Fucking Into Femme

So, about six months ago (maybe a little more) I got a book in the mail. Becoming Dangerous: Witchy Femmes, Queer Conjurers, and Magical Rebels on Summoning the Power to Resist. It’s a book of essays that touch on glamour magic, space claiming, and all sorts of good stuff.
The first essay in the book is by Cara Ellison, and it’s called “Unfuckable”.
 
It’s an essay about independence. It’s an essay about being so ferociously autonomous that you are utterly free and no-one can hurt you.
It’s… Okay, from my perspective as an insecure anxious-preoccupied attacher? The sheer glee of the author when she chants “I don’t. Fucking. Need you” is… deeply fucked up. It’s the chant of someone who is at the other extreme of insecure attachment. For whom relying on people, that vulnerability, is nothing but a trap.
 
It’s flip-side of my own trap, the one that says “If they need you, if you make yourself indispensable, they won’t abandon you”.
 
I was talking to my wife about this essay earlier today, and about how, thirteen or so years ago, I was very, very stuck in a sexual paradigm where EITHER (a) I could be touched, and could have moments of feeling worthy and loveable, but only within a context where I knew I was fundamentally worthless and disposable, OR (b) I could have something like intrinsic value, but only by being untouchable, only by allowing my own loneliness and skin-hunger to gnaw and gnaw and hollow me out on the inside.
 
In “Unfuckable”, the author visits the ruins of an old castle, the rumoured home of an ancient warrior queen who trained heroes and had no fucks to give about anything.
Her autonomy is legendary and, to the author’s delight, she finds a well – still brimming with clean, potable water, at the center of the former Great Hall. She could have outlasted a siege in there.
 
Thirteen years ago, I felt like I was under siege. I wasn’t safe in my own home. And I wasn’t safe outside of it. Thirteen years ago I was in my mid-twenties. I must have had “easy target” written on my forehead because the sexual harassment never let up, and the assaults – at home, at work, on the damn bus, you name it – were happening too frequently to just ignore and brush off.
When I separated from my then-husband, sold the marital home, and moved into a not-great-but-available one bedroom apartment, something changed.
I had a door of my own that I could lock.
Inside of a year later, someone told me that I had a “don’t fuck with me” bubble surrounding me at all times.
So I’m not knocking that independence, the “I don’t fucking need you” of being able to make rent without room-mates or live-in partners who had, up to that point, only ever been a bad idea. Sometimes that’s what we need to keep ourselves safe.
 
But, for me, it’s not sustainable, and it can feel desperately lonely. It can be desperately lonely.
 
A long time ago, I read a collection of essays called Fem(me): Feminists, Lesbians, and Bad Girls. One of my favourite authors has a piece in there called “On Being a Bisexual Femme”. That book was the first time I’d seen “femme” as a concept at all but it was almost entirely in the sense of “feminine monosexual lesbians who are attracted, specifically and exclusively, to masculine women”. So finding an essay that explicitly said that one could be femme and also be involved with dudes – which I was doing at the time – was such a relief.
I wanted femme.
I wanted it because it meant I could be a Real Queer™ without having to be something that I wasn’t – that being butch or masculine. And I wanted it because it meant I could have physical and sexual autonomy, could be the actual owner of my own damn body, without having to be masculine, too.
 
So. Femme.
Leah Lakshmi Piepzna-Samarasinha, the author of the above-mentioned essay, has written a zillion things on being a multiple-gender-attracted femme survivor of sexual abuse. I get a lot out of those essays and poems, believe me.
And one thing that comes up over and over is the idea of being able to be sexually receptive is a way that is authentic (rather than performative) and… “successful” in the sense of “When I do receptive sex like this, I can and do experience it as fun, pleasurable, intimate, enjoyable, hot” and all those other good things.
 
This is something I want.
This is something I want, and I am part of the way there.
But I get in my own way a lot.
 
There was a time when I tried on the word “stone”, like Amber Dawn did. A femme top who didn’t let her lovers touch her sexually.
But that isn’t actually me.
I’m touch-hungry. I want to top my lovers with my whole body, not just the outsides of it.
I want to be fuckable.
 
Not in the sense of gross dudes rating someone’s “fuckability”, or of Hollywood actresses having the choice of being either Hellen Mirin / Judy Dench / Meryl Streep or of being unemployable after they’ve aged out of the narrow margins of “young, hot, fresh” sexual desirability.
But in the sense of being able to unhinge my jaw and swallow the world, of being able to open, and open, and open. I wrote a poem, ten years ago, called “Swallow” about eating out my girlfriend while she fucked me with her hands, and how “I do not feel invaded. I feel enormous”.
If you’ve ever read Neil Gaiman’s American Gods? I felt like Bilquis in her temple.
 
I mean “fuckable” in the sense of Ann Cvetkovitch saying, in An Archive of Feeling, “Femme sexuality is about voracious desire for-which no apologies are necessary”.
 
