do my disorganized books make you feel horny babe

[...] I don't feel that external accoutrements are the sole, or even primary, aspects that compromise femininity or femme identity; that's a classist and wildly stunted viewpoint. I do, however, feel they are a crucial element of the theater of feminine gender; they are part of the process of creating and crafting a visible and recognizably gendered self. Similarly, for me, items such as clothes, heels, and makeup are what I love and and enjoy, and as a result, they bring me pleasure, an increased sense of self, and a feeling of empowerment.

While second-wave feminists such as Betty Friedan widely argued that femininity and its aforementioned trappings are disempowering, even oppressive, I vehemently disagree. Heels, manicured nails, and makeup are what I arm myself with when I meet the world; they are the armor that helps enable me to feel capable of making my way in a wildly unequal world. The unequivocal sense of power I derive from my femininity is significant because the world disempowers, silences, and oppresses those of us with feminine self-presentations; I feel this power even more strongly because I, as a femme, actively select my femininity rather than accept it as a natural or necessary corollary to my female biology.

The key to this sense of power is that I consciously choose to present myself in feminine ways. My femininity is my choice and construction; it is not a dutiful response or reaction to a social mandate that dictates that female equals feminine. [...] Through something as apparently simple as a bold nail color, I am reminded not to be complacent in my life and to work to effect the changes I want to see. This can be particularly helpful on days I experience as especially bleak; if and when I feel hopeless or powerless with the state of the world, I am comforted, however minimally, by my glossy nails or lips.

[...] Whereas some women experience femininity as gender conformity, it actually makes me feel less susceptible to homogenizing effects of socialization on gender and otherwise. I am not suggesting I am immune to the stifling ubiquity of norms; however, because it is something I have interrogated and crafted largely to my own specifications, femininity feels genuinely empowering."

- A selection from "Femme Is as Femme Does," an essay written by Brook Bolen for Visible: A Femmethology, Volume One. (Emphasis in bold is my own.)

"I go by "diesel femme" most of the time. I can't just claim "femme" with a straight face. It's too "good girl" for me. I am messy. I am a Tura Satana femme, a Diamanda Galas femme, a Mary Magdalene femme. No Donna Reed here. (And isn't it odd that I can only come up with transgressive/queered representations of transgression from the "straight" world, not the "authentic" queerness? Yeah, you got me on this one.)

But I have earned "femme," and it is mine now. I have earned it in sneers and whispers from queers and hets alike. I have earned it in hours of soul-searching and shopping for women's shoes in large sizes. I have earned it in your words at all the times I was told I was doing it wrong--too roughly or too angrily or too loudly or in the wrong color or the wrong size.

I have earned "femme," and I am keeping it. You can't have it back. I am a femme when I am in bed alone, when my hand is in a man's or when I am being flirted with by a straight girl. I am a femme when I brush my teeth and I am even a femme when I am Daddy. Which is to say: if the plethora of queer identities and of post-nuclear family constructions has interrogated traditional gender and family structures, femme self-representational production can't help but interrogate traditional feminine representation, provided the reader can see the handwriting on the wall.

So maybe I'll drop the "diesel." Just to piss someone off. It could happen.

Because this, too, in size 11 boots and bloodspurt-red lips--you bet your sweet ass this is femme."

-- An excerpt from "Diesel," an essay written by Dorothy Gottlieb for Visible: A Femmethology.

"I believe this is the way the knowledge runs: butches are visible by virtue of their transgressive female masculinity, but are further endangered when their gender(s) are read in the presence of a femme, the "female" of the species, recognized through her bright plumage. Poor, poor invisible femmes, only visible when endangering another. What a plight.

What bullshit.

If you feel invisible, you have every opportunity in the world to make yourself visible. You can rock "Hothead Paisan" pins or wear your Ani t-shirt everywhere. You can embroider your retro apron with the legend "Muffdiver" if you want. Hell, nothing but good taste is stopping you from doing all of the above at once, or tattooing "I AM A BIG LEZZIE" on your forehead if you want.

Am I being silly and reductive? Absolutely. Femme visibility is as slippery as we are and sometimes, like black ice, we are barely perceptible. It's a privilege to be able to pass.

And it's one that I largely forego. But I live in San Francisco, and this is my choice. I hear a lot of whining about femme invisibility, but I see women, a lot of the time, making every effort to pass and then complaining that they pass. There's no question that (some) femmes are subject to invalidation by fitting into the more "traditional" gender roles (you can't really be a dyke--you're so pretty) as well as misogyny and gender stereotyping even in our home communities (as one butch said to the butch I was out with, Don'tcha hate it when your girlie shows too much?). I am not trying to diminish--for a second--the very real, essential right we have to make ourselves in our own image. Whether in Laura Ashley or Xena, Warrior Princess garb. But I am trying to point out that we do have agency. We have choices. We have visibility if we choose it."

-- An excerpt from "Diesel," an essay written by Dorothy Gottlieb for Visible: A Femmethology.

I loved that bar. It's different now, of course, but back then, the beer was cheap, the booths were sticky, and the jukebox was a tawdry caterwaul. It was just dark enough and the staff was just busy enough that you could get away with just about anything in a secluded corner or beneath a table. Or on a barstool.

From the phone number exchange to the full-frontal lip crush, night after night, there were girls, free drinks, unblushing propositions, girls, and phone numbers.

For me. And it was a straight bar.

