“He’s so much darker than you!” the woman to my right says loudly, eating lentil soup with potato.

I feel like I am all dried up inside in terms of my ability to perform myself. (I hate the need to perform myself).

I feel as buttoned-down as my collared shirt.

Everything I do is on the clock. 

I need to find a self that I can talk about in casual conversation so that the people I’m talking to think I’m Deep and Caring and Worth Getting to Know.

I am afraid of Not Going Anywhere, even though there’s nowhere to go.

I am angry. I am furious. I’ve had to figure so much shit out on my own. I’ve never been pushed the way I’m craving.

Audre Lorde, who saves me, says:

“when we are loved we are afraid
love will vanish
when we are alone we are afraid
love will never return
and when we speak we are afraid
our words will not be heard
nor welcomed
but when we are silent
we are still afraid

so it is better to speak
remembering
we were never meant to survive.”

(A Litany for Survival)

My cat sleeps and I make eggs, thinking about whiteness and the places inside me that hurt.

Wondering if this raw soft place inside me is politics,

 or the fear of letting go.

Earlier this week I read this horribly sad article about Joyce Vincent, a young woman from London who died alone in her apartment with no one making an attempt to locate her for three years. Instead of discussing the socioeconomic factors at work that may have kept Joyce isolated, the article chooses to use her life and her death as an extreme example of what could happen to any of us who are living in impersonal, urban environments.

The internet does interesting things to loneliness. On those days when I can’t bring myself to leave my house Facebook sometimes beckons, both compelling and alienating, like a party where everyone but you is slightly buzzed and in the throes of the moment. But on Facebook, we are all our best selves– even the confessional status updates are crafted– me posting this, right now, is crafted– we untag the photos we hate and hide them.

My hands-down favourite thing about this blog is looking at the search terms strangers used to find it, often by accident. These terms- so often looking for the very things I search for without speaking- make me feel oddly connected. Could there be anything as impersonal as desires floating, disconnected even from the minds, the life experiences, that framed them? And yet even these words, sent out, can connect, can mean something, can have a story:

2011-12-02 to Today
Search Views

queer anarchist vancouver
how to challenger heteronormativity
internalized misogyny against femmes
lesbians rejecting butch
forms of heterosexual femininity
heteronormativity and white nation building
lesbian femmephobia
reclaiming female as a gender
femme queer
what to write for a stranger
how femme do sex
queer making world
accepting queers of color in society
what is the price virginity
tired of being androgynous
queer spaces
feminist exclusion
essay queer butch femme michelle tea
how a butch flirts with high feme
butch femme anti-oppressive
undo his fly
oppression on reproductive rights
(writing and oppression)
queer world making
queers of color in society
queer activists of color
lawyer who got in touch with natalie dylan on selling her virginity

Queers of colour, anarchist butches and femmes, queers who want to fight oppression, writers who want to fight oppression, butches who want to flirt with high femmes, femmes who want to flirt with butches, everyone who’s sick of being invisible or misrepresented, even here: we exist. we are here. we are searching. Not always finding what we’re looking for, but never really alone.

I’m sorry, Elizabeth,
There is no Mr. Darcy-
And yet you keep looking,
Although you know that all that is strong and lasting
Starts and ends with you-
(Your own breath in your lungs,
Your places of ache, and bitterness).
Elizabeth, I know.
Your love of Love knocks you down; it bowls you over.
A purpose, a place, a Home in someone else’s arms,
A direction,
A channel for the wellspring of your grief.
(These webs are dense, but fragile. You’ve felt it. Some days they break, leaving you to hold bewildered the frayed and dusty edges of your Great Romance).
You hold your mouth half-open,
Lips pursed,
Waiting to say: Take all of me.
Make me whole.

Elizabeth, say:
“I am not yours.”

Please-

“Darcy, you are too silent,
and undecided.
I don’t like the way you test me,
The way you’ re always watching.”

You could say-

“Give me space, now, to feel all the pleasure that I can cup in my six senses and ten toes.”

And-

“Let me wear dresses and collared shirts.
Let me drink sweet tea, and gin.”

