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All responses Most smiled responses
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I know!!! Me too. It got hacked and I didn't know how to fix it. It's back now and I have things to say, and I don't want to disappear again.
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Absolutely not!
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Oh no I'm sorry I just saw this now! Yeah, in general disaster aid money often goes to organizations that then have to use that money for that specific purpose -- and picture 50 separate aid organizations individually coming up with their own aid projects... And since it's an imperfect world, they are not all checking in with each other to make the process more efficient... and so it all ends up kind of a mess. Not that *no* one is getting aid, but just: one example from the tsunami disaster in 2004 was that a journalist went to Sri Lanka to investigate the aid situation and found that in some places, survivors had been donated multiple bicycles but still didn't have (for example) a shelter. Or food. Or access to water. These kinds of things. Also, such projects are generally conceived by aid "professionals" from the US or Europe... and they don't actually collaborate with survivors or people actually in need. (How hard would it be to ask, "what do you need?") Also, read this (or listen) (it's short) from NPR regarding the Japan crisis specifically - Japan is saying they actually don't WANT aid money - they go into as well how aid money often confuses the process. http://www.npr.org/2011/03/18/134644084/disaster-relief-how-to-make-your-donation-count
Of course, that doesn't mean DON'T donate (you totally should; capitalism relies on philanthropy!!!) - it just means it might be better to donate money to an organization whose work you trust (I like Partners in Health myself) and donate to their general fund rather than a specific disaster fund. -
I was raised going to an Episcopal church every Sunday; I sang in the choir too. I am not remotely religious. I also wouldn't say I'm agnostic or atheist. I guess I just respect a lot of different faith traditions and don't find the need to accept any particular doctrine as Truth *or* specifically NOT truth.
I'm white, and my ethnic background is primarily Anglo. I have English on both sides. I'm 1/4 Welsh. And I have great-great-grandparents from Holland, France, Sweden, and Germany, as far as I know. -
Most Germans speak some amount of English, but I lived with a host family that didn't, and I went to a school that didn't start teaching it until high school so my classmates were not that advanced. I dealt by throwing myself into it and learning German. Having lived there for two years I'm now conversationally fluent and can e.g. watch movies in German and TV and the news and such... reading academic texts is a bit harder, but then that's true in English too haha. It took probably 3-4 months before I was pretty competent, and I just asked everyone I knew to correct me when I made mistakes so that I could learn.
And no, I don't have a GED actually. I just never graduated. I guess that makes me a drop-out. My college never asked for a diploma, I guess they were satisfied with my transcripts from my school in New York and my school in Germany. -
My grandparents are, but actually my parents and aunts and uncles all self-identify as "liberal." But there are plenty of liberals who are completely clueless about gay stuff and who harbor prejudices about lots of people that they don't even realize (and would probably not admit to harboring).
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I think that's a stereotype that's based in very little fact. I don't think I know any lesbians who hate men. (I do know a few straight women who talk about hating men, and frankly, I think they have a lot more proximity to men in close relationships to base such proclamations of hatred on!) I have my suspicions about how the stereotype originated -- because of sexism and heteronormativity, to be a woman who is not interested in men sexually or romantically is to be breaking a major rule. And people can become indignant about that rule being broken and interpret it in ways that only make sense to them as people who are unquestioning about heterosexuality. So, for example, men who are interested in a woman and get rejected by her because she is gay might explain that by saying "oh, she must hate men, because otherwise why wouldn't she want to be with me?" Lesbian is often understood as a POLITICAL identity, much like feminist, rather than as a personal or social identity. Those are my thoughts on the matter, anyway. Oh, and I also think that men often see butch women or women who they see as masculine to be a threat or an affront to them, as competition, which they might also take personally, which might then also contribute to the ubiquitous nature of this stereotype. It's a hugely unfair stereotype, and completely ridiculous.
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Gina Gershon.
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Definitely not forever :) You've gotta start somewhere, though. If no one knows you're gay but you, it's not going to get much easier. Reach out -- blogs, community centers, LGBT clubs or networks, colleges and schools often have rainbow coalitions... et cetera. You're not alone :)
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holiday season ... well, you can read my latest blog post ("homesick") for a little bit on that. let's just say it's frustrating. but, you know, it's been fine :)
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Honestly, I haven't noticed any sort of difference along vegetarian/carnivore lines. Pussy tastes different on different women but I haven't noticed that particular trend. But, my sample size isn't *that* big. I've been with probably ... a dozen-ish women in that capacity, and I have no idea what the eating habits were of most of them. ;)
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100% femme... I don't know if I know how to think about femme in terms of percentages!! I just feel femme, and femme informs everything I do and am. The problem for me in terms of thinking of myself as such-and-such a percentage femme is that if I say "this isn't femme and that's not femme so I'm only 90% femme" then that means I'm also sorta judging other femmes or saying "that's not femme about you" or something. I think that gets onto a slippery slope of then setting up a standard for what a "real" femme is versus not, and if you don't meet a certain "quota" of femme qualities or something, then you aren't really femme...
There are certainly things about me that I'm *sure* others would identify or see as non-femme. For example: I don't really wear jewelry. Every once in a great while I'll wear button earrings to go with a dress or something but for the most part I don't. Another example: I have a lot of jeans-and-sweatshirt days; I will only put together "outfits" a couple days a week. I love wearing little dresses, but when I'm not in dresses I don't really enjoy putting a ton of thought into what I'm wearing. I don't really accessorize either. So, these are things that I've sometimes felt make me seem not femme enough, and yet as I've been sitting here trying to think of things that are non-femme, even these things seem to be really stretching it for me. I'm just stumped, because even though those things might appear non-femme to others, to me, because I *am* femme, because it's my identity, those things are as femme as the rest of it. I'm a mostly-casual femme, sure, but I fucking LOVE dresses and heels and red lipstick and black eyeliner, and I just *feel* feminine, I feel girly and pretty and femme.
