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.
Shouldn’t it be Womxn of Distinxn?
Good grief. If the organisers are going to mangle language to make a political point, they should stick to their guns, not just make it an award for anyone who wears makeup.
The Slate article may have made a good point on the etymology of the word “femme,” but the writer is obviously in the “inclusivity” camp when it comes to defining the word “woman.”
I know. Still a good job of explaining though, so I used it and then jumped ship.
This reminds me of (my math geek son talking about) physics. Is “gender expression” the second derivative of “sex?” Is there a third derivative?
Wasn’t there a certain individual commenting here whining about how things were oh so difficult in Missouri?
And… feminine-seeming men have had the levers of power withheld from them, the doors to power slammed in their faces, the fruits of power denied them? I mean, aren’t all those things the reason there are women’s awards in the first place? Why should men of any stripe be in the running?
BKiSA – Oh yes – Kevpat. (I had to do a search to find out, because I didn’t remember that part.) To be fair, though, a university or college isn’t the same as a legislature.