Elizabeth, no one is a fantasy (a fantasy, no-one).
Elizabeth, make all kinds of glorious mistakes.
Your heart is strong enough to hold the weight of them.
Uncurl your tongue from the roof of your mouth.
You can live unmasked, and beautiful, and tender in the suspended places.

You are already whole.

1. Vancouver is the kind of still and quiet that lets you catch your breath. The streets are wider than I remembered, and more clean. I haven’t seen anyone walking down the street with a plastic cup of beer. The trees are so brightly green they look toxic. Everyone in Starbucks smiles too widely; the cashier at the pharmacy initiates a ten-minute conversation.
2. Everything in my life is getting more and more queer. It’s all loose racer-back tanks and wiry arms, black tattoos and grown-out mullets. I feel anxious about conforming to this queer aesthetic and it’s like a weirdly backwards version of high school: less makeup, shorter hair, cutoffs, as much sex as possible.
3. My Vancouver friends are uniquely so incredible- gorgeous, cool, involved, passionate- that their combined prowess is close to overwhelming. Visiting Vancouver in mid-August means flying directly into a tight-knit world of art shows, ink, community organizing, collective houses, punk shows, make-outs, and radical style. Knowing these people makes me feel both heart-warmed and a little off-kilter; I can’t shake the feeling that I need to try harder, keep amassing stories and successes so that I can stay afloat.
4. This summer- even just these past two months- have been the most full-of-everything in a long time: redefinitions, new style, new friends, learning to be more flexible, working hard, putting theory into practice. I have been stretching myself in all directions, despite the fact that, in moments, all I want to do is find a big hole somewhere, and hide there for a while.
5. My horoscope says that my “future is about to reveal more of itself.” I’ve been reading horoscopes now that I’m single; it helps to take things one week at a time. My favourites horoscopes are big, extravagant: something, or someone, will alter the course of your life forever.
6. This list is only a little bit honest.

In this kind of heat, the parts you take for granted make themselves known. Creases of your elbows, the backs of your knees. Your feet swell, the skin cracking. If you hold your thighs together the way good girls are supposed to, they have difficulty coming unglued. You, on the other hand, are half conscious, bleary, alive only in the nerve-tip parts of you that know how to make peace with endings. Today your horoscope says that the time is ripe for pleasure, spontaneity, and exploration, hollow words that don’t mean much but that place yet another expectation on the time and space your body occupies. The pleasure your body feels right now is in the rough wooden floorboards, the moments before release. Everything, all fluids and all solid, anchored things, are showing their worn edges.

Who are you in the moments when you know nobody’s looking?

How does your posture change, slip from alert-and-competent-ready-for-anything to quiet, practiced, a little desolate? How do you brace yourself for the moments you fear, moments of rallying a crowd or shouting in a megaphone or telling someone you care about that you want to steal so many moments with them it’s fit to burst?  Are you the same calm-quiet, cheerful-tender sort of person? Are you someone that you yourself could love and play with? Where are your too-dark places?

Night, and the fan, and the sticky sweat-on-skin, and the thoughts that cycle again and again (if you could hear from one person out of the blue- one person that you covet, that you want in the secret-special way you want the things you’d never admit to wanting- who would it be, and what would they confess? Will you admit to wanting this?- swept up, claimed, desired, washed away). 

In this kind of heat, you drink coffee instead of water and wear the same clothes day after day, worn soft from repeated washing. You cut your hair short and wear it like that, off-kilter. You get tipsy from banana juice and coconut rum, and run ice cubes against your temples, both fearing and anticipating the sensation. In this heat you are sticky, see-through, shorn; you make the rules up as you go along, trying very hard to keep Cool.

