50 Ways People Expect Constant Emotional Labor from Women and Femmes. Two people sit on a park bench.
One covers their face and hunches over with sadness; the other touches their arm and smiles, trying to cheer them up. The work of women and femmes is traditionally undervalued – we get paid less in nearly all professions. But there’s another type of work we’re often expected to do for no pay at all: emotional labor. Emotional labor is the exertion of energy for the purpose of addressing people’s feelings, making people comfortable, or living up to social expectations. It’s called “emotional labor” because it ends up using – and often draining – our emotional resources. Now, don’t get me wrong: Asking friends for advice, reaching out to people in your line of work, and other actions I’m about to mention can be part of a healthy relationship. Many marginalized people can tell you that people frequently make demands of them that cross the line from participation in a mutual relationship to work – and unpaid work, at that. 1. 2. 3. 4. 5. 6. 7. 8. Femme invisibility is the dirty little secret of the queer community.
My last three girlfriends have all told me that I look straight.
That’s not what you expect to hear from another woman whose clitoris you’ve licked a few dozen times, but it’s the kind of thing I’ve heard in various forms for years. I’m a femme lesbian, a lipstick lez, a lady dyke, a girly-girl with long hair and painted fingernails. In nearly 20 years of dating women, I’ve had to field a number of surprising comments and reactions to my sexual preference and identity as a dyke. “You’re too pretty to be a lesbian,” a gay male newspaper editor once told me with a dismissive wave of his hand when I went for a job interview. I’ve been ranted at by strangers in lesbian bars who essentially told me to go back to Straightsville where they mistakenly thought I belonged. Author today Being straight-looking—whatever the hell that means—has its privileges, of course. I wasn’t always mistaken for straight.
Author, age 10 Nobody in X’s class had ever known an X. Author, age 20 Jen Richards. Femme shark manifesto! - you don't like how I'm living, well, fuck you! — LiveJournal. 11:11 am - femme shark manifesto!
FEMME SHARK MANIFESTO! Written by Founding Femme Shark Leah Lakshmi Piepzna-Samarasinha The Femme Sharks are an idea that was dreamed up by SBBFFF (Slutty Brown Best Femme Friends Forever) Zuleikha Mahmood and Leah Lakshmi Piepzna-Samarasinha in March of 2008, Oakland, CA.This work is shared under a Creative Commons license- feel free to share if you give credit where cred is due. Choses Aléatoires. Je suis pas fan des étiquettes, des petits mots qu’on s’appose sur la peau pour se réduire.
Mais je suis gouine et plutôt féminine. C’est-à-dire que je suis à l’intersection de la lesbophobie et du sexisme. Avec d’autres, on appelle ça la femphobie. Au départ, il y a la silenciation, le refus d’entendre et le refus de croire. Je suis fem parce qu’on ne me croit jamais quand je dis que je suis gouine. Puisque visiblement, il est nécessaire de se justifier : disons que je suis fem. En quoi fem est-elle une réponse à la lesbophobie ? J’essaie, avec mes petits bras délicats, de démonter la gueule de l’idée selon laquelle « ça se voit ». Non, parce que je porte les cheveux longs, un mini-short, des résilles et du vernis rose pétasse, tu n’as pas le droit de croire que je suis hétéro.
En quoi fem est-elle une tarte dans la gueule du sexisme ? Parce que c’est quand même bizarre hein, que ce soit la voix des plus féminines qui soit toujours minorée, ridiculisée. Je vais pirater tes codes. Enid B. 11 Common Assumptions About Being a Queer Femme – Debunked. Panel 1 (We see Annah, a cisgender, white, femme woman with an A-line haircut, botanical tattoos on her arms, mini skirt, leggings, and tall boots.)
(Annah has a confused look on her face under a thought bubble that says “Wait… I said I identify as femme… not as your mother, your fashion consultant, your service bottom, or your “other half…”) Panel 2 (Several women, both cisgender and transgender, of various races are standing in the panel. 50 Ways People Expect Constant Emotional Labor from Women and Femmes.