Femme Friday – G from boneandsilver.com

As more or less a luddite femme, I continue to be dragged kicking and screaming into the technological maelstrom that is our current reality. I tend to think about my blog as a column in a queer newspaper, perhaps on the same page as the latest “Dykes to Watch Out For” comic strip – ah, we had it so good back in the day! However, I am so happy to have made G’s online acquaintance as I am always thrilled to meet a sister femme blogger. Here, G speaks about two topics near and dear to many a femme’s heart: the environment and looking fabulous.

Deep gratitude to G for her in-depth, intersectional thinking about what it means to care about true health and beauty, for her sweet blog and for her caring, feisty, strong femme energy!

Being femme and saving the planet: but can I still wear a dress?

On my blog bone&silver, I write about being over 50, queer, Mum to my almost-18 year old son, and general life in Australia. My posts often have an environmental slant, as I’m acutely aware of how we’re not taking care of our planet- as most of us are of course. Is this a femme thing? Maybe. I think we femmes are definitely more tuned in to caring, whether it’s about our lovers, our family and friends, or the big Mama Earth herself. And there’s always room for a tiny bit of care about our latest vintage dress find too *winks.

According to the U.S. EPA, more than 15 million tons of used textile waste is generated each year in the United States, doubling over the last 20 years. In 2014, Americans generated over 16 million tons of textile waste, with over 10.46 million tons sent to landfill.

I know we love to look good, but we gotta shop second hand. We consumers have SO MUCH power, and we need to exert it. According to Greenpeace, cheap clothing production has doubled since 2000, exploiting the poorest women and children who work in the garment making industry.

There are literally thousands of women on Instagram blogging about fashion styles and trends; join your femme sisters in supporting ethically-produced clothing, or second-hand recycling fashions!

For when we all rise together, taking the wider community of women with us, we are using our caring, feisty, strong femme energy for global good.

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 March 30, 2018 at 11:18 AM  Comments (2)  
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Pingy-Dingy Wednesday – Ije Ude, Samia Abou-Samra and Turtle Tank

Ije and Samia are utterly and mind-blowingly brilliant and have the biggest hearts in the world! The last time we were in New York, Tex and I met them at a Georgian restaurant and sat there until the wee hours, talking about queerness, radical anti-racism work, social justice, outside-the-stratosphere business ideas, children, mental health in communities of color, queer youth, butch/femme, and so much more! What a gift!

Ije, Samia and Turtle Tank, you get one pingy-dingy! Thank you for the incredible work you’re doing, for helping activists, organizers and business owners do what they do in the healthiest, most genuine and efficient ways, for incubating the kinds of ideas, businesses and enterprises that are putting healthy and generative energy into the world, and for just being two of the most loving and generous people I’ve ever had the pleasure of knowing!

https://turtletank.co/

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 March 28, 2018 at 12:00 AM  Leave a Comment  
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Monday Meditation – Queer Femme Healing

To alleviate various health issues attendant upon being middle-aged queers, Tex and I have recently embarked upon a Health Regimen of some magnitude. Ok, it’s the modern-day candida diet, which we both learned about a million years ago when it first made its appearance. Even back then, I knew the diet would probably be really healthy for me, but instead, I went with macrobiotics. Why? Because of community.

Macrobiotics had groups and workshops and cooking classes and other bright-eyed, judgmental people running around purporting to have solved ye ole healthy living dilemma (while secretly binging on forbidden foods and sneaking ciggies because if you had “pure blood” that was your prerogative…!). All candida had was a book.

I’m still a little worried about forging ahead with this diet (no potatoes! no corn! no sugar! no GLASS OF RED WINE!!), because food and community have always gone hand-in-hand for me, and, as suburban queers, Tex and I can already feel pretty isolated. I love communal meals, going out to eat with friends, whipping up a batch of my most excellent granola (no oats! no maple syrup!) and just generally eating as much of and whatever I like. See, I spent another million years working on resolving eating issues and body stuff and ha! Here I am back at the beginning again!