Like, I’d like to be the kind of woman who can, and does, have gushing, squirting, g-spot orgasms. Partly because I know I’ve got the capacity to do that[1]. Partly because I think it would just be kind of cool and fun? And partly because I keep hearing (from writers like Poplar Rose and Sophie Saint Thomas) that squirting is remarkably effective at unlocking trauma-based/trauma-related tensions and blockages in one’s hips and lower back where, oh hey, I’ve been having problems since right around that time, 13 years ago, when my body was under siege. (Look at that, why don’t you…)
 
And that means I need to find that internal sense of safety so that I can access it when I want to, rather than it being just sort of… a matter of luck and chance as to whether or not I can do a thing that I would really, really, really like to do.
 
I tried something a day or two ago.
I’m on my period, so I did this with a diva cup firmly in place, which is maybe relevant (or not). But I slid one of my fingers into my vagina. And, yeah, things felt… kind of out of place, but… see above re: diva cup.
What was… relevant, I guess, is that I realized I was holding my breath while I did it.
Like “holding my breath”, not in the sense of “doing stuff with my pelvic floor to build tension” or “intentionally doing low-risk solo breath play”, but in the sense of “Oh, shit. I forgot to breath. Again.”
I was holding my breath because I was “freezing” myself, just a little bit.
 
Like, I was making a decision to do something to my own body with my own body – like two parts of myself that are both connected to the same central nervous system, and the same damn brain. And my limbic system still said “Hey… Now might be a good time to maybe start shutting down, since horrible, painful death is probably immanent and there’s a slim chance you can avoid it – or at least avoid feeling it while it’s happening – if you shut down all systems and play dead”.
A rabbit trying not to be noticed by a predator that is part of itself.
 
Which… Just… Really???
Thanks. That’s just great.
 
It’s not that I was dissociating. Exactly. But something was definitely going on.
And I would like to figure out how to… how to get out of my own way. And how to do it, well… quickly.
Which is maybe not the best goal to have, I do realize.
But… I get that, very probably, this thing where “staying with the feeling” in sexually-receptive situations is probably going to be a thing that I have to make conscious decisions about for the rest of my life. Like, it’s probably not going to be automatic/reflexive. (This is more Leah stuff, tbh. About how “healing” doesn’t mean “you become like someone who was never hurt” it means “you learn how to navigate your own unique circumstances with radical love and self-compassion and as big a bag of workable tricks and tools and you can create and continue to add to”. Which: okay. I’m into it. Even if it’s frustrating sometimes).
So I’d like to know how to… get myself out of Anxiety Brain – and the kind of cascade of other crap around danger but also around unworthiness and around what I “should” be doing or be capable of receiving or what have you – quickly, but in ways that don’t dissipate any sexual excitement that I had, there-to-fore, managed to build up[2]. Or at least in ways that let me view that drop in excitement as an opportunity for Edging[3] rather than some horrible failure or, like, “Oh, great. How am I ever going to get back to where I was when I’m right back at the beginning again?”
 
I want to be able to invite my partners into my body. To enjoy my own strength and to be fed – like nourishing and delicious! – by those experiences. Because I know I can be. I want to laugh that deep, satisfied laugh again. I want to hit my high notes again. I want to roar again.
I want it back.
To that end, I’m re-reading Ecstasy Is Necessary and listening to the Afrosexology duo talk about “orgasmic living” and how to stop self-sabotaging when it comes to everything from creative self-care to one’s sexual needs and wants. Here’s hoping I pick some stuff up.
 
~*~
 
Notice Pleasure: Feeling graceful while doing back bends and other pole-dancing floor tricks. Fizzy bath bombs that stain the water rose-red and smell like fruity candy. A clean sink. Watching my partner being in her own pleasure. Deep conversations that make my brain fizz. Laughing freely from deep in my body. The semi-weightless cradling of resting in warm water. Moments of silence and the peace that comes with them.
 
 
Cheers,
Ms Syren.
 
 
[1] Ha… because it happened once, embarrassingly, while I was working in art class. See also: Reasons why I knew I had to at least give this age play business a try. >.>
 
[2] Right now, I have a wonderful technique for stopping an anxiety spiral while it’s still small. And it’s great! The ratio breathing of “in-for-four, out-for-eight” (a) means I’m never holding my breath, but also (b) calms my fear-stuff right the heck down. It’s fantastic. BUT it calms everything down. Curious-and-excited happens in the same part of your brain (big surprise – Hi, Limbic System!) as Fearful-and-avoidant. And my brain is… funny… and doesn’t necessarily separate the two very well. (Sort of like when I realized that, when I’m experiencing an agitated motion – like when I’m stirring up the soap bubbles before doing the dishes – my Very Smart Brain decides that this means I should also be experiencing agitated emotions. I’m a genius, I swear).
 
[3] Where you build up to a very sexually excited, eager state, and then let things drop back to a more calm state, and then build things up a little farther, and let them drop back (but not quite as far), and then build yourself up again… and you get the idea.

