Identity Liberationist

Femme Boy in Tight Black Skinny Jeans

I have been getting a lot of mileage out of my black skinny jeans and black velvet jacket.
Hot Pink and Black are my colors at the moment.
Regarding makeup I settle on a black pencil eyliner.
My hair is long enough to play with now whick is a daunting but fun task. I have been doing my hair in a ponytail for the first time in my life. While I was at Harbin Hotsprings last week I got my hair braided by other girls. It is kind of a feeling of primates grooming each other.
Neither I nor the boys I grew up with ever got to exprerience these genderered activities. In a sense boy culture cuts the Male-Born off from a primal sociality.

February 9 2010
Hardt & Negri point out Identity Politics have the choice of retrenchment in Identity Nationalism or can push for liberation from Identity. The classic case of retrenchment is Black Nationalism, but it is clear that the Lesbian Nationalism of San Francisco 2010 belongs in this category. Even the term Queer is being mutated into a form of LGBT nationalism. The term Transgender was originally a cry for liberation from gender but has become appropriated as a vehicle for Trans-centric Identity Nationalism. San Francisco Transgender is splitting into the retrenched ‘Trans’ Category and into an Anti-Gender Genderqueer Category.
For me unboxed ‘Femme’ is still a liberatory category.

Why I use Mab & Fab

beautiful boy – white T w/ skinny jeans

Feb 1 2010
I took this shot in the Castro in San Francisco. He shows how very subtle effects of eyebrow shaping and (i think) eyeliner can make a huge impact

@polly Well female at birth would just be female people and/or implies you can become female later.

I am taking an agnostic position about whether anyone is female or can become female. For me that is the beauty of FAB as Female At Birth. It points backward at origins but makes assumptions about current sex/gender/body. In queer SF FTM’s are a much more visible presence than MTF’s. I feel comfortable referring to them as Female At Birth but I would never hang the label female on them.
I have decided that the terms Male and Female are no longer useful for communication. There are three main definitions of the Male/Female duality
1) Traditional | Female = Female At Birth (this is an immutable essence)
2) Transsexual | Female = Female At Birth – Female to Male Transsexuals + Male To Female Transsexuals (Also an immutable essence)
3) Social Construction | Female has no ontological reality. A baby is female if it is assigned female. An MTF is Female when femaleness is projected upon them.

The Transgender Crusade versus the RadFem Crusade

I talk about the Troll wars between the RadFem Blogoshere and the Serranoan Trans-feminist Blogosphere | an obnoxious trans activism, I talk about ‘Cis Guilt’ as homologous to ‘White Guilt’

Little Buddha Baby

Jan 24 2010
Happy Sunday morning sweeties,
Take a look at this while you drink your morning coffee. I find this document of a young being, fascinating. “More”.
Anya is just learning to interact. She learned to point about a month ago. She points and things are brought to her. It is a measure of her interest. It means “More! This is Interesting.” When she sees herself in videos she shows a level of enrapture and focus that I never have. Her constant pointing is kind of like saying “WTF!, OMG! This is so utterly fantastically cool. “
In one Zen Buddhist Narrative, babies are enlightened beings who have not yet unlearned enlightenment.
I see that quality in Anya’s rapt attention, like a pool without ripples.

#1 Transitioning To Femme…

Jasper at the Coffee Bar

www.jasperswardrobe.com for more blog posts on gender and fashion.

December 11, 2008

I love the color play in this outfit.
Auburn hat : thrifted
teal scarf: thrifted
hot pink fleece : Old Navy
lavender hotpants : American Apparel
purple tights : Forever 21
plum leg warmers : H & M
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Gender transition is a confusing process for me. I have long periods of movement towards femme. Then suddenly I find myself in a period of retrenchment. I am at war with myself. I have been going to parties in femme or high femme and I have felt completely accepted, more accepted than I ever felt in butch. I feel euphoria. Then the next morning I wake up and face the prospect of going out in the world and I get deeply depressed.
I desperately want to go out in high femme. I want to express myself. I want the people I interact with to know that I am a girl, yet the prospect fills me with anxiety and despair.
For the past three days I have found myself in front of the mirror waffling between femme and butch. Femme does not feel safe when I am vulnerable, but dressing butch feels like a self betrayal. The discrepancy between the euphoria of being high femme in safe spaces and dressing more butch in daily life is too great. Paradoxically, when I break though a new barrier of self-expression and feel greater acceptance of femininity, it is followed by deeper despair, because I want to be femme all of the time. Going back and forth is heart wrenching.
In the past, the solution has been to push through, to embrace femme and to come out more fully. But, it is hard to always bring up the strength, to take pride in my gender otherness. It is like swimming upstream. If I relax and stop struggling I am swept back into boyness. I get so tired sometimes.

Pan-Femme Manifesto

Male-Born Femme and Queer Fat Femme can together push a Femme Cultural Revolution. Femme is a form of resistance to our dehumanizing late-modern Culture.
For Mabs (Male At Birth), a Femme gender offers us an alternative to the narrative of “Real Woman” which is so prevalent in contemporary transgender politics. We do not have to make biological claims to Femaleness, because Femme is acknowledged as artifice and performance. The performance of Femme however opens up to feminine cultural embodiment. We are treated as feminine and become feminine.
Queer girls have been pioneering this gender activism in San Francisco and Brooklyn. I invite Genderqueer Mabs take inspiration and direction from their pioneering work.
I wrote a post last year to the day, also advocating for a Femme Boy alternative.

Crossing Swords With Aria Blue

Sister Of Perpetual Indulgence: Paris House

Jan 17, 2009
Aria Blue has written a challenge in my comments.