I’m thinking about authenticity, integrity and integration as I think about community. When I was so focused on body image, on loving my body, I ended up eating things that, on some level, I knew weren’t healthy for me. Why did having a healthy body image cancel out my being able to actually pay enough attention to said body to nourish it mindfully? Partly the consumerist, capitolist machine telling you “you deserve it”, “it” being whatever food or service being sold, partly the Western notion that you can control everything. I was so busy “conquering” body shame I didn’t have time to learn that it’s not really something you can conquer; really, it’s more like being neighbors with body shame, or even roommates – learning to get along together in a harmonious fashion, maybe ignore each other in a friendly way.

What is community? Do you have to share meals together? Food has been my go-to, but in the past, it turned into an emotional crutch, and something I used in unhealthy and even destructive ways. When I was in the macrobiotic community, for example, skinny and clear-eyed and perhaps healthy in my body, all I could do was obsess about food, which kept me from focusing on or benefiting from friendships and the joy to be had in getting together as a group of like-minded folks. How ironic and wonderful that physical health issues are now giving me the opportunity to focus on food in a healthy way, in the company of my dear Husband, for our enduring well-being. We are so much older and wiser and calmer now – we can do this! And when I really think about it, I have no doubt that our friends and the community we love won’t disappear because we’re not currently eating cookies. It’s deeper and way more layered than that.

We queer femmes deal with so much misogyny and homophobia and other oppressive bigotry that it is rare we escape unscathed, rare that we don’t spend a great deal of time trying all different kinds of ways to heal ourselves. This comes from such good intentions, but sometimes we end up neglecting one part of ourselves as we work so hard to heal another part. Throughout our lives, we do our best to negotiate the twisting paths leading to that authenticity, integration and integrity I was talking about earlier. The paths are rocky and steep and perhaps sometimes there is no path at all but the one you feel out, step by step.

Every time you take one of those precarious but healing steps, I hope you feel the love of queer femmes, past and present, who also took steps that uplift and inspire us. I hope you feel encouraged, accompanied and always, always at the heart of that queer femme community of fighters and lovers.

Sweet femme sisters, today I am honoring your drive to heal and be healthy and whole.

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 March 19, 2018 at 4:06 PM  Comments (2)  
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Femme Friday – Sydney Femme Guild: Visibility. Solidarity. Celebration.

Oh, oh, oh! I just joined the Sydney Femme Guild! I’m so excited! Although I have always wanted to visit Australia, thanks to early exposure to books such as Walkabout (!) and movies such as “Picnic at Hanging Rock”, I may not manage to do so in this lifetime. But! I can be a member of this femme-tastic guild! Below is a description of last month’s event, “40 Years of Femme”, and don’t you so wish you’d been there?? I sure as fuck do!

Deep gratitude to femmes, present and past, of the Sydney Femme Guild! Thank you for your creativity, perseverence and dedication to femme community – you are an inspiration to femmes everywhere!

Sydney Femme Guild is delighted to produce 40 Years of Femme in conjuction with Claude (ACON), a celebration of 4 decades of Femme history in Sydney during the 2018 Sydney Gay & Lesbian Mardi Gras festival.

A fundraiser for Sydney Femme Guild, the night will be an exploration and celebration of Femme identity – raw, sassy, strong, proud, dangerous.

Featured Femme performers will grace the stage with their own stories of Femme experience in the form of burlesque, spoken word, artistic expression and demonstrations.

In addition, we will be hosting an exhibition of Femme as Fuck images – telling a story of pride and history from the many diverse Femmes in our beautiful LGBTQI community over the past 40 years!

Every Friday, I showcase a queer femme goddess (or Guild, as in today’s post) with the goal of fostering queer femme community. I want to feature you, or your femme group! 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 March 16, 2018 at 9:57 AM  Leave a Comment  
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Pingy-Dingy Wednesday – Muliwai, Hinemoana of Turtle Island and the post, “On Cameron Crow’s Aloha and Indigenous Pacific Films We Actually Recommend”

It took a while for this white femme to get clued in, but once you start looking, racist and ridiculous caricatures of Hawaii and Native Hawaiians are as prevalent as those of American Indians. Masquerading as kitsch, all-pervasive images and objects, such as dashboard hula girls, are far, far from inoffensive.