Knowing How To Look (Femme In/Visibility)

So, a few months ago (early December), I was reading about Femme Stuff while working a reception job. I spent the whole morning reading primarily about femme invisibility and ended up writing a Twitter Thing about how the postal carrier who turned up with the mail around Noon had asked me if I’d ever considered being an actress because I was “using my facial expressions very intensely”.
What I thought was “Shit, I’m totally doing that”. But what I meant was… I’m flagging.
Flagging hard, to no-one in particular, wearing all of my sparkle on the outside because I was reading about how un-see-able I am to other queers.
 
That intense, almost theatrical, expressiveness is a thing that makes femmes intimidating and fascinating, but sometimes I wonder if that Femme Dazzling Smile (like a butch nod, if you will) that lights us up when we see each other isn’t just us saying “I See You, Femme!” but is also us asking “Do you see me?”
I mean, maybe that’s just me.
But I do wonder if we turn up the volume on our already/often pretty innate intensity, particularly in queer spaces & contexts, in the hopes of being recognized as Family when we don’t (necessarily) have fades / asymmetrical haircuts, or rock a pin-up aesthetic, or have leopard-print on that day or what-have-you. (As a side note, I have a pair of Fake Cat-Eye Glasses that I got for doing cam work, and I sometimes want wear them around town just to see how that effects the way others perceive me. I don’t know if that counts as “field work”…)
 
It’s a weird thing. Kind of nice to know that it shows up, even when I’m not consciously doing it? Kind of heart-breaking to know that I try That Hard to be visible even when there’s nobody around to see me?
 
An anecdote: Back in November, I went to a combination book-launch/dance-party/AGM/fundraiser (you know how that goes), and had all my dazzle on when I headed home afterwards. Halfway home a butch-of-a-certain-age, under a big umbrella, chatted me up for no discernible reason at all. Unexpectedly visible. Who knew?
I just about floated home. Not because that particular person was particularly exciting, just because: she (they?) recognized me well enough to flirt, noticeably, with a stranger in spite of drizzly night + my warm coat & non-heeled boots.
It was so freaking validating.
 
I’m in my late 30s. Most het-cis dudes don’t catcall me. I don’t know if that’s because I’ve “aged out” of the Easy To Intimidate range, or what (I am not complaining, if I have), but, despite that, most of the attention I get on the street is from people I’m fairly confident are cis dudes. They flock like cis dudes in their 20s who are trying to prove their manhood. Then again, maybe I think they’re cis guys because 100% of everyone else has a pretty solid idea of how uncomfortable it is to hear “How’s my wife?” from a stranger, sooo… What I’m saying is, it’s not necessarily “business as usual” to be all “Hey, Lady” when you’re QAF.
 
Years ago, on a day that was warm, but not nearly warm enough (so probably in late April or early May), I went out in my leopard-print skirt, my alizarin monster-fur ¾-sleeve jacket, a pair of dangly earrings, and a slick of raspberry lippy. I didn’t know it was Femme Visibility Day until I logged onto twitter that evening. But someone else did, some other femme with pin-up-girl bangs and winged eye-liner, who looked me in the eye like she’d seen something holy, reached out her hand, and said “You. Look. Fabulous!”
She gave me a smile that lit up the street, and I walked home wearing a crown.
 
One single day to throw away all the toxic, internalized shit that insists on telling us that deliberately-feminine-presenting people are always straight, always binary, always either cis women or wanting to be read as such (and I do not mean for safety reasons)… That it’s rude of us to plaster an unverified marginalized identity or two all over someone else’s unconsenting body, like we would be shaming them, just because they look familiar in some way. That it’s better (safer? Less painful? For whom?) for us to assume that the person with the fancy fade and the delicate Monroe piercing, is a “metro-sexual” straight, cis dude, not a brother-fem gay guy or genderqueer and pansexual or a trans dyke rocking Lesbian Haircut Number Two; wiser or kinder (are you kidding me?) to assume that the person with the scuffed, cuffed jeans and the crimson extensions, or the red, red lipstick and the fedora, is a cissexual straight girl not a genderqueer, sexuality-queer trans fem/me, a cis bi-dyke, a trans lesbian.
…That assuming anything else would be met with hostility or confusion or even anxiety, a whole other sort of Unrecognized to the one we’re used to from random androgynous-queers on the street, and all the more painful because of it.
 
The validating Butch-of-a-Certain-Age in that anecdote? The femme who made a point of telling me she could see me? Those encounters are the polar opposite of the queer dances I tend to go to. Queer dances run by femme friends. Queer dances where I at least kinda-sorta know the other regulars. Queer dances where I still walk in with the working assumption that people who don’t know me personally will be wondering what the Straight Lady is doing in their space.
And, to a point, I know that this is basically “Don’t Self-Reject” on a social scale. That I’m assuming every sort-of-stranger there is going to look at me the way my own femme friend looked at the cab-load of 20-something other femmes and assumed they were a bunch of het-cis kiddies crashing the dance during Pride.
The assumption (the fear) that I won’t be seen as “belonging” in a queer context is definitely partly pre-rejection (pre-jection?), but it’s also the end result of every time a more “obvious” (read: masculine) queer doesn’t pick up on my traffic-stopping lipstick & leopard-print skirt, every time the androgynous youngsters at the hippy indie grocery store only turn on the “Oh! You’re one of us!” familiar-smiles when I put money in the Ten Oaks donation box, every time someone I met at That Queer Thing, One Time looks right through me (huge, hard-to-miss me) on the street because I no-longer have Queer Context to flag for me.
It makes me a mix of sad and angry every time.
 
