Brazen Femme: Queering Femininity

by Chloë Brushwood Rose (Editor), Anna Camilleri (Editor)

Brazen Femme: Queering Femininity is a manifesto for the unrepentant bitch, straddling the furious and fantastic. Undeniably celebratory and deeply troubling, this sharp-edged collection (of fiction, prose poetry, personal essay, photographs, and illustration) figures the un-hyphenated femme experience emerging in performance, betrayal, violence, humor and survival.

Brazen Femme recognizes femme as an identity in flux and in motion, as constantly being reinvented. This mutability sets the stage for creative and thoughtful representation featuring critically acclaimed writers including Michelle Tea, Camilla Gibb, Sky Gilbert, Amber Hollibaugh and Anurima Banerji. The collection includes the entertaining and challenging work of writers and artists whose stories are missing from existing explorations of femme that exclude experiences of men, transsexual women, and sex workers.

Whether by choice or necessity, these frenzied femmes each explore their desires to make (and remake) femininity fit their own queer frames. Darlings, drag queens, whores and action heroes . . . a femme by any other name is spectacular.

With writings by Debra Anderson, Anurima Banerji, T.J. Bryan, Anna Camilleri, Daniel Collins, Lisa Duggan and Kathleen McHugh, Camilla Gibb, Sky Gilbert, Tara Hardy, Amber Hollibaugh, Suzann Kole, Heather Mc-Callister, Elaine Miller, Kathryn Payne, Leah Piepzna-Samarasinha, Elizabeth Ruth, Trish Salah, Abi Slone and Allyson Mitchell, Michelle Tea, Zoe Whittal and Karin Wolf.

With photographs by Chloë Brushwood Rose, and Daniel Collins, and illustrations by comic artists Sandi Rapini, Suzy Malik and Allyson Mitchell.

Chloë Brushwood Rose and Anna Camilleri have been collaborating in Toronto as curators, editors and art-makers for the past four years. Anna co-founded the interdisciplinary performance troupe Taste This, who collaborated on the acclaimed Boys Like Her.

Genres: Queer, Nonfiction, Feminism, LGBT, Gender, Poetry, Sexuality

176 pages, Paperback

First published April 1, 2003

About the author

Chloë Brushwood Rose is an Assistant Professor in the Faculty of Education at York University.

Reviews

[Ella · Rating 4 out of 5]

As a queer femme, I absolutely loved this so, so much, such a radical and beautiful read. Nonetheless, I feel as though it's just the first foot in the door of femme discourse as separate from that of the femme/butch dichotomy. There are a couple of reasons why I didn't give it all five stars: 1) I wish it were longer, 2) I wish it included more critical analyses about femme as a radical identity, rather than just the intro (after a while I felt that the book became a little narrative-heavy, which is weird for me since I love narratives), and 3) I felt that so much more could be said about what it means to be a queer femme POC.

Also, since I feel relatively positive about the book as a whole, I should probably mention something I really hated. In Sky Gilbert's piece about being a gay man and a drag queen, one of his closing statements is, "But the man whose life depends on his team winning a football game or the woman whose sense of self-esteem rests on a perfect hairstyle both need one thing: a good therapist." Like, fuck that sweet little taste of misogyny. I'm not interested.

All in all, though, a really valuable read.

[Candice · Rating 3 out of 5]

I started and finished this brief anthology during a three-hour train ride. I would agree with other reviews that this collection is a mixture of brilliant and mediocre work. I was especially impressed by Anna Camilleri and Leah Lakshmi Piepzna-Samarasinha. This book is a nice introduction to femme identities as it includes women of color, immigrants, drag queens, gay men, bi women, fat women, etc. Another thing I like about this book is that it explores femme identity as separate from normative femininity and also discusses femme outside of the context of butch/femme. A good primer for the beginner, but not the greatest as a whole.