Kim- you told me to update more frequently because writing that’s personal is “what hits deep and matters[.]” I am always torn in this place, torn between fear of self-censorship and the ethics of being honest. If I told you the truth I’d say that right now my mind is gulfs and valleys of light and images, my body a hungry vortex anticipating supper, my mind afraid of being wrong. I spent the day with the other counselors, planning activities and painting banners, and laughing until my sides hurt, and I worried that it somehow wasn’t ‘professional’ to laugh so much while getting paid. Somehow along the way the idea that fun and work can be compatible has been so knocked out of me that this  joy makes me feel guilty. I’ve spent the day soaking sunlight into my skin so that now I feel warm and sated, my extremeties hot for once to the touch. Around the edges hovers my sadness like a shadow, all the fears I haven’t worked through, all the doubts and itchy, uncertain places. At work I don’t let my mind wander, and focus instead on speaking French with my co-counselors and anticipating the faces of the five- and six-year-old children I’ll be meeting in two weeks. Life is so full of these distractions- work and school and “life goals”- enough to fill a day and a mind with. At the end of eight hours my body is drained enough for self care and sleep; the cycle repeats and pausing a moment to dig into those places that sting feels scary.

Kim,you seem like the kind of person who has managed to integrate all of your selves- student self and writer self and artist self, musician self and lover self- into a symbiotic whole. I love that you own all the parts of yourself that are dangerous to touch. Right now I feel like pieces, different people in different places. I think about whether my chocolate frozen yogurt popsicle will melt in the 28 degree heat; if the pet store will be open long enough for me to buy Orijen cat food for Zadie; when I should do the laundry; whether I’ve put in too much water with my rice; why my nails keep splitting, weak; about the dress code at my work; about the amount of hipster cred that comes from drinking juice out of a mason jar rather than a glass; about whether my shorts look dorky with my new sneakers; about if my hair’s okay and if there’s something coming out of my nose and if I’ve been feeding myself well enough and if I’ll ever learn how to be friends with my ex-partner without feeling like I’m choking on all the things I was never able to give her.

This is mundane. Sitting with my feet up on my desk, sticky from the heat of the day, black T-shirt with cut off sleeves, khaki shorts, glasses sliding down the end of my nose. Warm room, the sound of trucks outside, a crick in my neck, headache, stress of unfinished, untouched schoolwork lurking in my periphery, the vague unhappiness of knowing that there is always so much more to be done. A list of states and muscle aches and fluttery hopes with no end.

I’ve been having flashes of deja vu, of body-memory. These moments make me think of a card my sister gave me when I was little. On the front, there was a cartoon of a man standing in front of a row of apartment-building mailboxes. The thought bubble over his head said something like, “please, mailbox, contain a letter from someone that I’ve forgotten about, but who has never forgotten about me… a letter that will change my life forever.” These days feel potent, fertile. And I’m waiting.

When you’re in love with someone, where does the feeling live?
I can feel it growing,
sticky,
ready to catch debris.

It ended a few weeks ago, my partner and I, three and a half years of back-and-forth, and wanting.
I’m struck by the deceptive simplicity of it all, of severing ties that felt like blood.
I’m sitting in my room now (my room, singular, present tense), white bedspread, cool breeze.

My bookcases and my desk and my side table,
Her boxes in the bookcase,
Her slippers under my bed.

This is the month when every couple I know is breaking up, some more dramatically than others,
Ready for summer lie-ins with someone new,
New ribcages to discover, new fingers in new hair,
tongue touching new lips, blowing warm air into cold sore places.

I want to fill this vacuum with something,
With a sore throat, with mangos,
With a vision of me-before-you to sustain me through,
To build me into a solid me-after-you

But all of this is selfish.

I’m wondering:
If I gave you everything that I knew how to give,
And it still wasn’t enough to sustain you,
What happens next?

This is the part where I say when something ends,
time for a new cycle
But instead all that’s left is the same old shit of
Craving, and reinvention.

Okay, full confession: I look at my blog stats. Usually it’s just me pressing ‘refresh’ on my browser over and over again to make myself feel better about the number of site hits. But once in a while, if I’m feeling especially brave, I look at the search terms that strangers have used to find this little corner of the Internet. The results never cease to amaze/shock/confuse/and creep me out. (The only really creepy ones are when people search for the site through my e-mail address, plus the person who keeps searching ‘Kate Beaton Stalker’. I am more than overjoyed that whoever searched for “long haired woman hanging upside down, hair pulled, videos” once stumbled upon this site. That’s my intended readership, for real. Hi stranger!)