It’s funny / not-funny, strange / not-strange, that I get Recognized by people who I’m reading as older-than-me cis gay men – the ones who sing their sentences in much the same way that I do (so probably some degree of fem, even in the land of No Fats No Femmes Adonis-hungry gay culture) – more often than I get recognized by butch women in my own age bracket. Fellows who stop me on Booth street, in my pencil skirt and plunging neck-line, to say “Honey, do you have a light”, or who stumble, tipsy, up to me in my five-inch heels and mini dress – fresh from the Alt 101 drag show where the only people who gave me the nod, or looked anything like me, were there to perform and in costume – and inform me “Oh, sweetie, they’re gonna love you at CP” only to correct themselves with “Then again, maybe it’s not your scene” when they hear me respond in soprano… because everyone knows that a feminine cis-lady is straight, right?
 

 
This is why I try extra-hard to dazzle-smile at the baby femmes I see on Bank Street, or Somerset, or in the art classes I work for. This is why I try to assume that anyone whose style and bearing a just a little “too much” for where they’re standing – too glamourous, too skin-confident, too aware of their own sensuality – is one of mine, no matter where I find them.
The ones with Nefertiti eyeliner and pink-purple-blue hair extensions.
The ones wearing sun-dresses & stockings in November.
The ones with delicate wrist movements and shy smiles who paint fairy-wings on me in art school.
The ones who dye their armpits to match they eyebrows and scalps.
The ones who name themselves “queen” and “bi-gender” to strangers, but whose body-language says it before they ever open their mouths.
The ones who lounge on the counter, one leg crossed over the other, in deep v-neck t-shirts.
The ones who do the social/emotional labour of keeping up their end of a conversation.
The ones who sidle up to me at parties, because I’m taller than they are, and ask me where I got my shoes.
The ones braving dyke march with long, long hair and flowers in their hatbands.
The ones with boyfriends and big jewelry and hot-pink lipstick who call everybody Darlin’ in the office.
The ones with natural hair and magenta-cerulean plaid back-packs and huge earrings on the bus.
The ones who pluck their eyebrows so carefully and tailor their rock-show tshirts into boat-necks with the sleeves ripped off.
The ones who wear their plaid shirts & blunnies with cut-off short-shorts and scoop-neck tanks.
The ones in skinny jeans and perfect, sparkle-diamond nose-studs.
The ones rocking cocktail party jewelry in their 9am classes.
All of them.
All of us.
I want them to know I see them. That we gleam like fucking rubies, like lights in the dark, to anyone who knows how to look.

Queer Fam… of Origin

A few years ago, when I was an outreach worker for a province-wide Q/T health organization, I got to spend an afternoon with my wife and a bunch of other out-of-town (mostly) adults hanging out in Renfrew County for the local queer youth support/social group’s Big Day Out. THere were safer sex workshops. There was a drag workshop. And there was a dance-party (at which a friend of mine paid the party a surprise visit in her Elvis Gear, thus putting the king in The King, and the kids went nuts and wanted pictures. It was a good time.
BUT (or, more accurately,AND): I met a youngster who needed to talk about Stuff with someone who wasn’t an immediate part of her microscopic dating pool. Long story short: We emailed, she told me about feeling like The Only Queer in the Family, I mentioned some statistical probabilitiess, and she wrote me back to tell me she’d asked her Dad and he’d pointed out the small but significant group of homos amongst her cousins.
“I’m not the only one!” her email crowed.
 
Sometimes it’s a surprise, is what I’m saying.
 
In my case… it wasn’t entirely a surprise.
We were all just really, reeeeeeeeeeeally clueless.
But it still kind of floors me when I’m visiting my (bio) aunt, my (married-in) aunt, my masculine-presenting cousin + her super-femme lady-love[1], and my Big Gay Honourary Uncle… because it’s like: I don’t have to flag! They all KNOW!
It’s like some part of my brain forgets that they’re my relatives, that one of them has known me since I was born, and most of the rest have known me since high-school, and all I see is a house full of hippie-ass creative queers (MAH PEOPLE!) whom I don’t see every day… and I suddenly want to be all “So, my wife and I went to this queer slow-dance thing last weekend…” while re-applying my hot-pink lipstick and talking-with-my-hands so much that my shoulders are getting in on the action.
I feel like those kids in Renfrew, going a little hay-wire just because there are Other Queers Around… even though 90% of who I hang out with, these days, are big ol’ homos.
It’s a bit bizzarre, to tell you the truth.
And yet.
I’m not the only one!
 
 
TTFN,
Ms Syren.
 