[Tawny · Rating 3 out of 5]

Like others have said, this book is not bad, but falls short in some areas. I did question the inclusion of some essays ("Wheels Plus" for instance, even though I enjoyed reading it), and I also questioned the manifesto at the end which sort of said, "If you date men you can't be in the club," which I found kind of off-putting considering I identified heavily with the rest of the book, consider myself queer/pansexual, and am currently in a relationship with a man.

But aside from that, I did enjoy it, especially some of the poetry, and I would recommend it as a general queer identity read.

[Jill · Rating 2 out of 5]

There's a lot to be said for perspectives on femininity. Not much is actually said in this anthology, but at least the perspectives tend to be diverse. Very personal writing, not a lot of extrapolated thoughts -- it's prescient, in some ways, of the kind of theoretical shift that really kicked off in the 2010s. Anyway: not a bad read. But not a good one, either, really.

[Lina Ahrens · Rating 5 out of 5]

„The fem(me) body is an anti(body), a queer body in fem(me)inine drag. The voices we record do not cohere.“
- „she occupies normality abnormally“

I loved this collection of femme works. Everything I didn’t understand about my own gender resolved itself in lesbian fem(me)ininity, and when I stumbled across a paraphrase of the quote above, I found pride and comfort within myself even more. Thank god for the dykes

[Kat Heatherington · Rating 4 out of 5]

it took me something like six months to make my way through this slender little volume. admittedly, i do not read nonfiction quickly, ever. but i've had a weird relationship with this book. i kept finding myself in its pages, and then losing any connection with the content at all, not a touch or a trace of recognizability. the essays, poems and comics are, as a collection, very uneven; there is some work of sheerest brilliance in here, and there's some stuff that's gazing so deeply at its own navel, it's incomprehensible to an outside eye. hard to learn from, because it isn't interested in teaching. and, as other reviewers noted, several of these pieces are trying WAY too hard. most of the poetry is good, evocative; some of it is memorable. but all but one of the comics are simply bad. which strikes me as particularly unfortunate. and then i'd pick it up again and the next essay would be relevant, engaging, insightful, would bend my thinking into a new shape and i'd have to put it down again so that i could absorb the idea and chew it over. so i kept coming in and out of this one, determined to finish it, and finding the effort worthwhile, but not always engaged by the content.

but then i'd hit a passage like this:

"a working proposition: Fem(me) is la je ne sais quoi of desiring difference prior to any determination of sexual preference or gender identity. Fem(me) is put on, a put-on, fetish production at the hands of subject becoming object, becoming fetish, while always retaining a sense of performance, always amused yet possibly bored by its effects. ... What the feminine represses returns from inside and outside as the future of desire. Refusing the fate of Girl-by-Nature, she fem(me) is Girl-by-Choice. Finding in androgyny (the rejection of all femininity) too much loss, too little pleasure, and ugly shoes, the fem(me) takes from the feminine a wardrobe, a walk, a wink, and then moves on to sound the death knell of an abject sexuality contorted and subjected to moral concerns. ...

"And now, in the postmodern reign of The Queer, the fem(me) reappears, signifier of another kind of gender trouble. Not a performer of legible gender transgression, like the butch and his sister the drag queen, but a betrayer of legibility itself. Seemingly "normal," she responds to "normal" expectations with a sucker punch -- she occupies normality abnormally."


and i find myself loving this, and thinking i have to sit with it again, see if i can move past the absolutist language (a profoundly liminial and inclusive book that seeks to break down the idea of a unified or unifiable femme identity, this volume is nevertheless positively riddled with absolutist thinking and the same passages that i identify with strongly are immediately followed by some dreck about how femmes are *never* attracted to un-ironic masculinity, and i feel exactly like i'm in that queer group in college again getting scolded for failure to conform to somebody's arbitrary standard of sufficient queerness, and i want to tell the author to just fucking shove it) and into the really golden ideas at the heart of this whole enterprise.

so i love it. except for the part that bored me, and the part that's not very good. and i will probably never read most of it again, except for the two or three articles that really did catch my imagination and make me think. but those parts are worth owning the book for.