It was my favorite bar, no question. The cheap beer started it, but the kisses and phone numbers sealed the deal.

While I wasn't complaining--I mean, who would?--I was highly confused. Why here? Why me?

One night, before the bar approached its prime sardines-at-rush-hour capacity, I asked the bartender what was going on. After all, she was a straight girl, and she knew this bar inside and out.

"So tell me," I asked her, gesturing as best as I could with my forearm stuck to the bar in used beer. "How do all these straight girls know I'm queer?"

She raised one perfectly twigged eyebrow at me from under jet rockabilly bangs. One side of her bee-stung mouth twitched up in a smirk. "That's what I was going to ask you," she said, teetering on her heels to go pour a beer, leering back at me over her illustrated shoulders."

[...]

fishnet / heat

It was a pretty perfect San Francisco Saturday morning about a year ago--the day had started with the waking-up-and-rolling-into-sex, a lazy stroll to brunch with my lover, a lazy stroll back to bed with bellies full.

This being San Francisco, I saw people I know on the way to brunch and back, people who later asked vague questions like how I knew him, if he'd always gone by that name, and whom he used to date.

After the second friend's vague line of questioning, I caught on. They were trying to figure out if he was trans or cisgendered.

I'm tall. I am used to being about a full head taller than my dates. This date, a few inches shorter than me, was, like me, cisgendered and, to the best of my knowledge, pretty solidly heterosexual.

On sight, by reputation, I'd queered a straight man.

On his turf--in the bars he frequented or the like--I don't think the reverse was true. No one thought I was straight because I was with him. But then, I live in San Francisco, and it's not unheard of for dykes to date men. And it's not unheard of for straight men to date dykes. And it's not unusual for gossip to result. Because she's not really a dyke. She can't be. But she sure looks like one.

It's not unusual, in San Francisco, for straight girls to dress like femmes. If a straight girl dresses like a dyke, how do you know she's not a femme? If you have to ask, you're not paying attention.

-- An excerpt from "Diesel" by Dorothy Gottlieb, an essay from Visible: A Femmethology.

Femme means I won't compromise on complexity.

I don't have a neat, compact answer because my definition of femme can't be painted with black and white lines. Femme isn't linear. My femme refuses to occupy a circumscribed space.

Femme means hard-won energy. Sometimes femme means ambivalent but strategic gender enactment. Femme is a place where I still exist on the margins and where I can use ambiguity as a salve for all the gender-related questions I live daily.

[...] As a frustrated femme situated in more than one queer community, I have chafed against the practically codified definitions of femme and constrained scripts I've encountered. [...] Femme means I don't have to make it easy for you. It certainly isn't for me.

Above all, my femme is not your femme, which is the good news. [...] Femme means my sexuality, my partner choices, my definitions and my gender presentation might not match your labels.

As a queer femme, I was reassured and relieved by the strong, unique, fearless, complex viewpoints in these essays. I found peers who couldn't--and frankly wouldn't--play by any perceived status quo rules for How to Be Femme, How to Look Femme, How to Act Femme, and so forth. [...] Through editing Femmethology, I realized I wasn't alone.

I saw plenty of views to which I have never related, but I realized that those lived narratives nonetheless formed an essential part of our community. [...] This is who we are.

This is Visible: A Femmethology."

-- An excerpt from Jennifer Clare Burke's introduction to Visible: A Femmethology, Volume One

"Is this meaningful or casual?"

source: The Lesbian Love Companion: How to Survive Everything from Heartthrob to Heartbreak by Marny Hall, Ph.D.

source: The Lesbian Love Companion: How to Survive Everything from Heartthrob to Heartbreak by Marny Hall, Ph.D.

source: The Lesbian Love Companion: How to Survive Everything From Heartthrob to Heartbreak by Marny Hall, Ph.D.

source: The Lesbian Love Companion: How to Survive Everything from Heartthrob to Heartbreak by Marny Hall, Ph.D.

Hello, and thank you for your ask. First, my apologies for excessive delay.

Second, while I have yet to lay hands on a copy of any of the Siren periodicals myself, I have heard of it ... a cursory search of Worldcat shows that there are a few libraries in the USA (University of Wisconsin in Madison, WI, the Ohio State Library in Columbus, OH, and the Cornell University Library in Ithaca, NY) that may have copies of that magazine in their archives. Otherwise, it appears there are a number of Canadian libraries that have copies. See the details here. A Yale University guide from 2005 also claims to have a few of the magazines (See here.)

Worldcat is a pretty good resource, but of course it often doesn't capture the potential catalogue of every archive out there. If you are looking for in-person copies, I'd recommend studying a map of your area to see what colleges and libraries that might conveniently be in your area, and then perusing the internet for any associated websites these libraries and colleges might have. With any luck, they may have an online record listing their current archival contents. Any library or archive with a dedicated LGBT+ section might show promise ... and you can always ask that same archive if they know of any other archive with copies, if they themselves lack copies of the Siren magazine. (I would go for college archives first, personally.)

Going off wild guess, I would assume that within the USA, the best chances of finding a physical copy might lie with archives relatively close to Toronto, Canada, as that was where the magazine was originally published. State-wise, Toronto's closest neighbors are Wisconsin, Michigan, Ohio, Pennsylvania, and New York. I wouldn't be surprised if Chicago, Illinois has something ... I love the libraries over there, quite extensive.