 
[1] Who totally gave me the Femme Dazzling Smile when she met me, because we do actually recognize each other, but I wasn’t expecting it, and it was really nice when she did it. 😉

Some Tiny thoughts on Corsets – Kink Of The Week (#KotW)

Hi, folks!
So it’s catch-up week at KotW, and the most recent prompt has been corsets. Consequently, I’ll be talking a bit about them in this post.
 
Look. I love how a corset – an underbust, a plastic-boned bodice, even tight-lacing – looks. I recently did a portrature sitting where I deisilpunked it up as an alternate-earth WASP in her leather & pvc dress uniform. (I wore my Unholy Harvest dogtags, for those keeping track). Wish I had a photo to show you, ’cause I swear I felt like Amanda Fucking Palmer in that getup. 🙂
I love the way a nipped-in waist – whether through actual hardware or just through wearing a fitted top – can accestuate my already-fairly-hourglass figure and play up my awesome shoulders and hips. I love the feel of the fitted, structured fabric. I love the way my hips and ribs feel moving against it.
But.
I kind of loathe the sore back that comes with wearing boned articles of clothing. Sorry folks. My fetwear is more likley to be a sarong and some gladiator sandals, even if the aesthetics of giant high heels + heaps-o-boning totally turn my crank.
Alas.
I am, occasionally, a practical girl.
 
That said, I do have a tonne of the things – mostly the plastic-boned kind that you can get on ebay for $9.99 – that I use primarily for modeling jobs (see above re: portraiture class, for example). Because they’re not understood, these days, as “underwear” (sexwear is a different story, mind you), and because our contemporary clothing tends not to be particularly structured (even a lot of business-formal-style “blouses” are actually knits these days), the boning and obvious shaping of a corset (or similar item) tends to lend an element of instant formality to a given outfit while also playing (however inacurately) with anacronistic themes. They’re a useful thing to have in a work-wardrobe when your job involves bringing fantasy to life – or at least depictions of same. Case in point:
 

 
 
So those are my thoughts on corsets.
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TTFN,
Ms Syren.

More Thoughts on Femme – Personal Perspectives

So, quite some while ago – actually, a whole year ago, give or take a week or two – I was in Toronto for a conference that included a workshop on exploring gender through visual art. It was a grand old time, and I was surprised to see how much of my sense of gender was rooted specifically in femme rather than woman and, additionally, how much teary, shaking, rage was built into it.
I don’t know why that is.
I mean, I have theories. The little voice at the back of my brain singing girl, girl, girl was never told to shut up, never silenced. Whereas femme was something I had to find and, to some extent, fight for. I’m cissexual, so any time I gravitated towards a thing that was culturally coded as “girly” or “feminine” I got a big old “YES YOU ARE DOING GENDER RIGHT” from everyone around me (and, yeah, backwards much? But there it is) and, because I tended not to gravitate towards “boyish”/“masculine” things I didn’t get much “Yer Doing It Rong”. Except when I did what I now think of as “femme stuff”.
Which I guess means I need to offer up a personal working definition of Femme, how I was introduced to the word, and what it means for me.
I started finding femme – the word, the possibility that it might fit me – during my first marriage. I was shaping up to be a whole lot gayer (and kinky, and probably non-monogamous) than I’d originally thought, and the social expectations around being a hetero(normative) wife – with all the stuff that goes along with that[1], the expectations of modest-but-not-too-modest officially vanilla (but unofficial/unspoken submissive) heterosexuality, desire for kids & motherhood, even religious/political views and career aspirations (which starts digging into class stuff, but it’s tied up with the idea of “wife”, too), of not rocking the boat, of knowing when to keep quiet – was really, really uncomfortable. I spent a lot of time at family functions escaping to the bathroom so that I could let my shoulders come down from around my ears.
So finding femme – a word that is intimately tied, for me at least, to (a) being Girl, (b) being feminine rather than masculine, (c) being openly sensual & sexual, but also and very importantly (d) owning my own body & having physical & sexual autonomy beyond a Yes/No switch that could only be flicked once – was kind of a massive big deal. Like “Wait, that’s an option??”
I’ve heard Femme described as “broken femininity” and also – frequently – as a femininity that is “too much”.
I’ve always been “too much”. Too big. Too loud. Having been hearing the Social Disapproval version of STFU about things like my voice and my body and my sensuality since I was about ten, maybe a little younger.
So finding Femme was like “Wait, I don’t have to be masculine on some level to be all of myself at once? And not get punished for it? ZOMG!”
I wrote a poem, years ago now, where I talked about how becoming femme had been a process of unraveling the strictures of Mandatory Femininity that had been knit around me from birth so that I could be the feminine person that I am without having to squeeze myself into a garment that had always been too small, too constricting. Yes, it was a total metaphor-fest. Welcome to Poetry. 😉
It’s not that woman isn’t a significant part of my identity. It’s is, very much so. But what I am, this galaxy-sized creature that I am, bombastic that I am, can hold “woman” in its core and still be too big, too much, to be contained by it. Femme can stretch and mould to the whole of me. Femme actually fits.
 
 
Cheers,
Ms Syren.
 
