Attending: Amba, Susan, Melinda, Julie, Anne, Diane, Julie, Gayla, Debra
Amba shared a brief history of the formation of the Femme Posse. It was began by Victoria who wanted to organize a group of femmes to share their femme experience, support each other – and specifically to not do any butch bashing. The meetings were initially held at Victoria’s home and she took charge of scheduling the meetings, and putting together a topic of discussion for each meeting, and an exchange (clothes, make-up, books, etc.). As the group grew, it naturally morphed into a more self-sustaining group. When Victoria left town earlier this year, the regular meetings and group dynamic seemed to wane. In the way that femmes are naturally organic and creative, the group has had difficulty organizing meetings or any other events in recent months. (The example given was the 50 or so emails it took just to organize this meeting!)
The one recent success was the effort made to organize the Femme Posse to go to Wet Wednesday at the Power Exchange the first week in August. Many women came to Wet Wednesday for the first time and felt better about going because they knew they had support in fellow femmes who they could turn to if they were in need. It also allowed them to come and experience the evening, enabled them to ask questions, and not feel that they were intruding or unwelcome at the event. The serendipity of that evening, was that Wet Wednesday was about to be cancelled, but because of such a great turn out that evening, they decided to continue!
There was some discussion of what is Femme? Some have erroneously equated Femme with “weak” or “bottom” or as conforming to the patriarchy. To each of us, although we identify as “Femme”, we also define that individually. Sexually we may be top, bottom, or switch. We dress feminine, or in man’s clothes, wear high-heels or Birkenstocks, wear make-up or not (depending on the occasion), are into leather, are into spirituality, or revere the goddess. Most importantly, no one can tell us what it means to be femme – it is for each of us to know and define within our own hearts.
So in our meeting today, we wanted to re-group and get organized so that the Femme Posse can be strong again. Suggestions for accomplishing this include:
From these suggestions, we created a volunteer committee to organize the meeting for the next six months. That group includes Melinda, Gayla & Debra.
The next meeting will be on Saturday, November 6, from 1 to 4 p.m. at Anne’s house in Berkeley. Her address is 2800 Acton Street, at the corner of Oregon Street. Acton runs parallel to, and midway between, San Pablo and Sacramento Streets. Oregon Street is 3 blocks north of Ashby. The Ashby BART station is about a 20 minute walk. The discussion will be “Spirituality and the Feminine Identity”. It will be a pot luck. Please bring clothes for exchange.
The following meeting will be on Sunday, December 5, from 2 to 5 p.m. at Debra’s house in San Francisco. Her address is 5285 Diamond Heights Blvd. #307. The discussion will be “Family & Gender Issues for the Femme”. It will be a pot luck. Please bring gifts for re-gifting for the holiday season (someone will know someone to give that hideous thing you don’t want as a present)!
The topic of a Holiday Party was discussed, which is always a difficult thing to organize as there is so much going on in December, people are busy and/or traveling. The idea came up of the Femme Posse organizing a Winter Ball in January. Amba & Debra will contact Rope (who has organized the holiday party in the past) to work further on this idea and report back at the next meeting.