c o v e r s t o r y
Transgendered Butches and FTM's: a uniquely Femme Perspective
by Sonya Bolus

f e a t u r e s
Transgendered Lesbian
by Arlene Istar Lev
Passing as the Pope - the Story of Joan English
by Alison Phipps

c o l u m n s
Health
by Dr. Lipstick
Wealth
by Ms. Moneygrrl
Sex
by SexySuzi
Advice
by Victoria
Femme Perspective
by DeAnna
Butch Perspective
by E.T. Turner

Publisher's Note
Contribute to Femme

As we near the turning point of this century, issues of identity politics and diversity have reached a point of near explosion. No where is this more evident than in examining the newly emerging transgendered liberation movement. Cutting across all other identity issues of class, race, ethnicity and sexual identity, transgendered activists are raising new questions about biology and socialization. These questions have challenged me in the deepest part of MY identity issues: as a raised working class Jewish mom, a lesbian feminist therapist and a radical femme activist. In examining some basic feminist principals, the trans movement has stretched my understanding of gender identity and sexual identity, and caused not merely a paradigm shift, but a paradigmatic upheaval; the bipolar universe of male and female has been replaced by an ever shifting landscape of gender expressions.

There is a place where sexual and gender identity meet, that has been unexplored and uncharted. For me to begin this journey I had to be willing to honestly examine two constructs of gender that I held dear: one was my relationship to gender as a lesbian-feminist, and the other, my relationship to gender transgressive behavior in the lesbian/gay community.

Gender through the eyes of lesbian-feminism.

In order to explore transgendered behavior I had to start by examining my understanding of gendered behavior. The traditional bipolar division of the sexes has defined male and female into a world of opposites, i.e. males are strong/females are weak, women are nurturant/men are unemotional, etc. This division of gender is not merely role oriented, but has been role constitutive, defining, not only how human beings see the world, but how they can see the world. Although this bipolar view is most extreme in Western cultures, and the particulars may vary from era to era, this basic yin/yang perspective invariably creates an immutable paradigm. Even the concept of the "opposite" or "other" sex, describes our sense of diametrical distinction, the inability to exist as "both/and."

Feminism has given me a powerful analysis in which to examine the limits of a gendered world and an even more powerful set of tools in which to dismantle a patriarchal power structure that has disempowered females. Feminism helped me to deconstruct what it meant to be female and to reconstruct the concept of woman to include a full range of human behaviors, emotions and capabilities. Feminism had not, however, called me to question the actual bipolar nature of gender itself. Feminism assumed that there are two sexes -- males and females -- and has protested the power imbalances and duality of gender role assumptions based on physiology but it never challenged me to question the limited structures of a two-gendered system. I had never asked the questions, "Are there really just two sexes; are there only two genders."?

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