Queer Eye Candy: Call for Submissions! Please reprint widely!

“Queer Eye Candy is the on-line family photo album for the queer community.” – Geek Porn Girl

“As a straight woman I do not expect to identify with pictures of lesbians right away, but I do, because love is love, laughter is laughter, and happiness is all the same. Thank you for helping me to see this in a new light.” – Kelly

“After being featured in Queer Eye Candy as a femme, and reading all the comments, it made me feel like it was OK to be feminine again.” – Em the Femme

Queer Eye Candy – www.queereyecandy.com – is a community website dedicated to showcasing visual representations of butches, femmes, and all sorts of other queers. We as genderqueers know what it’s like to be out in the world and treated strangely, questioned (“Mommy, is that a boy or a girl?” “What are you doing, this is the ladies room!” “Don’t you know it’s dyke night, honey?”), or constantly stared at as we navigate through our days. We know what it’s like to feel outcast because of the way we look. But what if more people were more used to seeing us, in the wide variety of representation? What if the thousands of ways that butch and femme are reclaimed and performed were collected, so we could see how much variety exists within these identities?

And so, our mission of visibility was born.

With weekly features such as Wednesday Butch Hump Day, Date Night Thursday, and Femme Friday, Queer Eye Candy showcases all sorts of representation of and from our communities.

But we can’t do it without your participation! Here’s the part where we ask you to send in fabulous photos of yourself, your lover(s), your friends, your family. You do not need to identify as butch or femme to participate, though the project does focus on butches and femmes.

Submit your high quality, work-safe photographs to queereyecandy@gmail.com and go to http://www.queereyecandy.com/submit/ for further information about sending us your photograph. You can also submit photos through the Flickr group at http://www.flickr.com/groups/queereyecandy.

We hope to see your smilin’ face on the site.

Cheers,
Amber, Cheree, Denise, Tina, and Sinclair

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In my observation, there’s been an increase in butch blogs on the interwebs lately, and given that August is feature-a-blog month, I want to give some shout-outs.

• Jess I Am – Well, Jess you all know, ’cause she writes here at TLL. She also writes on her own blog about her life with her wife, her stepkids, her love of animals including birds & a cute-as-hell dog, and lots of personal stuff about gender and butchness. (Her wife, Tina, blogs at Tina-cious too. I know, this is about the butches, but I can’t help but mention fabulous femmes.)
• Lesbian Dad – Writings from a queer parent, I love the ways she explores parenting and butch lesbian identity, from dealing with her child’s preschool’s other parents to her philosophies on why her kids don’t call her the traditional “mom” titles, but instead use ‘Baba’ (which I really love). Her photos of her kids are really beautiful and sweet, and her writing is clear and concise, occasionally political, always very thoughtful. Plus I just love how she calls her kiddo “the little monkey.”
• Butch Girlcat – Leo MacCool is writing through some revelations about her own masculinity and her relationship with her high school sweetheart freedomgirl. I love the ways their story is unfolding, I’m excited to read it as it continues.
• Packing Vocals – The sweet writings of a “gentleman dyke” discovering an emerging gender. I’m particularly fond of her revelations about strapping on a cock and what that means both for her gender and for her sex life – plus some of it is just damn hot. Also read her wife’s blog, femmeismygender.
• Just Like Jesse James – Jesse James doesn’t identify as butch, but she’s in the transmasculine galaxy somewhere, probably somewhere in the I-look-lik-a-14-year-old-boy area. Her adventures with her girlfriend Violet and her fabulous dog Seal are fun and detailed, a great little glimpse into her life. Plus, she celebrates the goddess of all things sparkly once a week with Cherday.
• Natt Nightly – Natt writes smut and adventures about herself, her boy gang, and her girl Lady V.

A few more worth mentioning … Dylan’s not writing much at Flying Truth lately, but I still want to give her a shout-out. For a while there she was pretty much the only other butch I knew online, and we had some great conversations about sex & gender. Vic at What is it with Dykes and Guitars? writes from Australia about all sorts of random things, and I love the photo illustrations. tongue-tied blue would probably resist my adding her in a list of butches, but she’s kinda masculine-leaning and one of the most unique bloggers I know, as her posts are almost all with enjambment.

(Interesting that lots of these butches also have femme partners who are blogging, too? I didn’t notice that until I was writing this up.)

These certainly aren’t all the butch blogs out there, but these are some of my personal favorites. Got any more you’d like to add? Which are your favorite blogs by butches? I’m always looking for more.

Sinclair Sexsmith writes every day about her own butch life at Sugarbutch Chronicles.Similar Posts:

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I have a complicated cheating story.

I suppose they’re all complicated, at least from the perspective of the cheater, because we at some point feel justified enough that it’s okay for us to cheat, in order to make the choices to do it. I doubt anyone goes out thinking, “oh, maybe I’ll cheat on my girlfriend this weekend! That’ll be fun!” Uh, no.