 
[1] The day we went out to buy wedding dress fabric, my mom took one look at my tattered and patched army boots and told me I should replace them specifically because “[…] You’re gonna be a bride”. Brides, apparently, do not wear army boots[2].
 
[2] Tell that to my wife, who wore them on our wedding day. ❤ 🙂

The Queen of Cups & The Great Devourer – On Femme Appetite, Desire & Vulnerability.

The idea of Stone, the idea of Femme. I’ve heard descriptions of “stone femme” wherein the femme in question is The Queen of Cups – receptive, reactive, responsive, the partner whose moan, shiver, arch, pushes the energy back, completes the emotional/energetic/erotic loop so that it can cycle through again. In this context (in any context?) Femme Bottom (any bottom?) is all appetite.
But so am I.
I read Xan West’s writing about Stone, about the gaze, about desire and how a partner’s responses can make them come, just with breath, with sound, with need. And this is so familiar to me.
I’m not stone. My clothes can come off when I fuck, am maybe at my most powerful, most “toppy”, when I’m in nothing by sweat-slicked skin and high heeled shoes; I crave touch, hunger for it, too, but it’s scary as fuck and hard to stay in my body to accept it, let alone welcome it, without overthinking everything or flinching/freezing pre-emptively. I’m seven years (twenty years? thirty?) into trying to navigate my way through this minefield of fear, body, and performativity, towards the pleasure, openness, sincerity, the offering that I want to give in vulnerability, in desire, but also towards my own ability to accept the offering I want to receive, crave receiving, as a dominant bottom.
I’m femme.
When Tara Hardy writes “I, too, have a mouth”, about wanting to taste the world; when Leah Lakshmi Piepzna Samarasinha writes about femme hunger and needing to be cautious when it comes to sharing the gulf of that ravenous need… That’s me.
As a femme top, as someone who is all appetite, who is all mouth, I am not the Queen of Cups. Following you with hungry eyes, I want you to see, and respond to, my desire. At my purest, I am the Great Devourer: I want to eat you alive. I want you to like it. To offer yourself up to my hunger, to the tongue that would taste every quivering, shuddering inch of you.
Xan writes, in “Where Pleasure Resides” (same link as above), a lot about cocks. I don’t have one of those. It’s not a word that fits me. But I deeply understand the yearning to get energetically inside someone, to find her mouth of fire, coax it open with the red, red pulse of my tongue – physical, energetic, or both – until I am so deep inside that I can lap at her heart and coax that open, too.
This is what I want.
This is also what I dread.
I don’t know how much of it is conditioning – my mother telling me, in my teens, that once you’ve fucked someone your heart goes with them, too – versus how much of this is true to the actual connection between touch and trust, between sexual vulnerability and emotional vulnerability, that exists in my body. But, yes, if I let someone fuck me, get inside me, even just feed me – though it’s easier to avoid when I’m topping (“less direct” is the wrong way to say it, but… riding a response is not the same as generating that response, and there’s an emotional buffer in that difference) – the chances that I’ll fall in love with them, want a deep, lasting emotional connection with them, rise dramatically. And that’s scary. Terrifying. And also yearned for.
I’m hungry and afraid to eat.
What a damn silly place to be.
 
 
TTFN,
Ms Syren.

Kink of the Week – Stockings, Pantyhose and Tights

So I’m trying this Kink of the Week thing, and playing catch-up for the moment, since I’ve started it rather late. Today, we’re talking about Stockings, Pantyhose and Tights.
 
To be frank, I’m a socks and stockings gal. On me. On other women. Gartered or stay-ups. They’re a lot more comfortable. The little flash of skin between the top of the stocking (or the thigh-high sock – I’m a big fan of OTK/thigh-high socks – warm, practical, and sexy as all get out) and the hem of the skirt is just delicious. Colour isn’t a big deal (although socks and stockings that match my skin, more or less, are kind of boring), and it’s not the confinement or anything. They’re just elegant. And, hey, I like legs, and stockings (and socks) show them off nicely.
 
All that being said, I’m a femme chicky, and how I cover (or don’t cover) my legs is a Gender Presentation Thing as much as it’s a practical, “warmth in -30 winters” Thing. I kind of despise trousers, and I’m quite tall. So thigh-high socks are a way to keep myself warm while also feeling like like look like myself. If that makes any sense.
 
Anyway. That’s it for me.
 

 
 
TTFN,
Ms Syren.

V is for Vamp – Greater Granola Blog Project 2013

So… I was originally thinking of writing “V is for Vampire” and talk about (other people’s) energy as food, manipulating (other people’s, or my own) energy during S/M scenes, and other stuff like that there. And I may yet do this. But today I’m writing “V is for Vamp” because it lets me look at the connection between “femme” and “femme fatale”.
There’s this whole, huge cultural narrative – one that I can trace back through Christendom and into Judaism via the religious texts we share that have shaped a LOT of European (And thus, a lot of European colonies’) cultures – about how women with sexual agency are dangerous.
 
