The Fight To Keep "Femme" Lesbian Exclusive

I want to keep this simple, but personal; butch lesbians, bless their souls, have been having this argument with queer theorists for much too long now, and I wanted to give them a break by giving my opinion as a femme lesbian, myself. Lesbians, females attracted to females exclusively, are deemed gender nonconforming from the moment that they come out. No matter how much makeup they apply, or how long their hair is, they will be targeted based on their sexual orientation; I have been the victim of such, and I promise, no amount of lipstick could save me from the harassment and abuse. When it comes to lesbians, femininity can not be defined with just basic criteria such as hair length or clothing of choice, it runs much deeper. Femme lesbianism has a history and a culture; leather jackets and picket signs standing right next to our butch sisters. “Femme” is a word that denotes that we do not perform for the male gaze, that our physical presentation is not to influence the advances of men. While lesbians are still subject to the abuse of capitalism and gender roles, femme lesbians are able to sit back and say with more honesty than nonlesbian women, “this isn’t for men, this won’t be for men, you can’t have this under any circumstance.” It comes with the package of being a dyke, we aren’t delicate prizes to be won by a male audience. But what modern queer theorists have brought to our table is something vicious and unsafe; nonlesbian women have taken the history of excluding men from lesbian femininity and repackaged it so that men can devour it whole. “Mascara so great I can bat my lashes on his dick,” “ribbons on my underwear so he can unwrap my present,” “put my hair in braids for him to pull,” these are the vomit inducing slogans being spit from the mouths of those who wish to cater to men. “Femme” was a small revolution for me, it was being able to accept myself and deny the male gaze, it was something beautiful in my own sentimental way. And now I have to watch as nonlesbian women cater to men, just as women are fucking conditioned to do, and call it a “rebellion,” they scream “empowerment,” when they aren’t doing anything different than what we have been forced to do for our entire lives.