[Cpt Hawk · Rating 3 out of 5]

*3.5 stars

What I thought I was getting: another femme lesbian anthology
What I actually got: a more diverse & intersectional look on the femme experience and what it tells us about patriarchy, misogyny, feminism, gender, sexuality, desire, relationships (romantic/sexual and passing), respect, and power.

My biggest beef with this anthology--and really the only reason I'm docking it a star or two--is that a few authors read like they really needed another editing pass, maybe several, their prose-crime being not insufficient writing, but hella clunky and overdone prose that was somehow worse than mine when I'm really tearing it up for no damn reason. One essay in particular suffered from this so badly that after painfully struggling for a page and a half, I gave up and skipped it. The issue was just ... irritating to the brain. And unnecessary. The excessive, jarring poeticism was obscuring, communicating nothing, and after a time, became completely non-sensical. Blegh. Blegh!

Setting that aside--we've blessedly got a more diverse cast of authors here, what with lesbians, bi/pan women, trans women, drag queens, femme gay men, etc., and blessings on top of blessings, it's not all white authors, huzzah! I came to this anthology hot off the heels of The Femme Mystique and looking for something similar (I thought it was similar.) How close are they? Uhhh. Hmm. They're *adjacent* to each other, but as they state in their opening, the authors were looking to do a broader (not just femme lesbian) look at femme identity and how people experience such a thing, and I'd say they've succeeded. We've also got some really banging and otherwise prolific authors in this anthology, a fun treat for an anthology that's only 175 pages long. For anyone really interested in queerness and particularly the intersection of femininity and queerness, this is a *great* book for you!

In sum, because I really enjoyed the spit and fire of The Femme Mystique, I still place that as my favorite femme anthology so far. But I am biased, to be clear, and honestly the contest is only so definitively decided due to the prose issues of a couple pieces in Brazen Femme. Intellectually, Brazen Femme felt like a great anthology and I'm proud to have it on my shelf.

RETROSPECTIVELY (Aug 2024): This anthology was good but not like ... THAT good. I would use this book as a reference text for essays but I wouldn't probably reread this one.

[Rebecca · Rating 4 out of 5]

I really liked this book, and it's one I'd recommend. It covers a great cross-section of femme identity, and while not all the pieces are good, I found most of them at least thought-provoking. The mix of mediums throughout the book works really well, and it's one I can see myself referring back to.

There are some stellar pieces in this: Leah Lakshmi Piepzna-Samarasinha's 'gonna get my girl body back: this is a work in progress', which I had to take a couple of hours to get through because I kept wanting to cry, T.J. Bryan's 'It Takes Ballz: Reflections of a Black Attitudinal Femme Vixen in tha' making', which I couldn't put down, Zoe Whittall's great 'Fevers, Fall-Outs, and Fast Foods', and Debra Anderson's poetry (especially 'fading femme') were my favourites. I loved the variety, the perspectives I hadn't necessarily considered before, and their desire to push the boundaries of 'femme' - i.e. the inclusion of 'Blessed Be', Daniel Collins' chapter on the Radical Faeries and 'Wheels Plus', Michelle Tea's not-overtly-queer tale about her early teens. These were far from the only ones worth reading - most of the book is pretty fantastic.

There was, however, some pretty dismisal stuff: Sky Gilbert's cissexist and mansplainy 'Drag Queens and Feminine Women: The Same But Kinda Different', Lisa Duggan and Kathleen McHugh's ridiculous and wanky 'A Fem(me)inist Manifesto', Suzann Kole's (mostly) obnoxious and incoherent 'Rags and Reiterations: A Queer Story', Camilla Gibb's 'How Wide Is Our Circle' and Kathryn Payne's irritatingly-blind-to-her-own-privilege take on sex workers' rights, 'Whores And Bitches Who Sleep With Women'. That sounds like a fairly long list, but it was all interesting to approach critically and think about nonetheless - and the rest of the book more than made up for it.

The one criticism I did have of the books a whole was the glaring absence of trans women from a book that even included two different chapters by men: the only thing by a trans woman is one brief poem by Trish Salah. It's the second-last thing in the book, and it's not one of the book's strong points at that. This was made all the more glaring by the casual cissexism running through a couple of the pieces.

