To all the beautiful fierce femmes out there

This video has been making the rounds these past few weeks. It's a piece by Ivan E. Coyote, a queer writer from Canada:



I wasn't sure about it initially with the mention of tie ironing, cowboy hat tipping and big black boot polishing - but then 1 minute into it Ivan said this in regards to queer femmes,

"I know that sometimes you feel like nobody truly sees you. I want you to know that I see you. I see you on the street, on the bus, in the gym, in the park."

Which peaked my interest. Then,

"I don’t know why I can tell that you are not straight, but I can. Maybe it is the way you look at me. All of my life I have been told that I am ugly, I am less than, I am not a man, I am unwanted. Until you came along, I believed them. Please do not ever stop looking at me the way you do."

And shortly thereafter on to my favorite chunk:

"I want to thank you for coming out of the closet. Again and again, over and over, for the rest of your life. At school, at work, at your kid’s daycare, at your brother’s wedding, at the doctor’s office. Thank you for sideswiping their stereotypes.

I never get the chance to come out of the closet, because my closet was always made of glass. But you do it for me. You fight homophobia in a way that I never could. Some of them think I am queer because I am undesirable. You prove to them that being queer is your desire.

Thank you for loving me because of who I am and what I look like, not in spite of who I am and what I look like."

Not only do I relate to much of what Ivan conveyed, but it's also incredibly refreshing to see some femme empowering stuff every once in a while instead of the same ol' same ol' outdated rhetoric.

Text of piece available here or this video has a new function introduced by YouTube for closed captioning (go to the page and click on the small red CC button).