While I tend to think of “femme” as, specifically, a queer-as-in-dyke form of hyperbolic femininity (and, thus, will mostly be using “she” and “her” to talk about femmes in this post), I do have a couple of broader definitions, like:
“Fem” as in male, frequently though not always gay, femininity; or
“Femme” as in “queered” (meaning “twisted” or “rendered non-normative”) women’s femininity, regardless of sexual orientation.
 
In its broades sense, Femme is “queered femininity” because its femininity that’s done (a) for the feminine person herself (or himself, or theirself) rather than for the “gaze” of anyone in particular; and (b) is, one way or another, an expression of personal power.
 
I find that “traditional femininity” is often read/cued as “powerless”. The Masculine does stuff to The Feminine. The Feminine waits in the tower to be rescued. The Feminine is the (exclusively) sexually receptive partner. The Feminine “lets the boy win” or does the unackowleded emotional labour of supporting The Masculine and centering the experiences, needs, and – particularly apt within the context of this post – desires thereof. And Femme doesn’t do that. Not as a matter of course. Some femmes do any or all of those things, as and when they’re inclined to do so. Sure. But it’s not a requirement, or a “yur doin’ it rong” situation if we don’t[1]. By that token, “femme” is femininity with agency; The Feminine subjectified, rather than objectified.
But that’s not only what I mean when I say “femme” is an expression of personal power.
I also mean that a Femme is someone who expresses/finds/claims her personal power through the (visual – or other?) expression of (frequently over-the-top) femininty. When I’m feeling on top of the world, I dress more impresively than I might do otherwise. Sure. But I also do that when I’m trying to access or activate my own power.
 
You’ve heard the phrase “lipstick as warpaint”? It’s like that, albeit maybe a little bit more nuanced.
When I get All Femmed Up – When I wear the velvet, the leather, the satin, the corset, the big heels, the fancy jewelry; when I bother with lip stain and perfume[2] – I am accessing a particularly powerful, giantess/glamazon part of myself that doesn’t necessarily come out when I’m, say, shlumping around in my bathrobe[3]. When I need to access that part of myself, I put on a little mascara, and it works. I stand taller. I stride, strut, and sashay rather than scurrying with my head down. Just with little mascara. Who knew?
 
And so I come back to the Vamp. The femme fatale who is dangerous, but who is recognizeable because of her cupid’s bow lipstick, her thick eyelashes, the deliberate slit up the side of her skirt. She’s the aloof, vampiric Angelina Jolie to Jennifer Aniston’s “girl next door”; the much-married, hypnotic-eyed Elizabeth Taylor to Grace Kelly’s tragic/fairytale princess. She is “glamourous” (in the sense of “entrancing” and “sorcery” as much as “fancy/fabulous”) as opposed to just “pretty“. The kind of woman who leaves broken hearts in her wake rather than settling down (“Safe in a house and a husband“[4]) the way that women are expected to do.
 
And, no, femmes aren’t necessarily looking to be heartbreakers or home-wreakers or “high maintenance” or any of the other things that we get read as or coded as. On my more cynical days, I suspect that we get coded as these things specifically because we’re not doing this Femininity Thing for the benefit of someone else. Not the guys on the corner, not the butches in the coffee shop, not our dates. Just for us. And that goes against what “feminine” is “supposed to be” (or who it’s supposed to be for).
 
I read an anecdote ones about a femme who’d bring a satin clutch out to the bar, and you could clearly see the outline of a particular dildo inside the clutch. And the gal relating the anecdote said something like “You can’t tell me that’s being ‘sexually passive’.” And I wonder if it’s that clear (if visual, in this case) statement of “this is what I want, and this is how I want it” is what makes the femme, the vamp, the femme fatale so intimidating.
 
Anyway.
I think I’m getting to the point where I’m starting to talk in circles, so I think I’ll stop there.
Ruminate Ruminate Ruminate.
 
 
TTFN,
Ms Syren.
 
 
[1] Although I’m aware that this has not always been the case. Amber Dawn, for example, talks about being Stone Femme and how, ten-15 years ago, that was a really unheard-of thing: A femme-identified person who exclusively tops. Likewise, if you look at earlier femme-focussed writing – I’m thinking specifically of the pieces in Femme: Feminists, Lesbians and Bad Girls – you find the “femme defined by butch” and “femme as specifically sexually receptive feminine lesbian” tropes/ideas/identities far more frequently than you will in more recent work.
 
[2] “Blood Kiss” by BPAL is a favourite of mine, but I’ve also mixed up my own concoctions – mhyrr, clove, and vanilla, is a nice starting-point for a perfume. 😉
 
[3] Shlumping around in a negligee, on the other hand… 😉
 
[4] That book has a character who is a Vila, and a sorceress, and she teaches the MC a thing or two about the magic – the sorcery – of makeup and glamour.