Nonetheless, I'd definitely recommend this one, and I'm glad it's one for the bookshelf.

[Amanda · Rating 3 out of 5]

As someone who self identifies as a queer femme, I was curious and excited to read this book. Like all anthologies, Brazen Femme contains both hits and misses. If you can force yourself through the introduction and first chapter, most of the middle of the book is consistently good, though the "Fem(me)inist Manifesto" which closes the book is pretty terrible as well. I enjoyed the fact that the anthology contained works created by a variety of femme identified people: women, men, non binary genders, trans* people, people of colour, fat activists, drag queens, etc. It could have used some voices from the disabled community, but on the whole it was surprisingly diverse. I was keen on the plethora of definitions of femme, even though in some cases I did not agree (i.e. definitions which were limited to lesbians or women).

But can we please agree to stop misusing scientific terms for artistic purposes or inappropriate social studies topics. If I see the words "science" or "quantum" (or any number of other scientific terminologies) butchered one more time, my head is liable to explode. If you don't understand the term, don't use it -- simple as that. Good lord it's infuriating to try and get through a piece which does this constantly.

Despite the shortcomings of some of the contributing author's pieces, I truly did appreciate this collection. In fact, one poem inside gave me my favourite new expression for vintage femme: "Femme can feel like someone else's cast-offs. Another woman's old, worn-out frock". Hits home for me.

[Molly Thornton · Rating 3 out of 5]

I think for being published in 2002- this book mostly gets it right. The editors seek to explore and define what it means to be femme through the poetry, essays, and ideas of a diverse group of femmes. It is intersectional, and includes fat femmes, femmes of color, drag queens and mention of male or trans femmes. It also seeks to include a class perspective, including voices from sex workers, poor folks, and others oft excluded or looked down for their occupation or lack of pedigree, depending on the case.

That said, many of the pieces fell flat for me- trying to convey the multiplicity of what it can mean to be femme in a way that either left it completely ambiguous, or still managed to pigeonhole it in an overly specific way. I identify as femme and questioned whether or not I am actually femme based on prescribed definitions within this book. Mostly, I just find it disturbing how little seems to be written about what it means to be femme, it's history, and evolution- as compared to other issues of gender and sexuality.

I am grateful that I read this primarily because of the questions I am now asking about how to situate, understand, and mobilize "femme" in today's political/cultural/personal climates and struggles.

[Sara · Rating 3 out of 5]

This book was not what I expected. And it makes that clear from its cover image. I was expecting a lot more theory-talk about femme identities. That is not this book at all-- and that's a good thing! We need more books that feature essays, stories, poems and other art that look critically at structures such as "femme" and say what that word means to them, in all its different ways.

I would have given it a higher review if I felt it was a little tighter. Occasionally, this desire to make the discussion about femme to NOT be about femme felt strained. But some that never mentioned femme at all, such as Michelle Tea's story about being a middle schooler at the roller rink fit in perfectly as did the story that takes place at a radical faery party.

I like the connections frequently made between sex workers and femmes though at time it felt a little forced, a little too much. There are so many femme experiences out there that are brazen without wielding weapons and I wish we saw more of those. BUT-- that pic in the front would not be so sexyhotscary without that knife, right between her legs.

[~Anita~ · Rating 3 out of 5]

I had hoped that as a femme I would find something that resonated with me. I finished the book disappointed. Some of it were fun, some bits made me wonder if I was femme enough.

I’m a bi/pan femme. Femme maybe a queer identity but that doesn’t mean the lesbians own it as the final essay and some other works suggested.

I enjoyed the photography. Not sure why “Wheels plus” was even there. Not rereading this one.

[Karyn · Rating 5 out of 5]

This book is amazing. As with Anna's other work, there is a lot of rape related stories, which I'm not so into, but the text that deals with identity is fantastic.
I read the intro and was hooked immediately. I felt better about myself and that I had the ability to be braver in my own identity.

