Femmes Of Power *LAUNCH*

i will not cry i will not cry i will not cry... the march activities in sydney just keep coming! for example:

Slit Magazine with the Femme Guild and Feminist Bookshop
present the Femmes of Power: Exploding Queer Femininities Book launch
by Del LaGrace and Ulrika Dahl

Come and celebrate this exxcitng new book a stunning collaboration from gender variant photographer Del LaGrace Volcano and Swedish writer Ulrika Dahl. Stilettos, lipstick, beards: there’s more than one way to be a queer femme. Del and Ulrika travelled seven countries in their quest to explore the notion of queer femininity.

Come and Chat
with Ulrika Dahl (Sweden) with host Kitty Minge (UK)

Thursday 5th March
630-930pm $5
Shows By Vixen Noir (San Fran), Lillian Star, Molly,Dj Pony
Food and refreshments available
Red Rattler Theatre
6 Faversham St
Marrickville

actually, maybe i will cry. vixen is in town doing shows and workshops all over the place and i'm not going to make ONE of them. BIG POUT.

Not The Man You Think I Am

End of the pier, end of the bay
You tug my arm, and say:
"Give in to lust, give up to lust
Oh heaven knows we'll soon be dust ..."

Oh, I'm not the man you think I am
I'm not the man you think I am
And sorrow's native son
He will not rise for anyone
And pretty girls make graves

Oh ...I could have been wild and I could have been free
But nature played this trick on me
She wants it now
And she will not wait
But she's too rough
And I'm too delicate

- The Smiths
'Pretty Girls Make Graves'

Somebody theorised recently that the reason I engage in a sort of 'freak' aesthetic, ie all tattoo and piercing and shaved head and face cutting and no bra, was that I was not confident enough with my own attractiveness to be a more usual kind of womanly entity. As if I my venture into less 'traditional' physical presentations was simply a way of deflecting some sort of faulty femininity. At least, that was how I interpreted the comment. And perhaps not very suprisingly, this bugged me more than a little!

Not sure exactly what bugged me though. I mean, the implication that 'you could look so pretty if you just wanted to and believed in yourself' was more than a little patronising. I do like to believe that I have moved on a little from being some greasy angsty teen hiding behind a long fringe and a baggy t-shirt *lol*. Also the implication that I identify as female, and am obviously not a butch woman, so therefore I must secretly harour an urge to be a girly-girl 24 hours a day and if only I'd just take off those steel caps and slip on some kitten heels I could self-actualise seemed a little odd. All of this just gets so confusing for me at times! I mean, I like to play with butches and bois and boys, but I very rarely particularly want to identify as femme. Is it my only option? I have had butch partners insist on my femme-ness to reaffirm their butch-ness, and femmes insist that because I don't want to fuck femmes I must secretly want to be one...

Whores and Bitches Who Sleep With Women

Femme is the position that deliberate feminine sexual agency often occupies in queer girl subcultures. Slut is the position openly sexual single women tend to occupy in most hetero (and some homo) cultures. Ho is the position that professional sexual women occupy in this society and a number of others. But the distinctions between these particular categories often blur, many of us have occupied all three positions, and the social sanctions are damn near the same. Betcha we shop in the same stores, wrestle similar demons, carry comparable fears throughout the world. Chances are we frequently get mistaken for each other. And we will all be framed as "whores and bitches who sleep with women" the moment the nightstick comes down.
So, in my opinion, we can't talk about femme, about femininity, about anything related, without talking about ho.

- Kathryn Payne
'Whores and Bitches Who Sleep With Women'
in Brazen Femme: Queering Femininity, ed Brushwood Rose and Camilleri