Femme Fagette

The Lexicon

Brief definitions to terms which I (may) use, some of which you may know, some of which you may not.

Cisgender – people whose gender aligns with the cultural expectations of their sex and who have only ever experienced their subconscious and physical sexes as being aligned (e.g. feminine female, masculine male).

Domina – Lady or Mistress; A title for a Dominant woman. Domina comes from the Latin root dom- found in other such words as dominate, domify, domicile, and domestic, as well as domin- such as dominant and dominus. From various sources I find that “dom-” actually relates to a household or realm, and the actual Latin translation of Domina or Dominus (the male counterpart), is “Lady or Lord of the house/realm.” This makes sense, considering dom- relating also to words such as domicile and domestic. The prefix domin- alone (supposedly) indicates regal status, such as Lady/Lord, or Mistress/Master, which is why Domina is the feminine and Dominus is the masculine (the suffix -a being feminine, and the suffix -us being masculine).

High Femme – A (usu. queer) female who expresses the cultural norm of an uberfeminine appearance, usually including makeup, heels, dresses, etc. (male counterpart is drag queen).

Femme – A male or female who expresses the cultural norm of a feminine appearance, though may or may not wear makeup, heels, or dresses and can the gamut from soft, sweet and passive to bold, brassy & aggressive.

Femme-ininity/femmeininity – Queer femininity; the femininity of femmes as opposed to femininity felt by cisgendered females.

F/f – A relationship or simply relations between a female Domme and a female sub (could be any combination of genders).

F/m – A relationship or simply relations between a female Domme and a male sub (could be any combination of genders).

Gender vs. Sex – I use the terms gender and sex in very specific ways. Sex (while also having the connotation of having sex or fucking) is specifically the notion of biological sex, that is, if someone is male/female cissexual, intersex, or male/female transsexual. Though some have argued that even our idea of biological sex is constructed, but that is another story. Sex refers specifically to things such as chromosomes, hormones, and secondary sex characteristics. Gender is specifically the notion of socially constructed categories which society tells us relate to being masculine and feminine (or a man and woman). Because something is socially constructed does not mean that we do not feel a pull to it one way or the other. Gender can come in all different forms (see: gender galaxy), and is not limited to man/woman or masculine/feminine.

Gender Galaxy – Discussed at further length in this post. People often talk about gender in terms of the “gender spectrum” – mostly as in, “I’m not man or woman, I’m somewhere in between on the gender spectrum.” Looking at gender in a spectrum still leaves man and woman on either end, grounding the spectrum in a binary, with a grey area in between. While this is better than simply having a gender binary, it is still extremely limiting for people who do not think of themselves in terms of man or woman. The idea of a gender galaxy gives much more room to many more identifications, and takes gender off of a line and opens it up to anything at all.
This term was recommended to me by my sister, along with the link to the first publication of the term in: Expanding Gender and Expanding the Law: Toward a Social and Legal Conceptualization of Gender that is More Inclusive of Transgender People by Dylan Vade, published in 2005 in the Michigan Journal of Gender and Law.

Intellisexuality – My personal sexual orientation (also often called sapiosexuality), which, basically defined, means I am attracted to intellect, or I am attracted to minds, regardless of the type of body which comes with it.

M/f – A relationship or simply relations between a male Dom and a female sub (could be any combination of genders).

M/m – A relationship or simply relations between a male Dom and a male sub (could be any combination of genders).

NRE – New Relationship Energy: the spark, passion, and excitement experienced at the beginning of any relationship.

Oppositional Sexism “The belief that female and male are rigid, mutually exclusive categories, each posessing a unique and nonoverlapping set of attributes, aptitudes, abilities, and desires.”

Owner/cuntpet – (discussed at length here) the terms I choose to label my relationship with. I take “cuntpet” to be a term which includes sexuality, service, and cunthood, all rolled into one. I choose these terms for multiple reasons, one being the connotation which the word slave carries with it, the other being that I am not a “proper” slave, that is: I am spirited, stubborn and willful, I do not have a submissive personality, I do not necessarily do things which “proper” slaves do, and I am a cuntpet.

PoMo – Postmodern or postmodernism. From Wikipedia: Postmodernism “is a term applied to a wide-ranging set of developments in critical theory, philosophy, architecture, art, literature, and culture, which are generally characterized as either emerging from, in reaction to, or superseding, modernism.” Some of the basic principles of pomo include: deconstruction, epistemology, social construction. Some favorite pomo writers: Nietzsche, Lacan, Foucault, Derrida, and Butler.

PoMosexuality – a label for a sexual orientation which is characterized by the resistance to set labels of sexual orientation, used as a protest against fixed labels (oxymoronic and awesome).

Power Drag – the theory that BDSM is essentially power drag. A term thought up by Lisa Diamond who has allowed me to “run with it” and explore it and what it means. What power within BDSM and specifically D/s or M/s relations does is emphasize the power dynamics between the two people, going to one extreme of power, with absolute power and absolute submission, it is showing that power is a performance, and without an exchange of power no power can be gained or lost. Power drag shows that there is no natural power dynamic between people. one cannot escape power dynamics either, but power drag brings awareness to the power dynamics between all people, not just people within BDSM relationships. It shows the constructedness of “natural” power. Explored in these posts.

Sex-positive – essentially: having a positive view of sex and sexuality.
More specifically, from Real Live Nude Girl by Carol Queen: “Sex-positive, a term that’s coming into cultural awareness, isn’t a dippy love-child celebration of orgone – it’s a simple yet radical affirmation that we each grow our own passions on a different medium, that instead of having two or three or even half a dozen sexual orientations, we should be thinking in terms of millions. “Sex-positive” respects each of our unique sexual profiles, even as we acknowledge that some of us have been damaged by a culture that tries to eradicate sexual difference and possibility. Even so, we grow like weeds.”
Basically being sex-positive, to me, means believing that sex and sexuality is an essential, natural, necessary, and potentially positive force within the life of everyone. It’s knowing that there is no overarching or blanket sexuality or sexual experiences which every person can cling to, but that, given the right encouragement, sex and sexuality are wonderful things.

Slavehood – A differentiation from slavery, which has awful connotations, first given to me by Miss Abernathy in her book, with the quote “I reserve the term “slavery” for the sort of violence visited on African-Americans, among others, in the seventeenth, eighteenth, and nineteenth centuries. When speaking of consensual erotic submission, I use the term “slavehood.”" My use of the term slavehood is one which involves trust, consent/personal vocation, and egalitarianism. (more on that at slavehood.net)

Traditional Sexism “The belief that maleness and masculinity are superior to femaleness and femininity.”