HOT TOPICS
by Catherine Hollenbeck
Solidarity
Low Brow/
High Femme
Feminist and Femme. If you catch me on a
less cranky day I might be happy to use these
terms as part of my identity. This wasn't always
the case. During my formative feminist years I
was constantly (and not academically) having
intense and deeply personal conversations with
other women, gender queers, and trans people
about our shared experiences under patriarchy.
Our sharing turned into study and reflection
about our similarities. It also turned into tough
conversations about our differences and privi-
leges and how these differences affected our un-
derstanding of a very complicated world. Years
later, I tongue in cheek identify as a “radical sell-
out”. I have a full time job in human resources,
a car, a salary, business cards, and the thought
of being in a 6 hour processing session around
feminist politics sounds like hell on earth right
now.
However, I have something that keeps drawing
me back to observing communities dialogs. The
community I am in is a robust one, full of smart
well-educated queers (academically and not)
and a lot of self-identified feminists. Many of
these feminists are also self-identified femmes.
We’re having conversations about a lot but in
particular, about femme solidarity. For those
not familiar with the term, femme solidarity is
a pretty amazing concept. So it goes: femininity
is not valued in this world. Femininity is often
seen as the weak, artificial, stupid, shallow coun-
terpart to masculinity. Thus, as femmes and/or
feminists we need to both value the feminine
and each other. I am seeing a whole new genera-
tion of feminists using the term “femme solidar-
ity” but something is ringing hollow with me.
For instance, I have overheard unfortunate gross
heteronormative terms like ‘butch scarcity’
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JustOut.com
June 2012