R is for Reading Out Loud (what I read)

I wrote a little bit about my experience at Reading Out Loud over on my writer blog. But, for those who were wondering, I thought I’d post this information here:
 
When I introduced my pieces, I explained that I came out twice. Once as bisexual, while being a goth chickie in my teens (seriously, no big thing), and again, about ten years later, as a het-married gal who was poly, kinky, and still bisexual but a lot gayer than I’d originally thought. The pieces I performed were all from books that I read during 2007-2008, books that gave me language to talk about myself, and books that showed my my own reflection at a time when I badly needed to see my own face in the pages.
I read from works by two authors, both of whom are also bisexual, kinky, poly, and femme. Like me.
 
Here’s what I read at Reading Out Loud:
 
Femme: Feminists, Lesbians and Bad Girls
“On Being a Bisexual Femme” By Leah Lakshmi Piepzna-Samarasinha – under the name Leah Lilith Albrecht-Samarasinha
(Femme hunger; “I must choose who I lie down with very carefully”)
 
Brazen Femme: Queering Femininity
“Whores and Bitches Who Sleep with Women” by Kathryn Payne
(“Do you know your lineage?”)
AND
“Gonna Get my Girl Body Back” This is a Work in Progress” by Leah Lakshmi
(“I take one step past what I know”)
 
Longing at Least Is Constant by Kathryn Payne (poetry)
“Bi-Nary”
(“Why do I have to write it? / […] / To laugh, yell, and taste it all”)

Leah Lakshmi Piepzna-Samarasinha (at Venus Envy)

Leah Lakshmi Piepzna Samarasinha. If you’re the kind of femme who reads a lot of “femme theory” books – or if you’re the kind of feminist who reads a lot of social justice essays – you’ve probably heard of this chicky. Well. She happened to be in Ottawa last night (Saturday, July 20th) to do a reading-and-socializing evening at Venus Envy.
 
Now, in spite of hunting up as much of her writing as I could (she hasn’t profoundly changed how I view the world, for the most part, but she was the first – quite possibly the only – femme who openly ID’d as bisexual in the entirety of Fem(me): Feminists, Lesbians, and Bad Girls and, thus, was the person who gave me the clue that maybe, just maybe, this word could apply to me. And that’s a pretty big deal), I was a little worried about seeing her read/speak live.
I always am.
There’s always a little bit of fear in the back of my mind saying: What if this person who is so awesome on paper winds up being kind of insufferable – or possibly just a bad speaker – in real life?
 
So far… that hasn’t actually happened. Not much, anyway. But it remains and so I strolled over to VE – in a blue sundress that used to be my grandmother’s, plus flip-flops[1] and glitter mascara – with my lovely wife, hoping that I wasn’t about to regretting dropping $20 on the evening.
 
Readers, I do not regret dropping $20 on that evening. 🙂
 
She read excerpts from The Revolution Starts at Home and her forthcoming memoir (which, when it comes out next year, I will most likely be buying). I cried. (I’m a crier, what can I say). And then she read poetry. Yay Poetry! 😀
 
I finally got to hear “When Kali and Oya Met”, a poem from Consensual Genocide that, because my copy came from an early print-run that contained a major misprint (i.e.: Eleven of the poems were missing and had, instead, been replaced by repeats of poems from earlier in the book), I had yet to hear. It was sweet and sad, and it reminded me of my ex-girlfriend, a little bit, truth be told.
 
My two take-aways from the show – other than that Leah is a pretty awesome chicky who seems far more interested in being kind (not the same as nice, mind you) than in being right-all-the-time – were:
1) The question of “What kind of ancestor do I want to be?” – This is a question that prompted a poem from Leah, but it’s also something I take into consideration myself.
AND
2) What does “decolonization” mean to me, given that I’m a white chick who doesn’t want to move back to Scotland, and given that the whole thing is probably a lot more nuanced than the “White people, go home” idea that tends to spring to my mind when I first try to think about this? (That, I think, will take up an entire blog post of its own).
 
After the show, there were nachos and karaoke to be had, but also a chat about the whole concept of creating and seeking out justice-alternatives to the police and the courts. Things that came up:
1) Bridge-building goes in multiple directions and no-one is going to change their behaviour for people who are Opting Out and having nothing to do with them
2) Change takes a long, long time (especially when it involves changing both a corporate culture and the systemic-oppressive culture that underlies it both for the oppressors and the oppress-ees) and, in the mean-time, there are still people who can’t or don’t trust The System and who, therefore, would appreciate some alternative options
AND
3) It is really, really, REALLY difficult to get a system (or a person, for that matter) to change when it has no examples of how it would or could look/act/be if it were different. Thus creating alternative justice options can, itself, be a form of the afore-mentioned bridge-building because they can stand as examples of how to Do This differently while still being[2] effective.
 
Anyway.
So that was my evening at the Leah Lakshmi show, and (so far) everything that came of it. 🙂
 
 
TTFN,
Ms Syren.
 
 
[1] My hips and knees still work – hurrah! But, since I’d like to keep it that way, it means that high heels (alas) are for sidewalk-walks of no more than about six minutes.
 
[2] I know. One’s opinion of how effective it is will have a LOT to do with how invested one is in both (a) cultural narratives about who is and is not a Good Guy, and (b) the already-existing system. But bear with me.