My circumstances went like this. I was with my girlfriend for nearly four years by then, and we’d moved across the country together for her to attend law school. She wants to work in refugee and asylum law, saving some of the most marginalized, displaced, and traumatized people on the planet, going into war-torn areas and helping to relocate, organize, provide the basic needs of food, water, shelter. Very noble, very selfless, and yet another trait that I loved about her.

However:

1. Law school does not necessarily create problems, but it exacerbates those which are already there;
2. We had sex five times in the last two years;
3. We had pretty awful communication, and couldn’t really talk about what was happening in our relationship;
4. She went to Africa with an internship for three months shortly after we moved to New York City.

We weren’t very strong before she left for Africa in June. We had a couple of conversations that left us both feeling shaky and unsure, and I told her very clearly that I needed her help in working on our relationship while she was in Africa. I sensed the end was near, but I wasn’t sure when I would cross that point of no return and really decide that I couldn’t go back. I knew it was coming, I could sense it, but I felt I wouldn’t know it until I’d crossed it.

[ A sidenote here about the dreaded LBD (lesbian bed death): it exists. It's fucken real. I don't know how to cure it, but I think I have a better idea now about how to never, never get myself into that scenario again. Once was enough, thank you. ]

So, she went to Africa. And when a friend of mine shared how successful she’d been with getting dates via Craigslist, I began to wonder who else was out there.

And I came across an ad that felt as though it was custom-made for me.

“How could I not reply?” I asked myself. This is the first time I’ve looked at ads, and there it was, just waiting for me. And so I replied.

I never surfed Craigslist, I never replied to ads. And yet, she replied to me; we had a few email exchanges and agreed to meet for drinks.

And I fell in love.

I knew it from that first evening, from ordering that first Midori sour for her. I knew it when we walked to the river and kissed holding onto the chain link fence, a kiss that we anticipated for hours, that lasted for long lingering minutes, and fireworks, literal fireworks that went off over the river as we kissed.

I didn’t mean to fall in love. I hadn’t gone looking for it, but she seduced my ever pore. I had never known love like that before, especially in comparison to my sexless committed LBD relationship. I was desperate to feel passion, to feel ignited, to feel the fire of connection again, and I fell, hard & fast.

We didn’t fuck. But clearly, I cheated.

This New Love found out that I had a girlfriend by googling me after our hot first date, and I owned up to it. Yes that’s true. No it’s not an open relationship.

I told her I’d get my shit together, and come back to her. She told me she wouldn’t wait. Fine, I couldn’t ask her to. But I knew I’d do anything to get a chance, to really get a chance, to be able to break up with her because we were incompatible instead of because of my dead relationship.

And I did. I broke up with the Girlfriend in Africa. She had a terrible time and came home early; we had a messy ending. Endings are, by definition, I think, messy, but it was a harsh and unhonoring way to end things with that special, important woman. We had a long time together, she deserved more care. Problem was, I couldn’t get to the point where there was a “reason” we should split – I thought the lack of sex wasn’t an adequate reason, I guess. So I thought I had to endure. (Like I said, I will never allow myself to get in that situation again.)

I wish I’d had more care with the Girlfriend at the time, but I did the best I could with what I had. I did my best to be honest and kind.

Three months later, I sent flowers to New Love at her work, and put an ad up on Craigslist for her to see, too – this time, the opposite of her ad, the same language but switching the genders, butch for femme instead of femme for butch. She called me immediately. We agreed to meet for lunch.

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For March’s topic “define sexy.”

Sexy is in the way she walks. I notice her legs first, almost always. Her stride. The S curve of her ankles to her knees to her ass. Sexy is in the posture, in her spine, erect, in her shoulders, held back and confident.

It’s the power that is sexy, especially when combined with femininity. There’s nothing passive about it, she makes the space for me to walk in and sit right down, she puts the ideas of undressing her, unbuttoning that blouse, unzipping that skirt, into my head with just a glance. She knows how to engage, how to make it look like it’s my idea, like I’m in charge.

But I’m not.

Sexy is in the physical communication between us. The way I compensate when she pulls back, which is the reason she pulls back in the first place: she likes to see me strain. Likes to pull desire from me like a soul-sucking kiss. Likes to entice and invite until I reach that breaking point and just have to take her down. Have to hold her still, keep her from moving, break those charms from her mouth and remind her that I am a little stronger, a little bigger, remind her that there are consequences to her toying.

This place in me is just what she’s been seeking all along. She wants to be taken this way, she wants to know, to feel, how much I want her, how I cannot resist her any longer. She wants her intellect to be jolted, her physical body to be surprised so she can no longer theorize or prosthelytize, she can only animalistically respond with her primitive back brain, opening to force, opening to pressure, letting me take her, wishing it would never end.Similar Posts:

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