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"I was a Jewish femme, following in the paths of Joan Nestle and my mother. With my curly black hair and unmistakably femme hourglass figure, I was coming out loud and proud. Despite my newfound sense of joy and exuberance as a Jewish femme, I heard a fair amount of anti-femme sentiment from lots of dykes. As a femme, I am often invisible as a lesbian. I love wearing lipstick and lingerie. I am not passing. Passing implies choice, the intent to be invisible. Butch lesbians are on the front lines of gay culture as out queers, challenging traditional notions of gender and desire. Butches are victims of homophobia and sexism on a daily basis. They are wrongfully accused of looking like, acting like, or wanting to be men. They are harassed and ostracized, especially if they are also members of other oppressed groups. Femmes bear the brunt of homophobia and sexism in a different way. We are bombarded with straight men's sexual harassment and violence. We are made invisible by others, including other lesbians. For both femmes and butches, our strength has helped us survive."

"I am a femme. I pined for women for more than a decade following that visit to New Orleans, agonizing for months at a time until finally I would write in my journal, "I think I'm a L-E-S...," only to begin the cycle again, and again. Some of my fears were the usual what-does-it-mean-to-be-a-lesbian kind, generated by a homophobic society. I also had another kind of fear, which was that being a lesbian meant giving up my flamboyance and my love of changing myself through makeup and costume. I was afraid that I would have to wear army surplus pants for the rest of my life. And I knew fucking was important to me. If tribadism was controversial (as it was in the seventies), would I ever have wild, passionate sex again? That was quite a conflict. All my fantasies were about women, but it seemed as though being with women meant leaving my passions behind. It was made clear to me by the lesbian community that my conventionally pretty features and hourglass figure were not considered lesbian enough (being pretty wasn't politically correct). And society told me I was too pretty to be a lesbian. So was I judged, based on the same societal norms, by both groups. Being femme isn't about what I'm wearing, although it can be. I don't understand why being a lesbian who wears a three-piece suit is considered a social radical, while a lesbian who wears a dress, her sexuality up-front yet unavailable to the heterosexual norm, is not. Why is that only men get to be flamboyant in order to be considered socially radical? From my perspective that is letting men have all the fun again."

"Every time I speak at a lesbian-feminist gathering, I introduce myself as a femme who came out in the 1950s. I do this because it is the truth and it allows me to pay historical homage to my lesbian time and place, to the women who have slipped away, yet whose voices I still hear and whose V-necked sweaters and shiny loafers I still see. I do it to call up the women I would see shopping with their lovers in the Lower East Side supermarkets, the femme partners of the butch women who worked as waiters in the Club 82. I remember how unflinchingly the femme absorbed the stares of the other customers as she gently held onto the arm of her partner. Butches were known by their appearance, femmes by their choices. I do it in the name of the wives of passing women whose faces look up at me from old newspaper clippings, the women whom reporters described as the decieved ones and yet whose histories suggest much more complicated choices. And if femmes seemed to be "wives" of passing women, the feminine protectors of the couple's propriety, it was so easy to lose curiosity about what made them sexual heretics, because they looked like women. Thus femmes became the victims of a double dismissal: in the past they did not appear culturally different enough from heterosexual women to be seen as breaking gender taboos, and today they do not appear feminist enough, even in their historical context, to merit attention or respect for being ground-breaking women."

"Today, I am wearing my hair long and permed into full curls around my face, tying it up in sheer, silken scarves. I often choose to be late for a date rather than go out feeling "unfinished," which some days means a little powder and Chap Stick and other days means a total makeover. I wear long silk shirts and fluffy sweaters when I want, and regard the word pretty as a compliment again. Still, I know I am regarded as a failure and even a traitor by many in this [lesbian] club because I suffer occasional self-recrimination for being a size sixteen instead of a size six, because I enjoy wearing miniskirts and stockings, because I apparently care about and conform to the opinions of the "wrong" people (people in that other world who label us unacceptable or unfit). They say I am selling out, catering to patriarchy, being codependent on my mother and her opinions. Choose your descriptors, choose your chains. Too often, the saleswomen of the so-called freedom are more like the neo-conservatives and fundamentalists of the world, who say, "Do it our way or don't expect any privileges." They are not selling us the right to be who we want to be, they are selling us the right to be what they believe we should want to be. Sometimes, those rights are the same thing. More often, they are not. And when they are not, worlds may collide in a firestorm of indignation, embarrassment, and rage. I want that freedom they sold me. I want the freedom to love women, passionately and overwhelmingly. I want the freedom to love them the way I want, whether I wear a lace dress or jeans, whether I wear press-on nails or no lipstick. I want the freedom to feel sexy at 170 pounds. I want to do aerobics without resorting to stealth maneuvers. And I want the freedom to be who I am, without embarrassment or fear. I want no exceptions, no contingencies, no caveats. And if our community cannot--or will not--grant that freedom, I, and those like me, the rebel-conformists if you will, will take it. We will even steal it if we must. They'll be surprised at how fast we can run in those tight skirts and pumps."

"Femme correspondents connected with me in a different way. Many were grateful for my past work and for the opportunity to announce their identities in their own voices. Their statements reflected one bitter irony: if, in the straight world, butches bear the brunt of the physical and verbal abuse for their difference, in the lesbian-feminist world, femmes have had to endure a deeper attack on their sense of self-worth. Leather and denim, flannels and vests--butch women could easily adapt these prevailing signs of feminist gender resistance into superficial passports to acceptance, but the femme woman, in her lace and silk, high heels, and lipstick, had no place to hide. Many learned to pass as a "dyke" in public while in their homes and in their beds, they flew their flags of color and sensuality. The femme voice is underrepresented in historical records, though markings of her presence abound. Often, she is the security behind the butch display, the one who makes the public bravado possible. Lady Una Troubridge's words to Radclyffe Hall, while spoken by a white, upper-class, Christian woman, capture some of the enduring aspects of femme power: "I told her to write what was in her heart, that so far as any effect upon myself was concerned, I was sick to death of ambiguities ..." Yet to others, the femme woman has been the most ambiguous figure in lesbian history; she is often described as the nonlesbian lesbian, the duped wife of the passing woman, the lesbian who marries. Because I am a femme myself, I know the complexity of our identity; I also know how important it is for all women to hear our voices. If the butch deconstructs gender, the femme constructs gender. She puts together her own special ingredients for what it is to be a "woman," an identity with which she can live and love."

"I caught the fabulous photographer Phyllis Christopher in front of the camera for a kiss!" (Photographed by Phyllis Christopher.)

"A prime example of leasin' some lovin'." (Photographed by Phyllis Christopher.)

"Jackie and me living love large." (Photographed by Phyllis Christopher.)

"The Broadway Tunnel seemed to be a safe place for sex--except for the drivers who couldn't keep their eyes on the road!" (Photographed by Phyllis Christopher.)

"Don't cut your nails until after the third date." (Photographed by Phyllis Christopher.)

"One of the single femme's tools for titillation and girlsister-girlfriend support: the babephone." (Photographed by Phyllis Christopher.)

"Does your butch-in-training get kind of flustered when she sees you in full drag? That's a sure sign of potential." (Photographed by Phyllis Christopher.)

"Unadulterated femaleness." (Photographed by Phyllis Christopher.)

"A disco nap keeps you pretty and witty and gay!" (Photographed by Phyllis Christopher.)

"Walk your tape, ladies. Slink, slink, slink!" (Photographed by Phyllis Christopher.)

"Lipstick, like desert, is saved for last." (Photographed by Phyllis Christopher.)