Search Terms for all days ending 2011-02-08 (Summarized)

writing for strangers 72
writingforstrangers 29
vanessa fernando 21
femme identity 16
write with strangers 12
michelle tea 9
radical femme identity 7
femme-inism by paula austin 6
write to strangers 6
“vanessa fernando” 6
queer femme identity 6
paula austin femme-inism 5
queer spaces 5
queering the world warner 5
heteronormativity 4
feminism 4
writing to strangers 4
queer femininity 3
berlant and warner sex in public 3
kate beaton stalker 3
vanessa shanti fernando 3
vshanti2@gmail.com 3
karen bullock-jordan 3
leah lilith. “on being a bisexual femme. 3
warner queer the world 3
essays on reproductive justice 3
resist racism and eat your carrots chrystos 3
radical queer vancouver 3
paula austin feminist 3
femme queer women 2
berlant and warner 1998 2
queer femme 2
queer heteronormativity 2
how do you spell the sound of pouring coffee? 2
queer world 2
nomy lamm critique 2
femme queer identity 2
writing about strangers 2
my feminism 2
http://writingforstrangers.com/ 2
good title for writing about strangers 2
queer women of color feminism 2
stalking kate beaton 2
kate beaton dating 2
leah lilith samarasinha 2
gender race class: beyond the fem 2
berlant and warner 2
femme4femme writing 2
reviews of “and then you cut your hair” 2
write strangers 2
ways on how butches and femmes resist oppression 2
sandy chang “and then you cut your hair” 2
sex in public berlant and warner 2
queer women 2
femme queer 2
working class femme 2
queer of colour 2
high femme women 2
paula austin femme-inism summary 2
www.writingforstrangers.com 2
writing with strangers 2
sex in public by berlant and warner 2
radical queer femme 2
queer femmes 2
is the selling of virginity a feminist act 2
queer anti-femme analysis 2
queer femme men 2
nomy feminist 2
femme queer class 2
writing for strangers blog vanessa 2
butch-femme, black, gender presentation 2
femme of colour 2
andre and cheng: bulldaggers 2
queer anarchy polyamory 2
femmes of colour 2
femme-inism: lessons of my mother 2
femmes feminism 2
theresa joy naked 1
what does cagibi mean 1
athena sexual health sundays 1
vanessa fernando pictures 1
mall christmas 1
coffee magic tv 1
lise alain 1
laura harris femme 1
i’m no good with strangers 1
i could see up my aunt’s skirt 1
airplane stewardess 1
vanessa fernando and vancouver 1
aeroplane sketch 1
dark sexual fantasies 1
spell coffe on the doore 1
write to strangers + website 1
composition writing stranger 1
i cant write with strangers 1
teen alienation poem 1
“mouthing the lyrics” “music video” 1
coffee with strangers 1
hunger point book summary 1
airplane sketch 1
“magnified eyes” “her glasses” 1
kids writing on stranger 1
arelis.gr 1
sexual health sundays athena 1
belly button scraped and bleeding soul 1
the transfeminist manifesto by emi koyama 1
when i woke i heard my mother coughing 1
warner queer world making 1
writing to strangers for money 1
femme queer girls 1
i learned from the best – paula austin 1
“and then you cut your hair: genderfucking on the femme side of the spectrum” 1
write to stranger 1
radical queer writing 1
femme for femme relationship 1
merri lisa johnson “pearl necklace: the politics of masturbation fantasies” 1
space making queer identity 1
and then you cut your hair’: genderfucking on the femme side of the spectrum 1
harris and crocker female activists 1
writing to stranger 1
stalk kate beaton 1
“i hate my fantasies” 1
nomy lamm fat revolution 1
berlant and warner + heteronormativity 1
writing emails to strangers 1
write about the strangers 1
queer women gender identity 1
writing stangers 1
“the beauty of sexuality” 1
writting to strangers 1
write your thoughts to strangers 1
“sex in public” berlant warner 1
“she always wore a skirt” 1
jessica yee feminism 1
“judith halberstam” + criticism + “female masculinity” + femme + privileges masculinity at the expense of femme performance 1
“why am i so scared to write?” 1
joan nestle femme 1
“femme identity 1
essay on missing and murdered women yasmin jiwani 1
