How to Handle Femmes

Several readers have written to me recently asking me to write a post on how to "handle" femmes.  I'm not typically attracted to femmes myself, but I've dated a few (and have hosted a guest post about mistakes butches make in butch-femme relationships).

My take is this: the problem is the question. 

Femmes aren't something to be "dealt with;" they're individual people to be understood and communicated with.  Thinking about things in your girlfriend that you don't understand as "femme characteristics" rather than as the characteristics of a particular partner or individual is not a good place to start.

Second--and I'm only talking to female-identified butches here--it creates this dichotomous idea that you are the masculine one and they are the feminine one.  Yes, I know you like the butch-femme dynamic--presumably, so does your femme partner.  But you are a woman.  Chances are, this is part of the reason they're with you and not with a man.  Acting like they are the "crazy, emotional, typical" woman implicitly puts you in the role of the "sensible man."  That is too straight, dude.  Way too straight.  It sails right past the butch-femme dynamic and lands in the heteronormativity bucket.

Complaining about "dealing" with femmes makes you sound like one of those irritating Men's Health headlines (e.g., "Why Don't Women Just Say What They Mean?").  Newsflash: no one says what they mean.  And we are all emotional.  We just express these things in different ways.  It's a bad idea to talk about your relationship in a way that makes you sound like a bro (again, unless your identity is consistent with bro-dom, in which case, go for it).