Yeah, here’s the thing Jasper. I was born physiologically “different” than you, and your denial of that just makes you look silly. We have no “shared origin at birth”; your claim is an attack on my personal sovereignty as well as reality.

Selling My Body: Part I

In an act of sheer desperation. I am selling my ass to buy youtube views. Since my cleavage not that spectacular. I am doing a cheescake video in my tights. I show my ass at its most spankable. Anything for art and commerce, right? I try to make my scandalous outfit seem functional by showing you the innate femininity of my sexy ass and thighs.
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Queer Fat Femme Pinup

Queer Fat Femme Pinup, san francisco 2008

Jan 5th 2010
L. really shows the sex-positive, nature of the San Francisco, Queer Fat Femme (QFF) style. Rather than fat acceptance this is fat celebration. She is sexy, and dresses to emphasize it. This is L.’s favorite pose because it emphasizes her thighs and her cleavage.
It has the four attributes that I find in the QFF style.
1) fitted – she emphasizes the lines of her body
2) Femme – it is not demure but it is definitely femme
3) Color – Just a splash of hot pink, but it is there
4) Vintage Hairstyle and makeup

ChubChasing

Burnal Equinox 2009, San Francisco

Reposted from my emansipashun website. It too confusing to have two sites, so I am consolidating.

Dec 9 2009
Last spring I came out on my blog. Not as gender variant, I had done that months earlier. I came out as a Chubchaser. It was utterly ironic that I felt more social support adopting the ‘Transgender’ category than I did in publicly stating that I prefer chubby girls. Hegemonic american culture has a really strange, subtle, taboo on Sexual Desire for fat girls. It is subtle because it does not incite phobic reactions but involuntary laughter and social discomfort. It is kind of like the taboos about bisexuality among dykes.
Preferring chubby girls is incompatible with ’successful masculinity.’ Somehow the discursive space I grew up in, found it very important to declare Fat Bodies undesirable and to shun them. This social logic of fat = undesirable is maintained by declaring this form of desire a fetish rather than a legitimate desire. If I desire the undesirable I lose the coveted title of ‘Normal.’

Femme Fat Fashion 2 | Hot Pink 50’s Dress

Femme Fat Fashion 2 | Hot Pink 50’s Dress

Jan 1, 2010 Here is another example of San Francisco’s Queer Femme Fat Fashion. Her outfit is great with the Hot Pink and Animal Print combo. The hair and makeup take it to another level.
I am intrigued by the silhouette. It is 50’s racy with her ankles and neckline.
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What band is she in? Is it Mighty Slim Pickens?
I took it at SomArts for the Queer Arts Festival.
Her style reminds me of the styles coming out of San Francisco Fat Activist Burlesque and Pinups. This is another example of how a strong Femme Persona can be expressed in exuberant Fat Fashion.

Queer Fat Femme Fashion | Hot Pink Leggings

Queer Fat Femme Fashion | Hot Pink Leggings

Dec 31 2009
This was taken at Four Barrels on Valencia. I love M.’s outfit. Queer Fat Girls in San Francisco are creating a new sex-positive fat fashion.
This outfit is typical in a few ways:
1) Fitted silhouette – The leggings and dress emphasize her form rather than hiding it. She has a great hourglass form and she shows it. She is not running from her beautiful belly like mainstream fat fashion tries. The belly can’t be hidden on any body without losing the body’s lines.
2) Femme – Femmy clothing works well on really femmy bodies. I see fitted dresses, skirts and leggings
3) Bright Colors and Makeup- I love M.’s Hot Pink Leggings. Her pinup style makeup is perfect.

Overall she achieves a sexy confidence by embracing her form and working with it.

I made a one minute video where I talk about this photo. You can find it and other Body Positive art at: http://emansipashun.jasperswardrobe.com/topics/bodypositive/

Sex-Neg = Mab-Neg

Sexing it Up at Bondage-a_Go-Go

Dec 29 2009
This was my Bondage-a-Go-Go outfit. In the end It was too sexy for the club. A lot of women liked it, but a few of the straight Males got aggressive. I had crossed a scary line where I loose my “human” status. Twice boys told their girlfriends to stop interacting with me. A blatant, social performance of othering which is more intense than the simple stinkeye. I was glad that I was not alone with any of those hostile Males. That is the risk of sexing it up as a Mab Femme.
I have recorded earlier Bondage-a-Go-Go experiences in my Queerpedia.

The Troll Wars of 2009

Bondage-A-Go-Go, SF, Dec 2009

Dec 2009
I took this shot at Bondage-a-Go-Go, the fetish danceclub in the SOMA district of San Francisco. It is one of my recent favorite photos. It makes me love photography again. Alison was inside getting here ass flogged in the BDSM play space. With her beautiful, big, round ass she never has any trouble finding Mab (Male at Birth) or Fab (Female at Birth) play partners.

Male-Born Femininity & Gender Inversion

Sexy Corset and Tights @wickedground | Dec 2009

Dec 27, 2009
Alison put me in her corset at Wicked Grounds, the San Francisco coffee shop and took this shot. The Barrista said, "Hell, if you can’t play dress up here, where can you do it?" As always I find it interesting how much of the feminine body is produced by fashion which exaggerates curves in females and hides curves in males.
I have worn these leggings on many occasions but the high heeled boots produce a constructed female legs and butt. Notice also how baring the shoulders is a total female effect, as though males do not have bare shoulders.
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Polly said
I actually like what you do with gender a lot, because despite being a gender atheist, I think it’s genuinely subversive. And the extent of that subversiveness can be judged by the ruffled feathers elsewhere.
You are too kind sweetie. I agree that what I am trying to do is subversive.