queer love geographies 1
femme-inism paula austin 1
is kate beaton a lesbian 1
heteronormative privilege 1
queer hair do minneapolis 1
queer women of colour london 1
rejecting scorpio woman 1
queer performance radical 1
femme rond nu image 1
nyc butch women seeking femme 1
gory roommate stories bulimia 1
queer female imposters 1
femme stigma lyndall maccowan 1
white hetero-patriarchal society 1
invisible femme 1
sexism within queer communities 1
queer black femmes 1
kate beaton date of birth 1
virgin whore division feminism 1
deconstruct of queer women of color 1
fiction writing “scared to write” 1
lyndall maccowan the persistent desire: a femme-butch reader 1
“on being a bisexual femme” 1
transfeminist manifesto emi koyama 1
joanna bourke rape 1
vancouver radical queer 1
essay on butch and femme roles 1
the persistent desire a femme-butch reader 1
femme whipping men 1
lyndall maccowan, recollecting history 1
standards for feminine expression 1
seai femme 1
pleasing butch lover 1
essays samples of strangers 1
zones of degeneracy demarcate 1
plane sketch 1
freckled breasts 1
writingforstrangers.com 1
how to refer to strangers when write for dating 1
dealing with strangers- 4th grade writing prompt 1
is there an airplane glue that is unscented and won’t give me a headache? 1
femme queers of color 1
misogyny in queer communities butch femme 1
butch beaton brown 1
femme feminine differences 1
mykel johnson 1
femme lesbian how to attract a partner 1
seeking women of color writing 1
how to be a femme queer gender identity 1
queer women of color bar nyc 1
butch femme identity 1
austin queer community 1
queer feminists of colour 1
queer femme aesthetic 1
“first time i had sex” naked “shaved my legs” 1
chrystos “i don’t understand,” 1
“dear john i love jane” 1
recognise this… queer t-shirts 1
femme men queer 1
mykel johnson, writer 1
queer “femme style” 1
butch femme queer 1
queer high femme 1
queer as destabilizing norms 1
“my aunt was a witch” 1
leah lilith albrecht-samarasinha 1
radical queer world building 1
vancouver bc radical queer spaces 1
queeruption anarchist 1
queer roommates montreal 1
queer hetero 1
white femmes 1
recognize femmes 1
camrynmanheimwake-up-im-fat-show 1
queer women and oppression system 1
chimamanda 1
critical inquiry24 1998 1
reclaiming queer 1
eric jerome dickey pleasure 1
femme gender expression 1
lesbian femme femme relationships 1
radical queer space 1
femme seeking black female to male transsexual 1
andre and cheng: genderfucking on the femme side 1
workshops on heteronormativity 1
queer mixed race women 1
vancouver comicon kate beaton 1
mykel johnson, “butchy femme 1
being queer women 1
radical queers vancouver 1
butchy femme, writing, the persistent desire 1
queer anarchist vancouver 1
“and then you cut your hair” 1
26 year old queer women 1
rejecting the rules of gender and conformity sand chang 1
high femme queer poet 1
femme queer femininity 1
queer women, hair 1
femme butch definitions radical queer 1
butch beaton-brown 1
queer identification 1
allintext: heteronormativity + mental health 1
anti-oppressive feminism 1
joan nestle butch femme gender identity 1
i have sexual encounters on plane with strangers 1
radical queer bear 1
transform a femme more dyke 1
ideal femme 1
brown femmes queer 1
women of color sexuality empowerment 1
queering sexuality in color 1
“lauren blitzer” 1
macrobiotic community self-sufficient 1
kate beaton stop being so hard on yourself comic 1
“compulsory heterosexuality” “make-up” 1
women of color reject feminism 1
paula austin feminism 1
lauren blitzer 1
butch femme queer identity 1
femme queers 1
i don’t understand those who have turned away from me by chrystos 1
androgynous girl and femme girl 1
writing for strangers femme race class 1
reclaiming high heels and feminism 1
and then you cut your hair; genderfucking of the femme side of the spectrum 1
black dkyes and their femme women 1
adriana rich & androgynous 1
identify as a femme women 1
jane sexes it up: true confessions of feminist des 1
