‘Femme’ (and ‘sapphic’)
i've always identified more with the lesbian community than with the gay community, even long before transitioning[a]. Part of this is probably due to my feeling that the gay community is obsessed with conflating queerdom with Fabulousness:
“i don't belong to the queer/tgd communities”
But there have been other factors as well. For example, the lesbian community has tended to feel like it's at least a bit more willing to challenge nonconsensual hierarchies apart from homophobia - not only gender, but also e.g. class and (to a more limited extent) race/ethnicity as well. That said, as someone who's been non-monosexual for as long as i can remember - whether as ‘bi’ or ‘pan’ - i'm also keenly aware of the historic and ongoing biphobia from both lesbians and gay men.
A couple of months ago i turned 50. i've been reading about lesbian (and feminist) politics since the late 80s. As a result, my associations with the word ‘femme’ have mostly involved a contrast with ‘butch’: the impression i got was that ‘femme’ was something along the lines of ‘lipstick lesbian’, which itself felt to me like it was intended to convey something along the lines of “lesbian who doesn't reject presenting in a stereotypically ‘feminine’ way”.
In recent years, i'd noticed people using ‘femme’ to mean something that didn't really jibe with this; i was pretty sure i wasn't understanding how people were using the term. At one point i asked about it on a local queer Facebook group, hoping people could help me wrap my head around it. Unfortunately that didn't happen; the responses left me no less mystified. Some people emphasised that i should totally use the word if i felt it was appropriate, and i was like: “But that's the thing. i don't know what i'd even be identifying with. i'm willing to fight for various other labels, but when it comes to identifying as ‘femme’, i don't have any strong feelings either way.”
In late July, however, i saw the short Australian documentary “Femme”[b]. What it conveyed to me was that ‘femme’ is basically “punk ‘feminine’". And in less than half an hour, i went from “not having any strong feelings either way” to “Fuck yeah i'm femme!" It certainly helped that the film included a number of non-cis femme amab people.
Interestingly, though, i still struggle with the word ‘sapphic’.
i now know that ‘sapphic’ is a word intended to be inclusive of all people, including non-cis amab people, who are attracted to women. It thus intends to be a more inclusive term than, say, ‘lesbian’, with which many people have transphobic associations, due to radfem-style lesbian politics.
This is great. i love that so many queer women are being very actively inclusive like this.
The issue, however, is that i spent so many years reading things where ‘sapphic’ was being used to convey something along the lines of ‘woman-identified’ - that is, it described a (implied: cis) woman who oriented her life towards other (implied: cis) women[c]. And it had a strong anti-bi vibe to it - a women who could be attracted to a man was not ‘sapphic’.
As a result, even though i don't have any intellectual problem with how the term is being currently used, it still makes me queasy because of my strong emotional associations with the word, associations rooted in many years of having to deal with a constant barrage of anti-bi and anti-trans perspectives, with only minimal support[d].
It's like the word ‘queer’. i proudly identify as queer, but i know there are gays and lesbians out there who don't want to be associated with that word. Why? Because they're old enough to have lived in a world where work to reclaim the word ‘queer’ had not yet started, and ‘queer’ was a slur associated with some of the most traumatic periods of their lives.
So i'm now identifying as ‘femme’. But even though i don't have any issues with others using it - on the contrary, i'm grateful that they're doing so - ‘sapphic’ still seems to be a bridge too far for me at this point.
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[a] i transitioned in the early 2000s.
[b] Here's the director/producer's page about it:
And here's the Melbourne Documentary Film Festival's blurb about it:
A short film exploring what it means to be a queer femme person in modern Australia.
What are some of the unique challenges femme people face?
What are some of the beautiful parts?
This short, colourful doco offers a look into life as a femme person through the perspectives of 13 queer people.
Produced and Directed by delsi - a queer femme party creator and owner of the LGBTQIA+ community organisation, Unicorns.
[c] It's been noted on Tumblr that Sappho “was said to be married to a man named Kerkylas of Andros, but historians think it may be a joke as his name translates to ‘Dick Allcocks from Man Island’”. As user congenitalprogramming said: “no im totally not lesbo my super actual husband is dick allcocks from man island i'm megahet”.
[d] Cf. this related poem of mine: