“I am not yet comfortable with my own femme-ininity. It is so looked down on– especially in a political community like the one in which I came out, in which I want to continue to be a part. Femme often carries the stigma of the word feminine, and being feminine has traditionally meant powerlessness, passivity, everything that being a woman has traditionally meant. When I first came out, I wanted to be butch. I wanted to outwardly deny patriarchy in general, and men in particular. I wanted them to see me on the subway as I rode to and from school and not feel they could stare and salivate and comment and harass as they pleased. I wanted them to look at me and know in some way I was as tough as they, maybe even tougher, that I didn’t want them sexually, especially sexually, and was in some way in “competition” with them. I wanted to laugh in their faces, saying “fuck you!” I am a black self-identified femme. My hair hangs in loose curls a little below my shoulders. I often wear makeup, and I like high heels, although I seldom wear them. My femme-ininity does not make me victimized. I have a choice in what I look like and who fucks me. The fear, of course, lies in whether what I say and feel and believe about myself is politically correct or not. I still don’t know. In my angst over my femme-ininity, I question my own language. What constitutes ‘hard’? Does it refer to those who look most like men, and if so, what does that mean? If the women I like are ‘hard’, and if 'hard’ means looking like a man, then mustn’t women inherently be 'soft’, at least in my mind? Where is my thinking?”

I'm turning 18 in twenty years it's so over for me

Snickerdoodle Cheesecake