femininity is inferior masculinity 1
coulo femme 1
able-bodied heteronormativity 1
heteronormativity critical alternatives 1
24 hour comic kate beaton 1
heteronormativity 2010 1
lesbians reclaiming high heels 1
mixed race poems 1
kate beaton merchandise 1
high femme 1
i am sorry, i dont write to strangers 1
“michelle tea” 1
hades and minthe sexual fanfic 1
vancouver radical queers 1
femme-inism: lessons of my mother, summary 1
hetero femininity + definition 1
why is heteronormativity so pervasive? 1
comic-con kate beaton 1
anita rau badami 1
poem about melodramatic 1
leah lilith 1
femme as gender identity 1
kate beaton middle age 1
reclaiming femme book 1
queering sexuality of color 1
queer women of color california 1
kate beaton 1
capitalism heteronormativity 1
heteronormative 1
politics of identity women of color 1
boston queer femmes who like older butches 1
amazing stories about cross-boundary relationships 1
berlant and warner heteronormativity 1
radical queers polyamory 1
heteronormativity in todays world 1
white heteronormativity 1
latina femme queer 1
writer mykel johnson butch femme 1
queers of colour 1
revolutionary writing 1
vshanti 1
queer leaving home 1
my feminism is not afraid of sex or secrets or living fully 1
define “male-identified” woman 1
traditional or passive femininity 1
chrystos poetry airport 1
heteronormative spaces 1
compulsive heterosexuality, serrano 1
queer community identity 1
what is a high femme? 1
trans women terms femmes 1
heteronormativity warner 1
berlant warner world-making 1
women resist heterosexual roles essay 1
karen bullock- jordan 1
femme style queer 1
nomy lamm big fat revolution 1
gender identity of colour 1
black women of colour press 1
bisexual femme feminist 1
butch and femme identity 1
queer berlant and warner 1
women of colour and feminism 1
berlant christmas heteronormativity 1
story writting on stramgers 1
queer anarchist blog 1
how to write about strangers 1
warner and berlant sex in public 1
femme and invisible and queer 1
strangers are wxciting 1
feminism femininity serano 1
black butch and white fems 1
butch and femme roles power 1
bernant and warner 1
colour and femininity 1
black bisexual femmes 1
“queer femmes” defin 1
queer reject identity 1
femme of color 1
candace walsh and laura andre 1
sandy chang lesbian 1
michelle tea fanfiction 1
and then you cut your hair‘: genderfucking on the femme side of the spectrum‖ 1
and then you cut your hair genderfucking on the femme side of the spectrum 1
reclaiming femme 1
radical queer identity 1
dyke femme love lust 1
kate beaton brother 1
juanita ramos brooklyn 1
women of color, challenging notions of femininity 1
leah lilith albrecht-samarasinha information 1
butch identity t-shirts 1
identity artificiality 1
empowerment queers of color 1
leah lilith albrecht 1
heteronormative radical 1
radical relationships queer poly 1
“male-identified woman” 1
capitalism and heteronormativity berlant and warner 1
how to go beyond heteronormativity 1
radical queer 1
shishalh gathering 1
1980s women of colour 1
reclaim the name fem 1
destabilizes people’s conceptions of “heteronormativity” 1
heterosexual femininity 1
berlant, heteronormativity 1
“the space” vancouver queer youth 1
butch femme hair color 1
nomi lamm 1
femme queers invisible 1
write with strangrs 1
heteronormativity berlant warner 1998 1
high heels subordinate women 1
femme asserts masculine characteristics 1
passive femininity definition 1
de beauvoir queer 1
creepy ad kate beaton 1
adrienne rich male identified women 1
radical queer blog 1
queer women 69 1
sex with strangers by lindsay gordon 1
feminism & beauty ideal 1
london femmes of colour 1
berlant and warner queer world making 1
butch femme women of color personals 1
poet chrystos analysis 1
dykes “queer women” “queer community” 1
i am not your princess by chrystos poem analysis 1
queer women of color androgyny 1
feminine fluidity vs masculine mechanics 1
african american lesbians and gender presentation 1
heteronormativity berlant and warner 1998 1