[miss marla Fisher · Rating 3 out of 5]

this anthology is a bit spotty, but there are definitely some gems.

[Catherine · Rating 3 out of 5]

One of the earlier anthologies that focused on the queer feminine. Some of the pieces hold up really well, others less so. It's also geared more toward an academic audience in terms of writing style than I was anticipating. But that said, worth tracking down if you're looking at queer history and starter texts about queerness and femininity.

[Claudia Glenn · Rating 4 out of 5]

solid first read of the year! “gonna get my girl body back: this is a work in progress” by leah lakshimi piepzna-samarasinha stood out—

“i build this body, this gender, layer of silk over steel skeleton.”

“i made it out. i am still alive. i will have this. cuz i usta always think i would die when i finally healed, or the revolution would come. but instead comes something else.”

[Ashur · Rating 3 out of 5]

I'm not sure this is for me, but it's good to read different POVs. One of the best things about essay anthologies (though this also involved photography and poetry) is the contributor list in the back: lots of people to keep an eye on.

[Isobel · Rating 4 out of 5]

very hit or miss collection, and extremely 2000s so. i wouldn't really recommend but i did have fun reading it

[Vic]

war soooo schön

[Bethany Ebert · Rating 2 out of 5]

I had high expectations for this book, but it fell completely short.

"Quantum Femme" was terrible. The meaning of quantum is, according to the internet, "the Latin word for amount and, in modern understanding, means the smallest possible discrete unit of any physical property, such as energy or matter." I feel like the writer was trying to describe this super-sexy powerful femme, which is nice, but with every description of what the quantum femme does or does not do, I found myself comparing my own actions and falling short. Who is the quantum femme? Obviously not a scientist, or she'd pick a better word.

"Clay Pigeon" read like a veiled threat. To whom? I don't know. Someone obviously pissed the writer off. I found the whole piece boring and offensive. A page and a half of I-don't-care.

"Blessed Be" was the worst one. Yuck.

There were a few good ones, mainly "Femme Fables", "gonna get my girl body back: this is a work in progress", "Two Poetic Incantations", and "Wheels Plus".

But mostly, a lot of this book was either forgettable or shoddily-written. I feel bad for writing such a mean review, but this book had so much potential, and I wish the editors had picked better pieces.

[Heather · Rating 2 out of 5]

I wanted to like this, but I really did not care for it. I was totally on board after reading the introduction, where Rose and Camilleri state that they want Brazen Femme to depart from existing texts by focusing completely on femme identities... not just femme identities in relation to butch identities. But almost all of the works fell flat.

Sky Gilbert's "Drag Queens and Feminine Women: The Same but Kinda Different" was by far the bright spot in the collection for me. I also liked the dialogue between Abi Slone and Allyson Mitchell (though I thought Mitchell's paintings contributed absolutely nothing.) I really liked Michelle Tea's "Wheels Plus," but solely because I enjoy her writing style. I have seen other reviews questioning why the editors included it and I felt the same way. Suzy Malik and Zoe Whittall's "Fat is a Femme-inine Issue" was great and Leah Lakshmi Piepzna-Samarasinha has never let me down in any anthology I've seen her in. But that's mainly it.

Overall, this just came off like a selection of works that just happened to be created by femme-identified people, not a celebration or exploration of femme identities.

[Christa · Rating 2 out of 5]

When I picked up this book I was really excited (after all, just look at the cover!) I was really disappointed in this book. Someone recommended it to me and said it might help with my understanding of Femme-ness and help me evaluate my own shaky identity as a possible femme. It didn’t do this at all. Some of the articles tried to hard, others were just uninteresting. However, if you are going to pick up the book these articles worth reading:
-Whores and Bitches Who Sleep With Women by Kathryn Payne
-Drag Queens and Feminine Women: The Same but Kinda Different by Sky Gilbert
-Two Poetic Incantations by Karin Wolf
-Wheels Plus by Michelle Tea (although I’m not exactly sure why its in the collection)
-Fat is a Femme-inine Issue by Suzy Malik and Zoe Whitall (which is comic and one of the only things I identified with in the book)

There are a few more that aren’t so bad.

