#btexts

[femmespoiled]

I think I have a controversial thing to say: I love and recommend (have recommended) Stone Butch Blues as much as the next person, but there's other books from and about butches that get slept on because people only know Stone Butch Blues

#btexts #like please recognize other butch authors. they also exist and put out really good work out there

[jadedfemme]

oh, in this house we love femmes who like to be called boy/boi/pretty boy/loverboy/good boy etc too, all of you are amazing ♥️

I've said this before and I'll say it again, my admiration and love is endless towards gnc femmes, he/him femmes, masc presenting femmes, transmasc femmes, femmes who generally go outside of silly expectations for us, as a rule of thumb that's what makes femme and you make our community better by being in it

#bellas butch/femme tag #btexts #it's a new house but same principles

[blastburnt]

been thinking a lot about yellowjackets scam texts

#wont someone help this poor girl get back to playing soccer again #these type of scam texts make me crack up so bad it's not even funny (it is) #btext #yellowjackets

[femmespoiled]

What I've been saying all along.

And here's a link to their account and to this specific video. (the video on tiktok has captions, hopefully it works clicking on the link)

#btexts

[femmespoiled]

"Remarkably, hostile neighbors were relatively rare. Writing about homophobia, bell hooks criticizes the contemporary feminist view that homophobia is stronger in the Black community. She argues that, if this is the case today, it is a relatively recent phenomenon. When she was growing up in the South, poor Blacks, who were struggling for survival in a society fraught with racial hatred, did not ostracize their gay and lesbian brothers and sisters. Tolerance, if not acceptance, was the norm. This would appear to be true of Buffalo in the 1950s. Few, if any, Black narrators remember being physically attacked and beaten by Black men. Most white narrators confirm that they felt more accepted in the Black straight world than in the white. This is not to say that homophobia was absent from the Black community in the 1950s; it simply took different forms and it did not generate as much aggressive physical harassment of lesbians.

The police, however, were an ever-present danger. Black narrators, unlike white narrators, recall the police as vicious during the 1950s. Racial prejudice seems to have magnified hostility toward lesbians and gays to the extent that Black lesbians risked arrest for “disorderly conduct” just by walking in their own neighborhoods."

- Boots of Leather, Slippers of Gold: The History of a Lesbian Community by Elizabeth Lapovsky Kennedy and Madeline Davis

#violence tw #police brutality tw #btexts #racism #Bella's books #boots of leather. slippers of gold #bellas butch/femme tag

[femmespoiled]

stop equating femme lesbians to feminine lesbians challenge

and fucking stop treating us like them too

#bellas butch/femme tag #random stuff #btexts

[femmespoiled]

I'll make this its own post, because of the amount of people that have asked.

Let's talk the difference between feminine lesbians and femme lesbians.

Feminine is a form of presentation, it speaks directly to how you present.

Femme doesn't mean feminine lesbian, because regardless of the fact that some femmes are feminine/hyper feminine, not all feminine lesbians are femme, not all femmes are standardly feminine (usually most aren't), some are explicitly gender non conforming.

Femme as I talk about on this post and on my blog is more of a community role, based in the butch/femme community, that has a long history from bar culture. Femme inherently relates to subverting femininity from cishet standards and towards the community, making it our own. These identities (butch and femme) involve social, erotic, emotional reasons/intentions and contexts, ways of looking, loving and living expressed by a community.

Simply put, when I'm talking butch and femme, I mean people who are two sides of the same coin and have historically respected and backed each other up and been home and safety to each other, even without any romantic inclinations, that usually subvert traditional understanding of femininity and masculinity. There's a lot of deconstructing gender and taking matters of femininity and masculinity in our own ways, which can mean as mentioned previously that femmes can be, and a lot of the time are, as gender non conforming as butches and also, a lot of the time, not cis, because sometimes people outside these circles look at these identities through a very cis centered white lens.

Which is why, I want also clarify that it's important that the notion of femme not become limited by the hyper feminine white idea of it as well. That's easily ingrained in us and it's good to be conscious of it.

#bellas butch/femme tag #btexts

[femmespoiled]

this label might be too restrictive to you, but for me? this little label box is my home, I'm putting up decorations, I'm cosy as hell, I'm taking the silliest little nap in my cosy label box, I love it here

#random stuff #btexts

[femmespoiled]

the feminine urge to fucking sink my teeth into someone

#feeling bitey #feeling moody #feeling 🙃 #random stuff #men dni #btexts

[femmespoiled]

you know, love mellows you out, it does, in a way that feels like taking a breath after feeling suffocated, coming home after a long day, opening your arms and settling into a hug, a long and warm one. In a way that allows you to feel settled and safe in your identity, you no longer have to keep moving it around in your hands. It mellows you out when you no longer have to fight to be seen.

