“Wild Geese” by Mary Oliver (1935-2019)
Ouray, Colorado | Photographer: Nathan Anderson (edited by phantastrophe)
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“Rarely, if ever, are any of us healed in isolation. Healing is an act of communion.”
— bell hooks All About Love - New Visions (via cancerninja)
Kris | Femme Lesbian | 52 years old
[Business Owner/Consultant, Grandmother, Mother, Activist, Friend, Sage, Sarcastic Observer of The World | Seattle, Washington]
“I wish people knew, understood, that it’s not about playing a role—one of us is the man and one of us is the woman. The butch/femme dynamic is about so much more than that and most people, many lesbians included, never bother to ask or learn.
I wish the heteronormative culture had the ability to expand beyond itself and understand that being femme and lesbian doesn’t mean you are confused and that being masculine of center doesn’t mean she wishes she were a man. That fact that I am a lesbian is a critical part of my identity and I don’t want, and don’t accept, anyone saying “it doesn’t matter, I just see you as a person”. I get the idea behind it but that makes me invisible. It does matter, it matters to me and influences my life and choices in everything I do. I want straight people to get that. Beyond that, I wish the politically correct lesbians, the “sporty” dykes, the “I don’t want a label” lesbians would simply be respectful that my identity, my gender even, is a Femme Lesbian. And Butches need to understand it’s not a competition about who it’s harder for. We’re Gay, it’s hard for all of us sometimes.”
[From the Butch/Femme Photo Project]
Taking misogynistic stereotypes for feminine women and repackaging them as just cute things that Femmes do is both sexist and homophobic.
There is nothing inherent about being Femme which prevents me from understanding how to operate power tools, build furniture, fix a car, or do any other traditionally “masculine” activities. What a shitty thing to imply, even in jest. Do better, folks. This is tiring.
Our community should not just replicate tired old stereotypes and drape them in a rainbow flag. Ask more of yourselves and each other.
“Man is defined as a human being and a woman as a female - whenever she behaves as a human being she is said to imitate the male.”
— Simone de Beauvoir (January 9, 1908 – April 14, 1986), was a French existentialist philosopher, public intellectual, political activist, feminist theorist and social theorist.
The Sunflowers
by Mary Oliver
…
Come with me
into the field of sunflowers.
Their faces are burnished disks,
their dry spines
creak like ship masts,
their green leaves,
so heavy and many,
fill all day with the sticky
sugars of the sun.
Come with me
to visit the sunflowers,
they are shy
but want to be friends;
they have wonderful stories
of when they were young -
the important weather,
the wandering crows.
Don’t be afraid
to ask them questions!
Their bright faces,
which follow the sun,
will listen, and all
those rows of seeds -
each one a new life!
hope for a deeper acquaintance;
each of them, though it stands
in a crowd of many,
like a separate universe,
is lonely, the long work
of turning their lives
into a celebration
is not easy. Come
and let us talk with those modest faces,
the simple garments of leaves,
the coarse roots in the earth
so uprightly burning.