Muliwai and Hinemoana of Turtle Island, you get one pingy-dingy! Thank you for teasing apart some of the complexities of representing indigenous peoples, and for the amazing film suggestions.

https://morethantwominutes.wordpress.com/2015/06/16/on-cameron-crowes-aloha-and-indigenous-pacific-films-we-actually-recommend/

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 March 14, 2018 at 3:55 PM  Leave a Comment  
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Meditations for Queer Femmes – Bless Me, Ancestors

Thank you to my sweet femme sister, Miel, for allowing me to share her incredibly moving prayer with you today. May it connect you to those who came before us and inspire you to imagine a future world in which we will be the beloved and powerful ancestors.

Bless Me, Ancestors

a prayer by Miel Rose

May I live each day

Honoring my connection to you who came before

However complicated

Knowing my inheritance is rich

In both wisdom and wounding

Choosing which legacy continues with me

And which is put to bed

Buried in the healing Earth

May my heart beat in time with those Ancestors

Reaching back

Who lived in a deeply balanced relationship with all things

Those who recognized and honored kinship

Past human relations

Those who lived attuned to the cycles

Through abundance to scarcity

Birth to grown to death to rebirth

Waxing to waning

Let my heartbeat recalibrate to yours

And may this change ripple outward

Creating exponential shifts within and without

I claim you and am claimed by you

And may my steps through this life

Be in alignment with your sacred legacy

Miel Rose offers her gorgeous wares, femme-made and filled with femme love and healing, including hand embroidery, sacred votive candles, altar cloths and skin medicine, at her etsy store, flame and honeycomb.

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 March 12, 2018 at 6:15 PM  Leave a Comment  
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Femme Friday – Rachel Lanzerotti, Femme Yogini

A while back, I wrote a post about notes I take on little pieces of paper, some of which make sense when I find them later, some of which do not. Happily for The Total Femme and for the wider femme community, the note I took about Rachel was absolutely golden! When I reached out to her, she was enthusiastic about being a Friday Femme, and generously shared the below with us.

Deep gratitude to Rachel for her dedication to healing spirit, mind and body, for honoring embodied femme presence, and for sharing these loving practices with all of us femmes.

Hi femmes and friends! I’m honored to offer you a guest post about femme identity and yoga, as a Yoga Therapist (MSW, C-IAYT) and 20-year practitioner. Interesting, it was 20 years ago that I last wrote and spoke publicly about being femme. So aging and time are part of this too.

One gift of Yoga, and especially the meditation and mindfulness practices, is waking up to presence. What some would describe as learning to be comfortable in our own skins. Or maybe I should say in and beyond the skin, holding this body and its identities lightly and yet with acknowledgement, appreciation and at times reverence. In practice, there is aliveness and embodiment with movement + breath + awareness.

With embodied femme presence in teaching and as a Yoga Therapist, I often call upon the energy of the Great Mother, or a fierce and wise Dakini (female embodiment of enlightenment), or Guanyin (bodhisattva of compassion) and other goddesses, witches and archetypes. And Femme is central without being centered.

Here are three yoga tips for inner femme beauty, nourishing practices that I want to share with you.

Take a load off, sweetheart!

            Yes, femmes can get it done. After all that doing, surrender the weight of the world for a little while in this restorative posture, and nourish your deep energy source.

Basic supplies: chair/couch or ottoman, pillow, blanket. Nice to have: eye cover, timer.

How to:

Find a place and time where you can be relatively quiet, warm, and undisturbed for 10-30 minutes. Put your legs up on the chair (backs of the knees supported at the edge), find a comfortable position for your head/neck with a pillow, and cover up with a blanket for warmth. Set a timer for 15-20 minutes. Cover your eyes, and rest.

Lanzerotti Restoraitve 2

Sense our divine bodies.

            Daily body sensing keeps us connected to our aliveness, creativity and sensuality. Even the places that feel a little sticky or dull light up in the divine nourishment of our kind attention. The practice is related to rotation of consciousness in yoga nidra, and also is widely used in practices like Mindfulness Based Stress Reduction (MBSR).