metis queer 1
berlant and warner, sex in public 1
paula austin caribbean 1
femme querr 1
helth sundays 1
summary paula austin femme-inism: lessons of my mother 1
and then you cut your hair genderfucking on the fem side of the spectrum 1
sex in public berlant warner 1
creepy kate beaton fans 1
queer women of colour 1
sexual positions heteronormativity 1
anita rau badami writing process 1
queer gender colour codes 1
ed ramos kitchen idea 1
michelle tea poetry 1
queer+race+women 1
warner and berlant queer intimacies 1
when stranger write 1
ways femme fails to subvert 1
queer women of colour artist 1
queer white space 1
berlance warner 1
it’s a big fat revolution nomy lamm 1
heteronormativity mental health 1
berlant warner sex in public 1
kate beaton creepy fans 1
heteronormativity influence gay couples 1
i havent been writing because 1
queer world making 1
femme queer definition 1
continuous writing about strangers 1
decoupling femininity and power 1
“girfriend makes me come” 1
chrystos, reading, 2010 1
lesbian mother femme blog 1
androgynous mixed race 1
global queering and heteronormativity 1
heteronormativity make me angry 1
subversive: femme 1
femme power beauty women of color 1
angry brown femme 1
butch feminist woman identified women 1
biafra fernando 1
femme and femme relationships 1
sexual health sundays 1
femme-inism:lessons of my mother 1
women of colour 1
absence of queer public 1
radical queer communities 1
queerruption vancouver f 1
“kate beaton” line fans 1
alina bronsky broken glass park extract 1
paula austin, “femme-inism: lessons of my mother 1
warners heteronormativity 1
queer femme movement 1
black lesbian hair and femininity 1
radical queer art 1
juanita ramos 1
queer femme of color chrystos 1
women of color femme 1
reclaim femininity 1
queer femmes who love femmes 1
long haired woman hanging upside down, hair pulled, videos 1
joan nestle fem question 1
what write to stranger 1
wave of queer movement 1
queer hair femme 1
jane nestle butch femme reader 1
butch femme imitation of traditional heteronormative gender roles 1
submissive women and dykes 1
discussion on the reclaiming of queer 1
prominent queer activists of color 1
adult lesbiens naked and bumping pussies 1
warner heteronormativity 1
fernando writing for strangers 1
femme queer culture 1
radical queer vancouver bc 1
radical queer culture 1
queer femme of color 1
images and defintion of a butchy femme 1
berlant and warner, “sex in public” 1
who is michelle tea dating? 1
masculine queer women 1
the femme persona 1
qweer body radical 1
bisexuality in femme women 1
vanessa jason fernando 1
queer latina femme gender 1
simone de beauvoir on gender masculinity femininity is constructed in society 1
reproductive justice right to have as many children 1
andré, any and sandy chang. “‘and then you cut your hair’: genderfucking on the femme side of the spectrum” 1
steve van bakel 1
high femme queer 1
reproductive justice questions 1
tall tales press steve van bakel 1
cagibi march 27th, 2011 1
queer scene montreal 1
butch reject femmes 1

I’ve added a new sub-section to Writing; now I’ll be posting my non-fiction/opinion pieces from Athena Magazine (and elsewhere, if relevant) directly to this website, so you never have to miss a word. I’m sure you’ll all breathe a collective sigh of relief at hearing this wonderful news!

Make sure you don’t miss my latest gem, “In Defense of Procrasturbation.” Your life won’t be complete until you read it.

The four of us often play around about how oppressed we are, but we are excessively privileged. Not only because of the money, but because we (even for a second) felt entitled to entertain the idea of quitting, simply because we didn’t get along. Because at the end of the day, we leave Juarez’s flooded streets for a dry motel 6 in El Paso. Because at the end of the weekend, we come back to Phoenix, go back to our on-campus jobs, open our macbooks, and write blog entries about privilege. We are so privileged.

Catherine A. Traywick @ Femmalia