And the artwork throughout the book was also interesting/enjoyable. Maybe I just went into the book expecting too much.

[Quin Rich · Rating 5 out of 5]

Fantastic, eclectic anthology of writing by persons who identify with and about queer femininity. Crucially, this collection treats "femme" as an identity of its own, rather than as a (subordinate) partner of "butch." While these is some diversity in this collection, it remains heavily white and cisgender; it would have been a more through treatment if the editors had included the voices of more trans and non-binary femmes. As other reviewers have noted, Sky Gilbert's piece was really out-of-place; frankly misogynistic at points, and really out of touch with the rest of the collection, My favorite piece was probably Kathryn Payne's "Whores and Bitches Who Sleep with Women," though Lisa Duggan's and Kathleen McHugh's "A Fem(me)inist Manifesto" is a close second. I found myself actually smiling reading this book. It's a good mix of personal essays, critical, essays, poems, and even some comics. Definitely worth a read, as it's short, and it felt really good to read in a way I can't really explain.

[Xo🦇🐈‍⬛ · Rating 4 out of 5]

TW: Mentions of Incest, Mentions of Sexual Assault, Abusive relationships, Physical Abuse, Misogyny, and Sexual Content

This book was definitely enjoyable! Some parts were shaky but for the most part this book was an insightful anthology on what Femme is as a queer identity. However, this book is centered around sapphic individuals two of the contributors to this novel were gay men. However, please be advised that the language is dated. This is coming from a 1990s queer feminist perspective, so some of the language may sound funny at best and cringey or wrong at worst. Other readers have mentioned how one story in particular gives mansplaining and misogynistic vibes. And that critique is definitely valid

[Ariel · Rating 3 out of 5]

I'm not sure how I feel about this book. It was tough to read, very confrontational, and I liked that about it - I enjoy having to examine my own discomfort to see what that means about me - but as far as actual writing quality goes, I think it varied. Some essays were amazing, but a lot felt heavy-handed, or like they were relying too much on style and metaphor and not enough on emotional or literary impact. These essays positioned femme as a category unto itself, not as defined by butch or masculinity, and they had a lot of diverse viewpoints, which I loved, and because of that I'd recommend it to someone looking for a personal (as opposed to scholarly) view on fem(me)ininity.

[Beans · Rating 5 out of 5]

After a few blah experiences recently with queer/gender anthologies, I wasn't expecting much. But this was amazing. The essays/poems/stories/etc were all incredibly nuanced and well-written and challenging. As someone who doesn't identify as femme, I wasn't really sure what my relationship to this material would be, but I hugely enjoyed reading this and got a lot out of it (even in regard to my own lack of/gender) and it was so refreshing to see stuff about gendered experiences that were super queer but not the same old AFAB/celebration of kooky gender narrative that seems to get published over and over and over.

Highly recommended.

[Eli · Rating 3 out of 5]

A wide variety of artists and writers are brought together for this emotionally raw exploration of femme identity and life. The mark of a good anthology, to me, is that not everything in it speaks to me. I was especially fond of the essays here by T.J. Bryan AKA Tenacious and Daniel Collins. I do feel I learned something I didn't know before about what femme means, and what it means to be femme, beyond terms and definitions.

[lola · Rating 1 out of 5]

This went out in an email to my best friend:

"I tried to read the queer theory/lit anthology "brazen femme" but, well: "It has been this way for a long time, since they put a restraining order against my breasts and called it a bra." (pp29) back to the library you go little one"

[Rini · Rating 3 out of 5]

I think the only thing I didn't like about this book is how surprised I was to find out that it was, in fact, a collection of prose/poetry. Somehow I was expecting non-fiction. I didn't have time to finish it until a bunch of schoolwork set in, but what I did read was rather interesting.

[Leigh M · Rating 4 out of 5]

Some of this was a little over my head. I liked the way there was a mixture of creative pieces and essays. Only a few entries resonated with my personal journey but I loved getting to share in the stories of so many other femmes.