Basic supplies: A place to rest (lie down or sit), attention + body.

How to:

This one is harder to narrate. If you email me here, I will link you to an audio file for body awareness meditation. This practice can be done in the restorative posture from above, seated, in the bed upon waking or before sleeping. You will rest your body and move your attention to each area of the body, and simply notice sensations— for example tingling, dullness, pulsing, warmth, coolness, pleasant, unpleasant and neutral feelings. Move the attention with compassionate curiosity, noticing and not getting stuck in stories about the body (e.g., likes, dislikes, history or plans). Generally, I start at the sole of a foot and move toward the crown of my head, but you could go both ways! Stay with the feeling, and go with it if the body relaxes when you bring attention— although we’re not trying to do or undo anything in particular as we move into the felt sense

Invite a whole and multifaceted being.

Hand gestures (mudra) symbolize and activate our deepest intentions. To invite the core qualities of integration and non-duality, or nonbinary being, explore myriad postures of the hands such as the dharma chakra mudra. Statues of the prajnaparamita (perfection of wisdom and emptiness, the Great Mother) depict the goddess making this teaching gesture. This hand posture also, according to mudra teachers Joseph & Lilian LePage who inspired the variation I’m suggesting here, cultivates an overall sense of wholeness and well-being.

Basic supplies: heart + hands

How to:

Join the tips of the thumbs and index fingers of both hands to make the “OK” sign.

Turn the left palm inward toward the body

Turn the right palm outward

Touch the tips of the thumbs and fingers of both hands together, extend the other fingers.

You may experiment with hand placement, with this gesture over the solar plexus or the heart, relaxing the shoulders.

Prajnaparamita

Femmes, may we touch true joy in living and loving awareness.

IMG_4215

Rachel

FiveRiversYoga.com

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 March 9, 2018 at 12:00 AM  Leave a Comment  
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Pingy-Dingy Wednesday – Twelve Thousand Moons, Angela Sterritt, Erica Violet Lee and the Graphic History Collective

On any given day in my younger childhood, you could find me in the middle of my incredibly messy room carefully sorting through and organizing my comic book collection. This would have included Thor (who I thought was super hot), Archie (Betty and Veronica were not good femme role models), Superman (far too few appearances of Supergirl and Super Dog) and many more. I loved comic books, and still do. I never thought they were “just for kids” or “not real art” and of course, that kind of dismissal is still used to attempt to disempower all kinds of radical art. Don’t you believe it!

Twelve Thousand Moons and crew, you get one pingy-dingy! Thank you for making art that is so powerful and gorgeous, fierce and healing.

http://graphichistorycollective.com/project/poster-5-dance-decolonial-love

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 March 7, 2018 at 9:22 AM  Leave a Comment  
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Meditations for Queer Femmes — The Neutral Zone

This year of the empty nest is an emotional roller coaster for me, middle aged femme mama, that I am. Grief, loss, and panic come and go, interspersed with relief, excitement, and a sense of possibility. My therapist recently told me I’m in The Neutral Zone, something that comes after Endings and before New Beginnings. (It also reminds us both pleasantly of Star Trek.) In The Neutral Zone, said my dear wise shrink, it’s important to allow yourself time to experience the most prominent emotion and also to go full-tilt with whatever it is that gives you the purest joy. So in my case, I guess I need to be listening to a lot of sad songs and writing like my life depends on it.

This past weekend I made time to clean out my jam-packed writing file drawer so I would have more room for and access to my current projects. Even though the unorganized files were a little overwhelming, what I understood quite viscerally as I sorted through them is that I love to write, I’ve always written, and, as hard and full of mind-fuck as it is, it gives me such joy. Also, the things I write about have always reflected my politics and my unique take on the world. Like Tex remarked recently, “Other people can do our day jobs, but only we can make our art.”

The poem below fluttered out of a folder this weekend, and I was so glad to find it again. It’s something I wrote right when I was figuring out I was queer, before I’d even had sex with a woman. I already knew I was a butch-lovin’ femme and I had so much joy and anticipation about meeting the butch of my dreams! I didn’t know that I would have to wait years and years, but that’s a different story. I include the poem here for the pure joy of it, but also because it’s a reminder that in art is truth and in truth is connection to something bigger than yourself. Follow the truth and you find your way out of The Neutral Zone.

