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Visible: A Femmethology, the only two-volume anthology devoted to femme identity, calls the LGBTQI community on its prejudices and celebrates the diversity of individual femmes. Award-winning authors, spoken-word artists, and new voices come together to challenge conventional ideas of how disability, class, nationality, race, aesthetics, sexual orientation, gender identity and body type intersect with each contributor’s concrete notion of femmedom.

I must say that I am greatful for all of the contributors to Visible: A Femmethology. Many times femmes don’t get the spotlight since many of us “pass for straight” and thus seem “uninteresting” to the general hetero public and the queer communities in which we reside. Each femme has her own truth that deserves to be shared, whether just starting out in her journey ID’ing or having been in the game for decades.

I was asked: “When did you come out as femme?” It’s funny because I decided that I liked that ID before I even realized that I was a lesbian (at the time I liked the term pansexual for myself). Even in the year and some change that I have been aware of the ID I now call “home”, I’ve grown so much within it. Femme is a state of mind, much more than clothes, no less than an essence that cannot be pinpointed. But we all have a reference for it.

There are those who say you aren’t a “real” femme if you aren’t/doing such and such. Others have archaic stereotypes of what it means to be a femme and put that stereotype on every queer person who is feminine (even if they don’t ID as femme!). That’s why I love that Femmethology is not about theory, but Femmes pondering on what it means to them individually. Of course community validation is important, hints the title “Visible”…

Femmes need their communities to see what they are saying. This book hits that mark.

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