Gender Feels: August 31, 2012 - Jessie

Femmes, teach me how to know all of you, who are like me. See me, if I’m like you. Don’t miss something, don’t let me miss something.

I’ve written a lot in the past two weeks, the post-Femme Con weeks. Not here, obviously, but in emails to myself. Unsent emails to other femmes. Mini zines. Postcards. Postcards that got thrown in the trash because they were too tender. Postcards that got dropped in the mail even though they were too much.

The statement at the top here is one I keep coming back to. I wrote it on a Greyhound bus somewhere between Baltimore and New York. I wrote a lot on that bus. This is probably the only part of that writing anyone will ever see.

Femme Conference made me feel complicated. It always does, in one way or another.

me and cherry, halloween of 2008.

2008 – My best friend goes to Femme Conference without me. I am having HARD LIFE SHIT. While she is on the train home I receive (what feels like) crushing news about my relationship. I can’t talk to her (at the time, my ONLY femme community) because she is on the Amtrak. I retreat from Femme for a minute. I feel abandoned, mostly by myself, and silly for not going to the conference.

Sophie, me and Sonya, ghostly and amazing in the hotel at femme con 2010

2010 – I travel to Oakland with amazing femmes from Austin. I am scared a lot. I stay close to my friends. Regrettable things happen, and I kiss no one. But I tread on glittery streets and eat half a chicken and have a pretty amazing time. I see femmes with facial hair but am too scared to talk to them.

Moxie and me having such a tender goodbye. <3

2012 – Femme Con really blew me open. I was ready, I guess. Now that I am home I think maybe I was less ready than I thought. But I had the best time. I helped organize and execute an amazing femme clothing swap, we live streamed keynotes and featured presenters, I got to meet JB in person (it didn’t even feel like the first time). I broke down a lot of boundaries with myself (maybe too many in retrospect) and put up fewer boundaries than usual with other folks. I had a great date. I danced. I talked with my sisterwife into the wee hours of the morning. Shit like that makes coming home hard. At Femme Con, in that mass of three or four hundred femmes, there were plenty of femmes who “looked like me”. That can mean a lot of things – tall & fat, loud dressing, beardy, gendercomplicated. It was comforting to feel seen by those femmes. Seeing those femmes, and the ways that other femmes saw them, reminded me that I could be seen by folks too!

Right now my gender is a complicated pile of glitter and words mixed with hair and tears. I’m pretty sure I’m on the right track.

Femmes, teach me how to know all of you, who are like me. See me, if I’m like you. Don’t miss something, don’t let me miss something.