Today, sweet femme sisters, make room for joy. Reconnect with your queer truth. Lean into the support and nourishment that beats in you like a fiery heart. Whatever your art, go full tilt.

P.S. There are a lot of break up tunes, but sending-your-babies-out-into-the-world-and-feeling-griefregretfearfreakout songs? Send recommendations my way!!

SUITED

If you fit your suit all long and lanky,

and in your pocket is a folded hanky;

if your name is Kit or Frankie or Des,

or something equally genderless,

if you’re wearing something to catch my eye,

like a strap-on snug between your thighs,

then chances are I’ll adjust my frock,

and watch real close as you walk that walk.

I’ll touch up my lipstick, fluff my hair,

imagine you stripping me with manly flair.

When you ask me to dance, I might play hard to get,

moving real pretty until we’re both wet.

When you buy me a drink to salute my charm,

I’ll notice the tat on your wiry forearm.

When you buy me another to salute my style,

I’ll sip it demurely, but all the while

I’m planning my moves and weighing my chances,

making sure that I’ve caught your fancy.

Crossing my legs, I’m checking you out,

my eyes are traveling both north and south.

I’m watching you smile with your crooked grin,

creamily opening, inviting you in.

I retire to the Ladies as you watch my ass

and come back relieved with double the sass.

We dance some more, this time cheek-to-cheek;

I reach down below and give you a tweak.

You pull me close, I inhale your smell –

we’re way smooth together, and I can just tell,

when you take me home and lay me down,

we’ll fuck so brilliant it’ll light up the town.

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 March 5, 2018 at 3:41 PM  Comments (6)  
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Femme Friday – Ali Sands

I came across Ali Sands’ I Know Who You Are, But What Am I? A Partner’s Perspective on Transgender Love when I was browsing in Womencrafts in Provincetown last week. When I read on the back that this is Ali’s “memoir of finding her way through a labyrinth of changing identity from married heterosexual woman to lesbian lover to queer femme” I knew I had to have it!

Deep gratitude to Ali for her extreme generosity in sharing her story of loving her sweetheart through many changes, and for finding, reveling in and staying true to her own queer femme spirit.

(In this excerpt, from June 23, 2007, a young woman has just approached Ali, asking her about her sexuality, wondering if she’s straight now that she’s with a heterosexual trans man.)

            “Do you base your sexual identity on who you are dating?” I gently inquired. She pondered my question.

            “Well,” she said, “I guess not, but I thought I was a lesbian. Now it turns out I’m seeing a guy and I don’t even know what to tell all my friends and family anymore. My lesbian friends think I’m a sellout for seeing this trans guy, but I have really strong feelings for him and I’m just so confused!” she stated honestly. “You see” she continued “when we first got together he thought he was a lesbian too. Now that he has come out as transgender I don’t know what to think.” The pain was so evident in her young face and I felt immediately inadequate to be handing out trans-lover advice even at this stage in the process.

            “Well,” I began, “I can tell you this much about myself. As far as sexual identity goes I identify as queer. Part of this comes from being with Rhys over the last four and a half years. I am not queer because I am with Rhys and he is transgender, I am queer because I feel I could be in love with any individual, regardless of gender or sexual orientation.”

            WHOA. Did that statement of confidence just come out of my confused head? Perhaps I’ll be okay after all. What’s really beautiful is that each time I’m given an opportunity to explain or defend my relationship with Rhys, it brings about a clarity for myself that I didn’t previously have. This young woman desperately wanted me to give her a magic answer to her own questions of sexual identity, yet I knew that giving her any such thing would be a lie. In this situation I deferred to my role as the parent of my two adult children. I tried to convey to her the confidence that her answers are only for her to find.

–I Know Who You Are, But What Am I? A Partner’s Perspective on Transgender Love by Ali Sands, Transgress Press, Oakland, CA, 2016.

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 March 2, 2018 at 3:56 PM  Comments (4)  
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