#i keep thinking of how much I've grown and how I've settled into my identity. my beliefs. how much calmer i am about my journey #I'm more opinionated but I also undoubtedly know more #I've mellowed out over the years but in a way I'm quite proud of #it feels like the beginning of a little space for peace #undoubtedly they've changed me. in how they see me. the things we discuss. in how we come together to be this pair #the set of arms i fall into. allowed me to see the horizon and take a breath. sit on the metaphorical grass for a bit #🖤💗 #btexts

[femmespoiled]

"The tradition of house parties had a significant impact on leadership in the Black lesbian community. Like the tough bar community, with which it overlapped, it respected those butches who could take care of business in the difficult environment of the street. But unlike the white bar community, it recognized and respected fem leaders. One reason for this may be the structural significance of home life in the Black lesbian community. Home-based parties gave fems, whose role was associated with domestic life, an arena for contributing to the social well-being of the community. They were key organizers for the house parties, dealing with problems internal to the community as well as relations with the outside world. In addition, fems opened their houses for visitors, nurturing those who needed a place to stay. Arlette, who was an important leader in the community, had the nickname, Mother Superior. When asked how she got this name, she explains, with a mixture of embarrassment and pride, that she always took care of people."

- Boots of Leather, Slippers of Gold: The History of a Lesbian Community by Elizabeth Lapovsky Kennedy and Madeline Davis

#black butch/femme community my beloved #btexts #Bella's books #bellas butch/femme tag

[femmespoiled]

fuck it, I'll make this its own post.

I feel frustrated sometimes by how much skinny, able bodied, white, hyper feminine femmes are given the spotlight sometimes, even treated as an authority that speaks for all of us. There's quite a stark difference between the attention they get and how others get treated, also the amount of effort needed to get that attention. A lot of people don't get recognised and seen in the community, get overlooked as femmes, because of the overshadowing in such situations. There's still a lot of work to be done in our community to actually value diversity.

#bellas butch/femme tag #btexts

[femmespoiled]

I've been thinking quite a bit about this conversation I had with a butch I had a thing with, a few years back. To be honest, it crosses my mind a lot. In this conversation we were talking about butch/femme, aesthetics, stereotypes etc. The context to it is that I saw a video that showed, unfortunately stereotyped, femme as these 4 styles of clothing and whatever, you can think it was funny, it's not the end of the world certainly, but we got to talking about this notion that I think the community forgets, regardless of verbally recognising "we're not aesthetics".

He showed me a picture that he really liked of this butch/femme couple in a bar and they were both wearing the same outfit and yet we could recognise them as a butch/femme pairing. Reminds me also of this black and white picture of two butches with a femme in the middle, they were in similar clothes, only the shirts said "butch" or "fem" in the case of the one I now bring up. Both of these were taken before the 1980s, if I recall correctly. Of course these are pictures, so we don't get the full context of their identities, but the intention here is to illustrate the concept of, in a way, the silliness of separating us by clothes and aesthetics. What this expectation of femininity or masculinity means considering both of these can be presented in such a subjective way.

When I talk about this, and how I view femme through my own femme lenses, I want to once again, shed light to some parts I love of The Persistent Desire: A Femme-Butch Reader by Joan Nestle:

"the femme is the lesbian who poses this problem of misinterpreted choice in the deepest way... Femmes are women who have made choices, but we need to be able to read between the cultural lines to appreciate their strength. Lesbians should be mistresses of discrepancies, knowing that resistance lies in the change of context." - the resistance and the strength of femme, along with its meaning, isn't quite obvious and a lot of people tend to miss it.

"Butches were known by their appearance, femmes by their choices."

And this part of Butch Is A Noun by S. Bear Bergman:

"(For the record, I believe that the same is true of femmes; the femmes who get the most admiration, the most approbation in the queer community in which I live seem to be the ones who cherry-pick exactly what of femininity they want, mix it with a hearty dash of traditionally masculine characteristics like sexual agency, stompy boots, assertiveness, fondness for power tools, and so on, and shake up a gendered cocktail that makes traditional unexamined cultural femininity look a little watery, a little pale. This is what I see, as a longtime admirer of femmes in all their variations, but I freely acknowledge that I only see what any femme cares to show me, and it's really not for me to say."

I think femme identity can become this pale misconstrued concept because we're not as obviously recognizable and people aren't as prepared to recognize us. People get used to, when thinking of lesbians, noticing and expecting butch signs, in such a way that femmes flew under the radar as an identity and definition and we still deal with that heavily today. And lately I've been seeing somewhat of a guessing game of what it all means that doesn't encompass our full range, truly it's hard to encompass that in any case.

But the moral of the story, I guess, is that femme needs more than a glance, more than one size fits all, more than what meets the eye, if we can recognize the multitude and holistic nature in the other side of our coin, we're capable of recognizing it within us.

#bellas butch/femme tag #bellas books #because of the mentions of books i make available in the drive #btexts

[femmespoiled]

"but, oh my god, you're such a crybaby" Yes, I am, things affect me, I live in a world that constantly moves me, regardless of if it is for bad or for good, so what? What about it?

#random stuff #btexts

[femmespoiled]

You know what? I'll go ahead and say it, people should cry more

#random stuff #no. seriously. get comfy with it #btexts

[femmespoiled]

Anyways, in this house we love butches who like to be called boy/boi/pretty boy/loverboy/good boy etc, y'all are honestly so hot 🥺♥️

#bellas butch/femme tag #btexts