I’m a high femme who often gets read as straight by most lesbians. Other than by adding rainbow accessories to my outfits, are there any good queer markers for high femmes?

Listen sister, I feel your pain. I mean what’s a girl got to do to get a little attention around here?

Hello? Butches? I’m talking to you. Stop thinking we’re hanging out in the bar being all bicurious, trying to pick up a lady so we can have sex with her in front of our boyfriend. Because that’s gross.

I once saw a straight couple walk into the Lexington with that sort of thing in mind. I think the dude was wearing a flowy rayon shirt? They didn’t stay long. I guess they didn’t find a bunch of big ol’ tattooed, pool playing bulldaggers as hot as I do. Ha. Good because that means more for me!

Oh wait, this isn’t answering your question at all, is it?

OK, there are a few ways to queer yourself up even when you dress like a lady.

Bust out your take-me-seriously glasses. The only drawback to this one is that Lisa Loeb co-opted the hoochie librarian look in 2000; effectively watering down a high femme standard. God damn straight people always get their fashion ideas from queers! This tip wont get you read as gay on the street, but it will still help you out in the dyke bar.

Learn to flirt. Be more aggressive. Don’t be afraid to tell a woman she’s hot. If you are waiting for the other woman to make all the moves and she’s wondering if you are really gay, no one is going to get any. If you are high femme the onus to make the move often falls on you.

Tattoos are an option. Don’t get anything cheesy like, say, a big Lambda on your forearm, because people will laugh at you. But there is something about the juxtaposition of a little Marc Jacobs cocktail dress and visible tattoo that reads queer.

Finally, try dressing like a drag queen. Female femininity, as much as female masculinity is a construct. While your gender may be inherent, your presentation of it isn’t. I was not born wearing false eyelashes and a push-up bra, were you? So if you take your femininity to another level–hone it, perform it, make it unique–the intelligent women, the ones with a trained eye, will read you queer.

Got a question? http://www.formspring.me/dianacage

I’m disappointed that in the question about Mary Daly and Andrea Dworkin, you didn’t address the rampant transpobia of either one! What’s up with that?

Second wave feminism was (is?) plagued by transphobia. It’s not limited to Daly and Dworkin, so I don’t see a reason to single them out. But a more useful discussion would include transphobia in current feminism, because it’s not like transphobia has been eradicated. In fact, I find transphobia in current feminism, the LGBT movement, and mainstream (read: homophobic, transphobic, sexist, racist, classist) society even more troubling because it’s empirical evidence of our lack of progress.

Also, limiting the discussion to the second-wave would mean criticizing the work of many revolutionaries who, though short-sighted and stuck in an essentialist view of what it means to be man and woman, still paved the way for the rest of us to wonder what the terms man and woman really mean. I’m not making excuses here, we all know how lacking previous waves of feminist thought have been and that non-white, straight, middle-class, non-trans women were either ignored or met with open hostility. That exclusion held all of us back, including the women who fit all those labels.

I tend to pick and choose and take what I can from different thinkers, reserving my criticism for feminists whose thought hasn’t evolved in thirty years. Germaine Greer comes to mind here, The Female Eunuch was a huge, huge influence on me and I will forever think she’s brilliant in that book. But the fact that she still talks that transphobic smack about “pantomime dames” from The Whole Woman (1999) just makes her seem stupid and lazy. (I’m referring to the comments she made in the Guardian about Caster Semenya).

Ask me anything

What are some nice normal things I can say to girls I don’t know at the bar that wont read as creeper? I keep defaulting to space camp, but, as I’ve no real interest in space, it’s really failing me.

FTW is space camp? How the hell did you settle on space camp as an innocuous topic? I’m fascinated. Did you go to space camp? It sounds kind of cool. Do you have all your teeth? Because if you do, I bet I’d be attracted to you.

Girls like compliments. Make them sincere and not overtly sexual. Complimenting her on her shoes is a good bet. Complimenting her on her tits is dicey.

Open a conversation with a compliment, or a question about something that’s going on in the room. You can’t say something completely random, it’s too obvious. You have to anchor your conversation opener to something that’s actually going on around you.

Once you have her attention, switch to something that’s happening or has just recently happened in the news. From there, if she seems comfortable and interested in you, you can start asking her questions about herself. If she’s still talking to you by this time, she’s interested.

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Do you think some people thrive on drama? Perhaps to the point where they cannot function without it?

Well you can be addicted to anything, can’t you? Oxytocin or Oxycontin, either way if you like it you want more of it.

I do think drama can be a form of addiction. And it can also be a symptom of addiction.

Constant romantic drama is a cycle of highs and lows. It’s like doing speedballs. You get so high from fighting, all your aggression is triggered, your fight or flight hormones, the cortisol and the adrenaline, are coursing through you. You need something to bring you down, so you process with your lover. You talk through the fight and your bonding hormones kick in, the oxytocin and the vasopressin, and you come down and you feel better and more relaxed.

But then you remember the thing that set you off in the first place and you get all high and freaked out again. And that cycle can keep going. Some people can keep it going so long that the other person gives up and gets out of the relationship. So then the addicted person has to find a new lover and the drama starts back up.

But some people use drama as a way of hiding or justifying their other addictions. An alcoholic might want to drink all the time, but on some level she knows drinking alone isn’t ok. So she or he will seek out the most dramatic situations she can possibly find. She might befriend or date a lot of trainwrecks, so she has an acceptable excuse to get drunk.

If everything around her is always on the verge of collapse, it works like a smoke screen so you wont notice that she’s in the bar every night.

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Why do I like David Letterman better than Jay Leno, even though David Letterman is a boob in a suit?

Letterman is a douchehose but he’s much smarter than Leno. Also, Jay Leno’s head is shaped like a chicken McNugget, which makes him hard to look at.

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Oh Diana Cage, will I ever find love?

Love is just a chemical trick designed to get you to stick around after your orgasm in case there is some baby making involved. It’s not that hard to find love. If you haven’t found it yet it’s probably because on some level you don’t really want to.

Take a good look at the relationships you’ve had in the past. Were the people you dated actually available? Were you? It’s a lot more likely you were only pretending to want love when you really just wanted sex.

The key to finding love that lasts beyond the crazy humping stage is actually letting yourself be vulnerable and maybe even occasionally bored or disappointed. And being vulnerable, bored, or disappointed seriously suck so most of us avoid it.

In the meantime, just keep screwing everyone until you get bored of it. After a while you’ve slept with enough people that you get it out of your system. Being bored with the highs and lows of casual affairs helps with the whole falling in love with someone part. If you still crave the drama, you aren’t ready. Falling in love means sticking around once the oxytocin and dopamine hits wear off. When you decide you don’t want emotional ups and downs any more the more quotidian parts of love will seem more attractive and you’ll actually be into it.

Ask me anything