Identified

Even in Missouri?

It’s “Women’s HERstory Month” at Missouri State so…

The Office of Multicultural Programs and the Department of Gender Studies are excited to announce the return of the annual Womxn of Distinction Awards.

I assume the Office of Erasing Women and the Department of Centering Men were involved too.

A yearly part of Women’s HERstory Month, the Womxn of Distinction Awards honor women and femme identified individuals who have excelled academically, contributed to the success of the Missouri State and Springfield communities, and demonstrated commitment to positively influencing the lives of others.

Women and “femme identified” people…because women can’t have anything that’s just for women any more. We have to share everything with men who claim to be “femme identified” (whatever the fuck that’s supposed to mean) now.

A Slate article a couple of years ago explained why “women and femmes” is such a stupid pairing:

Before we go into what’s wrong with “women and femmes” as a linguistic device, maybe we should clear up what femme means (for those who don’t know their Ellen Page from Ellen DeGeneres). Femme is a term that comes from working-class lesbian culture. It was originally used to describe lesbians who were feminine in their appearance and clothing, and sat in opposition to butch lesbians, who were masculine in their appearance and clothing. (If you’re interested in reading more about the height of butch/femme culture then I suggest reading Leslie Feinberg’s seminal novel Stone Butch Blues.) Femme was about femininity released from the chains of obligation to men and their gazes. It was a defiant and knowing femininity, performed for oneself and for other women, rather than in service of the heteronormative status quo, which maintained that women were naturally feminine, men naturally masculine, and that the only acceptable desire was between these two kinds of people.

In short it applied to women. It was about women. It came from women. It was by women.

But then it got appropriated. Of course it did.

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