Reportback from Femme-Bottomville



I mark today six weeks into being sexually active again, and two weeks into dating again, after a year and a half of heavy grieving from my girlfriend's suicide. I have to say, it's a bad time to run out of antidepressants. But, on the other hand, I'm enjoying rediscovering my femme-bottom identity after being a tentant of Celibate-Misanthropolis.



Some new discoveries about my femme-bottomhood:



Reprising my teenage experiments with makeup and nailpolish -- where the goal was to be punk and different -- are useful for knowing the color-combination DON'Ts. Punk is an aesthetic that is ready to be put on its pension. Especially if you don't like to make the first move (i.e. are trying to look approachable).



Losing my compulsion to locate someone on the socio-political activist spectrum in favor for operating from my gut reactions -- essentially subjugating my intellect to make it bottom to my sexual instinct -- was the best new thing to come out of the complete crash-meltdown that was/is my grief-process. Butch tops often have sordid personal histories leading to interesting political insights that are not positioned in relation to the rest of the progressive movement, but all the same are valid and worthy. Being less judgemental makes me a better, happier bottom.



Asking my date what I should wear, something my ultraliberated mind would never do before, is now fun. Ultimately, I don't care what I look like as long as it doesn't fall under the rubrick of "embarrassing to my date."



And lastly: do your freakin' hair BEFORE your nails. Good god you'd think I would be smart enough to have figured this out by now. But just now with the putting in the bobby pins with the wet nails. FYI, there's no better way to completely and instantly ruin a nail job.



By the way, thank you Shar Rednour for being a beacon of good sense in femme self-caretaking. I keep remembering parts of your book The Femme's Guide to the Universe. Especially the advice about not cheaping out on things that go on your skin.



Some historical discoveries I've been mulling about femme-bottomhood:



I just have to say, the days of the Lesbian Avengers were good days. But the L.Av. are dead and it's because we were the sorts to challenge labels and gender/ sexual identity, so when we looked around and the entire group here in San Francisco was identifying as FTM or MTF or bisexual or a supersized combination order of these, and nobody's first choice of identity was lesbian, we tried to change the name and the group dissolved. Honestly, I bailed before the name change. I just didn't care enough to sit through endless processing about the word "lesbian." But BEFORE we all gave up on identity politics and were happy to be assumed to be lesbians, we had a kissing booth fundraiser at the Folsom Street (leather kink) Fair where all the bisexual femme bottoms (me among them) made a rule. We would not kiss a strange bioman, anyway not as a cheap-ass $5-per-kiss fundraiser. The butch tops, on the other hand, were all gung ho (ahem) to give the boys a taste of a lipsticked shaved-headed manly-woman. They wanted all the money we could get.



So what was that about? You'd think to us femme bottomy types it wouldn't matter whether we kissed another boy. But we had all been in some way or another scarred by consensual bad boy top experiences. I don't think I was able to completely embrace my femme bottom identity with a feeling of empowerment until I extended this Folsom Street Fair Kissing Booth rule into the rest of my life: no kissing of bioboys I don't know. It's a good rule. Especially since I've extended my definition of "know" to require one calendar year of being around the person. It effectively makes me a lesbian. But I can't rule out bioboys, even under these conditions, so I still call myself bisexual. I think I used to think that these rules made me a coward, but now I know it makes me a good bottom. Good bottoms make their own rules and make their rules known, and then abandon control from that seat of power.



Why I think femme bottoms don't have a special community support network like every other damn microdemographic:



We should, but we don't have a lot of spaces to ourselves. We are essentially the most private/ invisible sector of the queer community, partly because we tend to pass as het. Also because - even though most of us are politically or socially very active - we tend to be really very independent and reluctant to go outside our inner circle of friends for support. In other words, you don't find a lot of femme bottoms in support groups. In mountain climbing clubs or circles of artists, yes, but not in a place where we advertise our weaknesses to potential caretakers. We know the power of the caretaker, and we select our caretakers (tops) with extreme care. So, it's not that we wouldn't do well to have some unity among us, but wherever we make ourselves a public demographic, we become the targets of bad tops. So, we are quiet and grateful to find eachother where we do.



And where do we find eachother? In kink-positive space. I was a fan of the famous "Fuck Fests" here at the dear, departed Castlebar in San Francisco, where we separated the room into two sides, top and bottom, and it was your choice to define yourself as you wanted to be for the duration of the party. There were tables on which we could extend ourselves (from neck-down) under a thick black curtain, on which we would pin (on the "top" side) our list of limits and desires. The tops weren't allowed to communicate directly with us, only through dungeon monitors who were standing on guard on both sides of the curtain. I found such amazing sisterhood among the (butch and femme) women/ FTMs on the "bottom" side of the curtain. We took care of eachother, we enjoyed eachother's pleasure, we gave hugs and butt-slaps where they were needed, and we fed eachother complements and food. It was the most powerful, pleasureful, sexually secure space I've ever been with a group of people, and it still strikes me what a rare feeling that is. There won't be any more Fuck Fests (the venues for such things are basically gone from the city), but I will always cherish that memory of bottom-bonding. It was like the hard workers of the non-management part of staff getting together to just see our numbers and temporarily unionize-- viva the struggle of the hard working bottoms!