Oh, ho, ho, and don’t you know this butch-lovin’ femme dearly loved seeing Lena Waithe on the cover of Vanity Fair last month! Jacqueline Woodson writes gorgeously and pointedly about Lena and other black women, including queer black women, in tv and Hollywood. At one point, she quotes Ava DuVernay, the director of “A Wrinkle in Time”, who says, “If no other black woman makes a film more than $100 million past me for another 10 or 15 years, if no other woman wins an Emmy for writing, for the words that come out of their head, then we’re kidding ourselves that we’re in a moment that makes any difference than momentary inspiration,” and Lena adds, “…There’s a transition of power. But we still aren’t in power.”
Oh, how I wish all the money used to make the fucked up, throw-away white penis films could go to women of color artists – what a bounty would grow from that and how much more glorious the world would be! I loved reading this article, for the hope and the wisdom and the queer women of color brilliance, and for the thoughts this particular conversation sparked for me about my own queer femme art and power. What does that power look like? And looks are important, because out and about, most people, especially straight people, think that I look straight. That I read straight. But just because straight people may think I look like them doesn’t mean I want to be like them. It doesn’t mean I’m lusting after even one of the boring toys in their pissy little sandbox they’re so busy defending and bragging about. The toys they think I want so badly. Ha!
What I want is to be part of shifting the paradigm, offering art and community and healing that’s not based on enclosure and a model of paucity. I want harmonic vibration and new ways of looking at old problems and coalition building and joy and fucking and naked sailing and making a fort in your living room with your sweetie and getting in there with the dogs and eating really fun food and maybe having a little nap together. I want to sow inspiration and love and creativity and make people laugh and do belly breathing and help each other shake ourselves free of oppressive systems and get right after connecting to our birthrights of singing and writing and dancing and making art and playing.
And you know what? That’s what I am. That’s who I do. That’s what is here on Planet Femme, and you are, too, you do too, because queer femmes have those capabilities and those magics and that is how we bless the world.
Sweet femme sisters, today take some time to honor the blessings you bring to your family, to your community, to the world. Remember our sage and honored grandmother, Audre Lorde*, and don’t try to measure those blessings with the sorry-ass tools of the status quo, either, because those tools will never be able to do you justice and they’re for shit, anyway.
But I see you and I take your glorious measure and I am grateful.
Thank you, queer femmes! You are beyond compare.
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.”)
*“For the master’s tools will never dismantle the master’s house. They may allow us to temporarily beat him at his own game, but they will never enable us to bring about genuine change. Racism and homophobia are real conditions of all our lives in this place and time. I urge each one of us here to reach down into that deep place of knowledge inside herself and touch that terror and loathing of any difference that lives here. See whose face it wears. Then the personal as the political can begin to illuminate all our choices.” –Audre Lorde
The Total Femme 