c o v e r s t o r y
Coming out of the Queer Closet
by Nedhera Landers

f e a t u r e s
A Response to Alix Dobkin's article "Queer & Present Danger"
by De-Anna Alba
Living Deliberately
by Mowani Carter
The Queering of Femininity
by Susan Craigie

c o l u m n s
Health
by Dr. Lipstick
Wealth
by Ms. Moneygrrl
Sex
by SexySuzi
Advice
by Victoria
Fashion
by Fran Fatale
Femme Perspective
by Christine
Butch Perspective
by Daddy Rhon

Publisher's Note
Letter from the Editor
Contribute to Femme

Coming Out of the Queer Closet
by Nedhera Landers

(continued page 4)

The third time someone asked that question, it wasn't funny anymore. This time the butch bouncer at a bar famous for its well-to-do butch-femme clients asked me. She was a butch I knew personally! She hadn't recognized me in full femme regalia. My companions and I just looked at each other and stepped around her into the bar. I could feel my face flame and my body flush as I saw the same incredulous looks on the faces of many of the customers. My friends and I must be het interlopers here to secure a drunken lesbian for a night of debauchery. It didn't help that we had brought with us two VERY gay men who danced with each other most of the night. It must have looked like we'd made stops along the way to compile a menagerie of kink!

After that incident, I had to figure out "femme" and what it meant outside the context of my butch. No butch was there to protect me from the hostility I felt as I walked through that bar. She wasn't there when we left. In the parking lot, a drunken, abusive dyke yelled at us that we were just "cocksuckers" and "breeders". She nearly spat at us - her words filled with so much hate. I didn't understand it, but it pissed me off.

That drunk began my politicization around butch-femme. It was another stereotype and prejudice to get rid of.

I talked with femme friends about their experiences coming out of the queer closet.

One friend, Alison Phipps, a degree candidate attending graduate school in London, had a similar story: "In my youth, I was extremely confused. My sexual desires were as yet unformed - the strong attraction I felt towards masculinity never culminated in a teenage crush on a man, yet my experiments with other little girls did not fulfill the dynamic I craved. What I wanted was a lover I could gift with the sweetest surrender, someone whose power would make me swoon: but this experience eluded me, and I was left frustrated and empty. Deep down I knew that only a woman could take me from the inside out, but this feeling had been forced so deep into the unconscious part of my emotional makeup that it was almost impossible to recognise (sic). I fought against my instinctive identification with butch-femme culture for some time. But attempts to convince myself that my interest was purely intellectual were doomed to failure every time my heart skipped a beat on catching sight of some tough, sexy butch leaning up against a wall, one eyebrow raised, who would turn to jelly with my smile. I struggled with my need to define, seeing it as a sign of weakness - but the compulsion was growing so strong that I eventually gave up the fight. And it was the wisest thing I could have done. My decision to negotiate my life and articulate my nature as a lesbian femme has shown me a happiness that I only ever dreamed was possible."

Time moved on and by 1994 I'd read quite a bit of Joan Nestle. I learned a great deal about "negotiating my life..... as a lesbian femme". I also devoured Jewelle Gomez' work. I greatly admire her writing and personhood. To me, she is a wonderful model of a Black femme (though she may not identify with that dynamic). I read her stories with the same hungry mind I bring to Audre Lorde's work - wonderful tales of butches and femmes from other eras. Here I learned what femme was and saw that I can shape what femme could be for me today.

More has been published in the last ten years about butch/femme than in the previous twenty, much of it with a negative or condescending tone. Slowly that has given way to much more positive portrayals written by and for butches and femmes themselves. Much of what is published even now, focuses more on the experience of butches. It is as though any femme without a butch ceases to be a femme. It's strange that there is never any question about a straight woman being straight when she's without a man, or even a butch ceasing to be a butch when s/he's without a femme.

continued page 5