Tag: semantics

Semantics Sunday: Femme

On August 24, 2008

Yes, I know, it’s not Sunday (again) I’m getting bad at these, but at least I’m trying to stick to the posting schedule even if it is not the right day! And, that’s what backdating is for! My best excuse for being late is that our mama cat had her kittens yesterday! See all five kittens and the mama or just two kittens close-up. I’ll be posting pics on twitter as they progress.

Somethings I’ve been thinking a lot about since starting The Femme’s Guide (I start off too many posts that way, don’t I? Maybe I just think too much): What is femme? What does it mean to be femme? Who can be femme? Is there any sort of limitation on what femme means?

Something I came across a while ago here via The Femme Show was a definition of what femme is, or can be: “[the femme is] a betrayer of legibility itself. Seemingly “normal,” she responds to “normal” expectations with a sucker punch– she occupies normality abnormally.” – Lisa Duan and Kathleen McHugh from “A Fem(me)inist Manifesto” The abnormality in the normality of feminine can be caused by a number of different things, and in all cases conscious choice is the forerunner, but can also be accompanied by a deviant sexual orientation (queer, dyke, lesbian, bi, pan, etc. to which I also include queer heterosexual), biological sex-to-gender allignment (such as femme males), or etc.

My basic definition of a femme is someone who consciously chooses to embrace fem(me)ininity as a “deviant” identity. Femme is a conscious genderfuck in the rouse of traditional femininity. The major difference between a feminine woman and a femme is conscious gender performance, and anyone who consciously takes on the role of femininity as a deviant identity can be femme.

I don’t believe that femme is reserved for any type of person, there are femmes of all sexes, orientations, sizes, colors, etc. The only thing I believe must be present in order to embrace the identity of femme is just that: embracing the identity and consciously performing femmeininity.

This also doesn’t mean that they must be femme all the time, or that it has to be an all-or-nothing experience. I am an advocate (and practitioner) of gender fluidity, and I don’t believe that once an identity is embraced it must be the dominant identity at all times.

This brings me to the question of how is femme deviant? How is being femme any more deviant than being feminine? In a culture which considers femininity to be a counterpart to masculinity and therefore everything that masculinity isn’t: weak, vulnerable, emotional, etc. when a femme consciously chooses to be femme ze is choosing to take on this culturally slandered role. When we consciously choose marginalized roles while recognizing their marginalization we are, in a way, giving power to them. This is, in my mind, deviant and a small way of rebelling against social order.

The big issue with femme, in my opinion and experience, is visibility. It’s often difficult to be recognized as femme as opposed to feminine.

Semantics Sunday: Fucktoy

By Tai Fenix Kulystin

On August 17, 2008

In Discourse, Identity: Submissive

So it’s not exactly Sunday, but I can fake it.

Fucktoy is a word I have been struggling to find my own definition of. When I started this blog I originally bought ofpleasure.com which I still own and which points to this domain. I then changed it to ofpleasure.com and now to ofpleasure.com. The change from cuntpet to feminist fucktoy happened when I realized that cuntpet was an identity, and it would be like owning slave.com or submissive.com and having that as my personal blog, that is, it would be centering this blog around one identity when I am many. I wanted to change that.

I found a shirt from dyketees.com which says “Feminist Fucktoy: Don’t hate the player – Hate the shame” and I absolutely fell in love with it. That shirt is what inspired me to change the name of the blog and website to The Feminist Fucktoy (and then femmeinist came later, of course). I chose the name before I started embracing my Domina side, and so fucktoy has been somewhat difficult for me to embrace as a Domina, but that’s why I defined it the way I did originally in the masthead.

I don’t believe that a fucktoy is someone soley used by another for their pleasure, which is what a common definition of fucktoy is (from what I can tell). Fucktoy is similar to slut in that sense, the common definition of slut is someone who fucks around but who isn’t gaining pleasure for themselves, only giving pleasure to others. In reality a slut can be many things, but the way I choose to view it is that it is someone who embraces hir own sexuality and chooses to engage in sexual activities in order to experience pleasure, both giving and receiving of pleasure. That is how I view fucktoy as well.

A fucktoy isn’t necesarially the one on the bottom, either, despite “toy” being part of the term, which we often equate as something being used. The beauty of a term like fucktoy is it combines an action with a (seemingly) inanimate object: fuck with toy, but toys are not always inanimate, they can do wonderful things (the SaSi comes to mind) and can embrace their given purpose, which is to bring pleasure in one form or another.