So: I'm 100% femme :)
And, happy holidays to you too! -
I don't remember, exactly. I think it was a combination of reading various queer and sex blogs, and also just some sort of feeling in me from a young age that I liked this or that. Being restrained does something to me that's totally indescribable and very reptilian--not something I really control. So in that sense I would say the interest is intrinsic, not something I developed per se. But I did take that feeling and run with it once I discovered there were people writing about it and doing it, and reading what other people had to say made me want to explore more. That's about where I'm at right now, having read quite a bit and talked about a lot and still boring deeper into my kink psyche...
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Yeah I could, though generally I'm sexually attracted to women with some sort of masculine/androgynous energy. But femme women who also radiate queer energy, in a feminine way, I occasionally get attracted to as well. The lines between wanting to "be her" or "do her" are a little blurrier, but blurry lines are ok sometimes I think :)
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I've thought about this and thought about this. I can't think of anything, honestly. Other than personal stuff about the loved ones in my life (meaning: I won't talk about personal shit that belongs to other people to talk about and not me), there isn't much I'm not willing to talk about candidly. There's stuff that's harder for me to talk about for various reasons, like if it's very personal or embarrassing or something, but even stuff like that is definitely not unequivocally off the table. I'm pretty open.
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Female to male trans people are trans men (the key way to remember this is that the gender the person identifies as is the gender that's labelled). No, I haven't - but there have been many trans guys and transmasculine folks I have been really attracted to and could have or would have slept with or dated if the timing had been right or if the cards had just fallen like that.
Drag king typically is used to refer to a woman who performs high masculinity (i.e. masculine aesthetic and other characteristics that are very identifiable, perhaps even exaggerated for effect) in special circumstances (on stage, for an act, in specific social situations, etc.). Drag king is typically not a full-time gender identity, but I imagine that there are exceptions, since the awesome thing about queer is that it has no bounds. -
Not necessarily. I definitely think there are misogynist men who watch hardcore anal porn, but I don't think a man is misogynist just because he watches it. I think that people's desires and what turns them on and gets them off aren't always "politically correct" or even really "appropriate" by normal standards, but as long as no one is being harmed by his watching it (i.e., he's not going to require that any woman he sleep with let him fuck her hard in the ass, or he's not going to non-consensually do anything with women he sleeps with, or he's not going to degrade women in general as a result of watching the porn) I think it's fine. It gets trickier when you start to look at whether the women in the porn are being harmed or not, especially cuz I think there's some porn (not in the mainstream legit porn industry I don't think, but I don't know for sure) that exploits trafficked women, and that's reeeeeally problematic. But that's a different question.
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I applied for a scholarship through the US and German governments, and I got it and so they shipped me off. They selected a host family for me and everything. I applied for a bunch of reasons, but mostly, the town I grew up in was suffocating me. There were too many ghosts, and I was too fragile.
I lived in Munich, and it was unbelievable. Sometimes I still can't believe I lived there for two years. I like Berlin better as a city, as a place to live, but Munich is stunningly beautiful and has so much history and beauty and is so close to the Alps. I had an amazing time. It was complicated and difficult, but also I loved it. Sometime I'll write about it more on my blog.
My parents were surprised and I think reluctant to let go of me, but they were ultimately supportive. I didn't actually ever graduate from high school -- I did go to high school there, but their graduation requirements were very different from what I was coming in with, and my American high school didn't accept credits from the classes there, so I ended up going to college without a high school diploma. Whoops.
And how was it compared to the US? Tough question. It was quite different. School day was shorter (8ish to 1:30), but classes had more homework and less busy work. In general, the quality of the education was a bit better than my high school in the US, but not so much better that it was remarkable. I was in advanced placement classes in my US high school anyway. One thing that was different was that when you entered "high school" in 5th grade, you were with a set class (similar to a US homeroom class) but you had classes with the same group all day, and rather than go to different classrooms, the teachers tended to come to you in your homeroom. That wasn't always the case, and there were some electives that split up the class, but in general we were together as a cohort all day every day. I went to a music magnet school, so we had a particularly good music education there and I was able to keep taking private piano lessons for free through the school. All in all it was a fantastic experience and I *definitely* learned German! Immersion really is the best way to learn a language. -
I blame it on my parents ;)
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I love the femme shark manifesto. I don't know whether I would take on the label "femme shark" as one that fits on me though. I just don't know that I'm fierce. I'm like a sort of gentle, warm, quietish sort of femme. People have called me dainty and lady-like. (When I imbibe, I'm not so dainty anymore, then I get giggly and coquettish. And not so quiet.) I LOVE my heels but I don't know if I'd ever be able to use a stiletto as a weapon, even if I do think it's a really hot and empowering thing to think about. But most of the femme shark manifesto, I'm like "fuck yeahhhh" and nod vigorously. It's just a matter of me and sharks having absolutely nothing in common (I'm probably more of an angelfish. Or something.). I would be totally mauled by a shark.
This is a good question though. I'm going to have to think about this some more. Maybe even write about it...
(Here's a link to a blog where the femme shark manifesto is written up: http://www.thefemmeshow.com/blog/2008/07/25/femme-shark-manifesto/)
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alphafemme’s Bio
Insert femmey queer awesomeness here.
