Feminine bisexual
Life in the middle of the Kinsey scale is diverse, complex and often confusing. A common misconception about bisexuality is that the attraction to your own gender and other genders is a 50/50 split, identical on both sides. The reality is a lot more nuanced.
What you find attractive in a cisgender bloke could be completely alternative to what you prefer about a femme genderqueer person. You might not check out all the women when you saunter into a party, but that one conversation with a girl in the smoking area could produce you fall head over heels (having never been with a girl before). Both are intense and legitimate attractions, but when bisexuality is portrayed as a perpetual state of threesome in popular media, rather than the intricate and varied form of queerness that it is, it can be manageable to compare the two and obsess over which category &#;dominates&#; the other. Needless to say, this does not make coming out as bisexual any easier.
Personally, this is why I like the term &#;queer fluid&#;. It gives you the autonomy to move around your attractions to different people without your sexuality existence numerically valued. While this is by no means the case for everyone, I spoke to som
How I Maintain Visibility as a Bi Femme
When we see someone dressed or styled a certain way, we might subconsciously doodle conclusions about who they are as an individual. We might form ideas about them, their gender, their sexual orientation, their economic status, whether they are liberal or conservative, whether they are religious or non-religious, where they live, and what they do for a living. And while many of us are aware that these judgments may be unreliable or rely on stereotypes, that doesn&#;t necessarily stop us from subconsciously trying to identify and categorize others.
As a bi femme woman, I&#;m acutely aware of how my appearance and my sexual orientation interact. I came out when I was in high school, and for much of those early years, I still believed that I had to enact my orientation by dressing a certain way. This was, in part, rooted in internalized misogyny— being a gender non-conforming girl meant being "not like the other girls", and that translated into my appearance.
I was also desperate to be seen and acknowledged (I was lucky enough to inhabit in a place where although being out was not received positively, it also did not lay me in any physical danger). Com
Out On The Couch
By Briana Shewan, MFT
In order to prioritize femme voices, all quotes in this article are from femmes.
Positionality makes a big difference in femme identity: Please observe I am a cisgender, white, thin, millenial femme from an upper-middle class background formally trained as a psychotherapist.
Have you ever wondered if you’re femme? Have you been circling around femme identity for a while without knowing if it fits? Are you unsure if you get to call yourself femme? Maybe you’ve heard “femme” more and more and you’re curious about it?
Femme is a lovely, complex identity. What it looks like, means, and encompasses is different for each of us. I’m sure for many femmes there’s a sense of resistance at my endeavor to categorize the persona here. I don’t intend to imply that creature femme fits into one specific box! In truth, quite the opposite is true. Femme is all about stepping outside of traditional femininity. Spoiler! I’m getting ahead of myself.
Rather, this article is intended to broadly clarify femme identity by exploring its common themes. As the term “femme” becomes more widely known than ever before, it’s helpful to distinguish what it isn’t, and w
Being “Feminine” Can Be a Double-Edged Sword for Pansexual Men
The party, a swanky roof-top affair in Recent York City, was called “On Top.” I was feeling even more on-top than most, considering the 9-inch, Jeffery Campbell heels I was wearing. I also had on my one-of-a-kind black sequin jacket—the one that, when the designer said, “It’s vintage,” I said, “Say no more.”
My face was painted club-kid chic, and, despite my broad shoulders, I moved around with a certain sassy elegance: All-in-all, I was definitely serving some femme realness. Alone, I blended in quite nicely with the homosexual mosaic of the crowd. However, I was with my ex-girlfriend, and as we passionately made our bodies and lips into one on the dancefloor, it wasn’t my stare that was turning people’s heads. It was the juxtaposition of my femme presentation with the remove fact that I was getting hot and burdensome with a woman.
I’m attracted to both genders, and though I’ve never once identified as male lover (not even when I came out as a teenager 10 years ago), that label is an assumption I face regularly—especially from those who’ve acknowledged me when I’ve been dating men. That I don’t mind playing up my femme side from time to time doesn’t help eith
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