So, my (new) definition of fucktoy is as follows: a person who enjoys sex and sexuality with the purpose of giving and receiving pleasure for the benefit of all involved.

Are you a fucktoy too?

Semantics Sunday: Gender Galaxy

By Tai Fenix Kulystin

On August 10, 2008

In Discourse, Gender Galaxy

One of the terms I have in my lexicon but also something that I could expound upon for quite some time. I was talking with someone recently about my idea of the gender galaxy and she said something about liking femininity, not wanting to give it up. I kind of balked at her and asked how that was what I was saying at all. I find it so ridiculous that people assume that taking gender off of a binary means that femininity must go away.

On one hand, it makes sense, because a lot of the work of the feminist movement has been, basically, to do the same work as patriarchy and discredit femininity only from the other side of it, discrediting it from the inside, because it’s constructed. One thing I love about the idea of performativity is that it names everything as a performance, the constructed nature about the way we think about gender, but it doesn’t mean that we all don’t have some sort of pull toward one or many types of gender expression.

But, I digress. The term “gender galaxy” first appeared in Expanding Gender and Expanding the Law: Toward a Social and Legal Conceptualization of Gender that is More Inclusive of Transgender People by Dylan Vade, published in 2005 in the Michigan Journal of Gender and Law. He says:

I suggest a non-linear alternative conceptualization, which I call the gender galaxy. The gender galaxy is a three-dimensional non-linear space in which every gender has a location that may or may not be fixed. For instance, butch woman is one particular gender location. Feminine FTM is another gender location. These are two different valid gender locations that are not linearly related.

The article is fascinating, and I highly encourage you to read it as well, for further information of his explanations. He mentions that generally when we try to go away from the two options of (he uses male and female but to me those are sex categories rather than gender, and so I would say masculine and feminine) gender we move it onto a spectrum instead of just a one-or-the-other option. However, moving it onto a spectrum means it is still grounded in that binary, and his idea of a gender galaxy is moving away from that, as mentioned in the quote above.

Gender galaxy is a term that Sinclair of SugarButch has written about and defines, and I highly encourage all you who haven’t to look at his brilliant writings on the subject. One of the best examples of his writing about the gender galaxy comes from his telling of his journey of learning how to navigate within the gender galaxy and finding his identity as butch:

It took such a long time for me to come to comfortably sit in this butch identity, for me to (if we’ll continue the metaphor) navigate the gender galaxy, and find a comfortable orbit around an identity label. Some of us don’t ever settle into that – some of us are radical little spaceships that explore treasures from all sorts of different worlds and words that we orbit. I guess the trick is, in my opinion, to simply find the routes that are the best to navigate (not necessarily the easiest, but the most satisfying), the orbits where there is plenty of oxygen, the alliances that create treaties and share resources and have excellent adventures.

We basically have to make our own gender galaxy maps. And while some gender mapmaking tools – queer theory, gender theory, postmodern theory, queer literature, smut and the language of lesbian desires – while some tools help immensely, I still couldn’t quite escape the praxis, the application of the theory, because of the ways that the social constraints and social policing affected my own process deeply.

I’m working on a post of my own personal galaxy map to femme, how I’ve gotten here, what it means to me, and I’m hoping to be done with that soon. In the meantime, you have Sinclair’s to reference and my ideas of gender galaxy to ponder, as follows.

Basically I see the gender galaxy as having lots of little solar systems, with the sun or focal point of that solar system being a certain gender identity. There are some people who stay in orbit around one sun. Some are closer than others, like the difference between Mercury and Jupiter, and some are farther away and have irregular courses like Neptune. Still others are asteroids or comets, moving around multiple solar systems, moving through the gender galaxy itself without one focal point or another. Some people may inhabit two planets or three or four. The beauty of the gender galaxy is the limitless amount of possibilities.

Obviously, as my own gender identity includes femme and therefore includes femininity (or, femmeininity) I am not anti-femininity, nor do I believe that gender should be abolished or that the gender galaxy is getting rid of gender, on the contrary. Gender is even more emphasized in some ways in the gender galaxy, except instead of confining it the gender galaxy makes gender overly available. Opening up gender from a gender binary or even a gender continuum to a gender galaxy makes it so that there are no expressions of gender that are considered incorrect. We would no longer be able to fail at gender, either, as there is no set limits as to what gender is or could be.

