://lastrealindians.com/black-and-native-lives-need-each-other-to-matter-by-nikkita-oliver/

I’m a typewriter whompin’, card catalogue lovin’ white girl from back in the day, and I yearn for a time before the covers of trade paperbacks were all squidgy, so you can imagine that I don’t actually understand what a pingback is. I do know that it can in some way be part of spreading the love, and since that’s what I’m all about at The Total Femme… every Wednesday, I pay homage to the laughter and inspiration to be had elsewhere online.

At the Total Femme, my intention is to post three times a week: Meditations for Queer Femmes on Monday, Pingy-Dingy Wednesday on Wednesday and Femme Friday on Friday. Rather than play catch-up in a stressful fashion on those weeks when life prevents posting, I have decided to just move gaily forward: if I miss a Monday, the next post will be on Wednesday, and so on. Thank you, little bottle of antibiotics for inspiring me in this! (“…if it’s almost time for the next dose, skip the missed dose and continue your regular dosing schedule. Don’t take a double dose to make up for a missed one.”)

 

Published in: on January 17, 2018 at 5:23 PM  Leave a Comment  
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Femme Friday on a Saturday (Because That Happens Sometimes!) – MadFemmePride

There’s nothing like stumbling upon your people in person or online or both, which is what happened to me with MadFemmePride. I met some of the fabulous members, in all their glory and glitter, wielding their groovy signs, at a Dyke March many years ago, and then I hooked up with them on meet up.

Here’s what these amazing queers have to say about themselves:

MadFemmePride (MFP) is a queer, femme-centered community that is PRO-trans, PRO-woman and PRO-femininity for all folks who support femme-positive queer space.

We are open and welcoming to anyone on the queer, questioning, LGBTQIA spectrum who wants to meet new people, mingle, and experience a little bit of the MadFemmePride friendly magic that makes our diversity-conscious, radically-inclusive community so special.

We are based in and around Boston and organize in-person events primarily via meetup.com.

Read more about MadFemmePride in the most recent Boston Spirit Magazine, where they were recently featured!

Deep gratitude to MadFemmePride for their big hearts, delicious politics (not to mention the vegan cupcakes!), book groups, picnics, marches and more! May every town grow groups such as this!

In fact, if your town does have a group like MadFemmePride, the Total Femme wants to know about it, so hit me up with a comment or an email!

Every Friday, I showcase a queer femme goddess. I want to feature you! Write to me at thetotalfemme@gmail.com and let me shine a spotlight on your beautiful, unique, femme story!

Published in: on January 13, 2018 at 10:03 AM  Leave a Comment  
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Pingy-Dingy Wednesday — Nnedi Okorafor talks about African science fiction

My sweet femme friend Miel Rose recommended Nnedi Okorafor’s writing to me, and I just finished reading her second novella about an earth girl who travels far and gains great responsibility, Binti: Home, which I adored. The astrolabes, the Meduse, the otjize, the okuoko and the edan are so beautiful and real. And my newly empty nest would be a lot easier to endure if my kids were at Oomza Uni instead of attending their mundane ol’ earthbound colleges!

Nnedi Okorafor, you get one pingy-dingy! Thank you for sharing your prodigious imagination and gorgeous writing with us! Your work lives on my bookshelf next to Octavia’s books.

http://nnedi.blogspot.com/2014/01/african-science-fiction-is-still-alien.html

I’m a typewriter whompin’, card catalogue lovin’ white girl from back in the day, and I yearn for a time before the covers of trade paperbacks were all squidgy, so you can imagine that I don’t actually understand what a pingback is. I do know that it can in some way be part of spreading the love, and since that’s what I’m all about at The Total Femme… every Wednesday, I pay homage to the laughter and inspiration to be had elsewhere online.

 

Published in: on January 10, 2018 at 3:29 PM  Leave a Comment  
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Meditations for Queer Femmes — Queer Femme Inspiration

For queer femmes, the stories of other queer femmes can be nothing short of life saving. Every femme who shares her take on the world releases enduring nourishment to her sisters far and wide. Every time we name ourselves, proudly claiming femme, we save each other the fatigue of constantly having to read between the lines, desperately searching for queers like ourselves. There is a comfort unlike any other in seeing queer femmes engaged in every arena from art to science; from knowing that we are everywhere. And because “bodies respond to other bodies” and “[t]he heart responds to direct human contact,”* that comfort grows exponentially when we queer femmes gather together in person and are able to relax, connect with our own complex femme identities, and be nurtured and challenged by other femmes. Femmes who are like us in one core fashion, but who are, of course, their own fascinating, unique selves. I don’t think it can be said enough that we are able to explore our own identities more deeply, connect with ourselves more fully, when we have time to rest, laugh, renew and explore with others like us.

And when we have rested, laughed, renewed and explored, we are able to bring a more healthy and discerning awareness to the rest of the world. A generosity. After a Femme Klatsch, I can just breath more easily, and situations that might have infuriated me and taken up way too much of my time end up being more easily resolved because my spirit has been fed and eased, and I feel good in my queer femme body.

In addition, when our queer femme spirits have been fed by queer femme company, we are so much more able to be inspired by those who are not queer femmes. Queer femme company is imperative, but connecting to other queers and to straight people, finding inspiration there, is not only delightful, but necessary for the work of resistance.

For example, I adore the Marketplace series by Laura Antoniou. I’ve read it many more times than once, but the first time through was the most profound. I was just coming out in my thirties and was so excited to be here and queer! My attraction to the world of the Marketplace is based less on a desire to live a life of full-on BDSM and more on the fact of the possibilities in this queer leather story. If these characters can move in so many directions, find so many ways to connect, love and thrive doing things that are in direct contradiction with what the status quo says is ok – that’s inspiring! I treasure that inspiration, from the leather community, from trans folks, from radical fairies, from drag, from poly folks, from the Queer Asian Pacific-Islander Alliance, from Black Lives Matter, from United American Indians of New England, from the Center for Coastal Studies, from RedNation, from Bold Nebraska, from Brown Girls Surf…the list is deliciously endless.

I want all of us to support each other and learn from each other. I want us all to have the opportunity to gather in affinity groups, those places conducive to a certain, basic kind of healing and spiritual growth, so that when we get back together, we can sock it to the oppressors.

We all need our own close-knit communities based on affinity and love; we all need our siblings in the revolution who may not look a thing like us but with whom we share the goals of resistance and radical change and with whom we are inextricably linked.

I am inspired by my queer femme sisters.

I am inspired by lovers and warriors of every stripe.

May we meet in power!

Every Monday, I offer a Meditation for Queer Femmes, in the spirit of my maternal grandmother, Mimi, who was fabulous, and from whom I inherited her Meditations for Women.

*The Power of Off: The Mindful Way to Stay Sane in a Virtual World by Nancy Collier, p. 109 in the chapter, “All Alone in Virtual Community”

Published in: on January 8, 2018 at 3:06 PM  Comments (3)  
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