Another Slight Semantic Difference

By Tai Fenix Kulystin

On August 8, 2008

In Discourse, Identity: Submissive

So I, basically, shun the word “slave” as many of you may know, and yet I still use the term Master. I’ve been thinking about this a lot lately, and the more I think about it the less I like the term “Master.” It implies some of the same things that “slave” does, only from the other end of it, my problem thus far as been the lack of a better term.

The terms Sir and Lord just are not that appealing to me either. I can appreciate the appeal, but I just don’t have a strong tie to either of them, so they don’t do much for me. While I can understand the desire for either, neither of them click with me, they don’t seem quite fitting. I hear Sir flung around like crazy online, and Lord just seems like a little much.

I like the term Owner, it’s a little more neutral than Master, though has similar connotations, not all of them bad, however. Owner is closer to what I want than Master is, but it’s still not quite right. It sounds strange to call someone Owner, such as “Owner just said something funny,” it doesn’t quite work the same way Master does, it just sounds a little funny.

I like the term Dominus as well, technically it means both Lord and Master, and doesn’t have all the same connotations as Master or even Owner does. I talked extensively about my use of the term Domina just last Sunday, and I feel similarly with the term Dominus, it’s regal and delicious. I left the post by asking about why people don’t use the term Dominus, and maybe I will begin to. The problem with Dominus is similar to Owner, “Dominus just said something funny,” sounds strange as well. Perhaps I just need to either shift my perspective on it, or choose one.

The biggest component of this, really, is how Master/Owner/Dominus feels about it. I haven’t really talked to him about it, but I plan on it. I like referring to him by a title, as he is the only one which I do call by a title. It takes a lot for me to call someone by a title, just as it takes a lot for me to say anything which I mean and which could make me in the least bit vulnerable. He is one of the few people that I have ever called Master, and possibly the last.

Semantics Sunday: Domina

By Tai Fenix Kulystin

On August 3, 2008

In Discourse, Identity: Top, Power Play

Semantics Sunday is the day for me to write my own definition of a word, how I feel about a word, and how it relates to me personally and my own identities. This could be anything sexual, gender, bdsm, and poly/relationship oriented, or anything else I feel like throwing in. This is simply my definition and understanding of the word, and not meant to be the only definition that is or could be. If you have an alternate definition, if you agree with my interpretation, or if you have something to add which I left out or which needs correcting, feel free to let me know in the comments!

For my first Semantics Sunday I figured I should use a word that is near and dear to my heart. Since I have already given my lengthy definition of cuntpet I decided I should focus on the other of my identities: Domina.

I recently created a new channel on irc.bondage.com, where I am quite frequently, called #Fiery_Dominas. This is the first channel with Domina in the channel name, which is part of the reason why I started it, however it has inspired comments such as “What is dominas? Dommes plural?” which is relatively ridiculous considering for one thing, Dommes is Domme plural, and for another thing Domina is a fantastic and real Latin word, unlike Domme, which is a slang term.

Now, on one hand, I feel there is nothing wrong with slang terms, and think that they should be used and incorporated, and Domme basically incorporates Dom and Femme (as in french for female, not queer femme), which is not horrible in general, and is rather logical. However, now that I have discovered and embraced Domina, Domme sounds silly to me, it is nowhere near as linguistically luscious or regal-sounding as Domina is, and it doesn’t inspire the same awe. I also feel that Domina is a much more feminine term than Domme, which is partly why I’m so partial to it as well.

Basically, Domina comes from the Latin root dom- found in other such words as dominate, domify, domicile, and domestic, as well as domin- such as dominant and dominus. From various sources I find that “dom-” actually relates to a household or realm, and the actual Latin translation of Domina or Dominus (the male counterpart), is “Lady or Lord of the house/realm.” This makes sense, considering dom- relating also to words such as domicile and domestic. The prefix domin- alone (supposedly) indicates regal status, such as Lady/Lord, or Mistress/Master, which is why Domina is the feminine and Dominus is the masculine (the suffix -a being feminine, and the suffix -us being masculine).

This brings us to the question, if we use Dom and not Dominus, why should we use Domina and not Domme? Well, I’m not saying that we shouldn’t ever use Domme, I’m just saying that I don’t want to use Domme, and furthermore, we could use Dominus as well, should a male dominant desire to be called that. I’m not going to condemn others for using the term Domme, but I do not identify with the term and will not be using it for myself or for others unless specifically requested.