hunger

photo by Morgan Gwenwald

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“What an experience making “the femme tapes”! Our mutual hysteria at finding someone else who recognised that hunger, that desperate need, the desire to be “fucked senseless” and to know that we have, would and do put up with some incredible shit to get it.”
Madeline Davis, “A Letter to My Femme Sisters”
The Persistent Desire

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“She bought me crotchless panties and untied the bows like I was a present that had been wrapped just for her, and before I melted into mindless throbbing waves of orgasm I had a political epiphany: Women who decried being objectified had never had the opportunity to feel like this.”
Carol Queen, “Why I Love Butch Women”
Dagger: On Butch Women

fem hunger is the desire to be a fem for a butch, a woman for a dyke, an object of desire to the women that I desire most. it’s the need that beats within me, urgent and relentless, when I am dreaming of what I want most in this world, all around me, on top of me, between my thighs, taking what she wants until she’s finally satisfied, only to find I’m not. that I can’t be, won’t ever be, not while she’s there to stoke the flame of lust that curls urgently deep in my cunt.

it’s what a fem feels when she sees a butch who makes her heart race faster, who makes her a little giddy, a little breathless and wet. the rising surge of desire that floods every vein until she could burst with it, swelling with the force of her own need so that it can only be quelled beneath the hands of a butch as strong and hungry. it’s the urge to jump a butch’s bones, to grab your love and devour her with kisses and eager hands, to press against her so close you could sink into her skin and still never be close enough; to feel the hard push of her pubis between your thighs, grinding until you can’t breathe, until you’re so slick with sweat and desire she has to hold on. it’s wanting her so much you ache with it, like a fever only she can break, like you’re sick with longing and she’s the cure; her lips, her hands, the way her brow furrows as she gets off on you the hot elixir that finally brings relief.

“I would argue that a good femme does not play to the part of you that hates yourself for feeling like a man, but to the part of you that knows you’re a woman. Because it’s absolutely critical to understand that femmes are women to women and dykes to men in the straight world… you see, I want you as a woman, not as a man; but I want you in the way you need to be, which may not be traditionally female but which is the area you express as butch. Here is where in the other world you have suffered the most damage. My feeling is, part of the reason I love to be with butches is because I feel I repair that damage. I make it right to want me that hard. Butches have not been allowed to feel their own desire because that part of being butch can be perceived by the straight world as male. I feel I get back my femaleness and give a different definition of femaleness to a butch as a femme.”
Amber Hollibaugh, “What We’re Rollin’ Around In Bed With”
My Dangerous Desires

it’s when I can see in the eyes of a butch that there’s nothing she doesn’t love about the way I am, about how I am fem – from top to toe, inside out, what makes me this way in all its layered complexity and infinite nuance. it’s when she sees all that and loves it as deeply and as sweetly as I love how she is butch. fem hunger is being stirred suddenly to violent, voracious life when a butch holds your eye and you know she sees you, really sees you, for what you are – and that what you are is all for her – and all at once straightening, smiling, basking, brimming. it’s feeling at once sure and certain in your femness, at peace in your own self and being the way you can be only when a butch lets you know she recognises you, and loves you for being there. this is so much a part of it, because we need them to – the way they want us, the way they love us, reassures us in who we are, makes certain we know where we belong in a world that has no space for dykes unless we make it for ourselves. and we make it together.

fem hunger is wanting to be wanted the way a butch wants a woman. it’s wanting to be her dream, her fantasy, everything she has ever desired. it’s wanting her to watch the way your hips sway when you walk, the way your ass fills out those capris; to notice when you push your hair behind your ear and to think about what your neck would taste like. it’s wearing your tightest dress, the one with the plunging neckline that thrusts your breasts together, just so she’ll think about what it’s like to bury her face between them, to grasp them in her hands and squeeze, to take them into her mouth. it’s the towering stilettos you strap your feet into, knowing how they make your ass jut out, your legs long and toned; that soon enough they’ll be up above your head, spike heels pointing to the ceiling while she holds you to the promise you made by wearing them. it’s wanting her to think about what you’d look like on your back, spread open for her, no holes barred.  or on all fours while she fucks you and smacks your ass, pulls your hair and makes you cry out for more, more, more.

“The woman I just started seeing said to me over the phone, ‘I love your ass, I love your tits. I love your cunt. I would like to congratulate the architect’. It made me feel so worthwhile, so precious. It was also tied to a recognition that my femmeness was appreciated.”
Madeline Davis, “The Femme Tapes”
The Persistent Desire

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“It’s so funny that I’ve had to explain to butch women that it was okay to want me in ways that are considered sexist. The young ones are butch on the outside – and when it comes down to sex, they still want to fuck you ‘til your brains explode… they want to have their cocks and they want to fuck you. But they don’t know that it’s okay for me to be on all fours saying ‘we can live in a porn movie – let’s go! Call me a bitch. Objectify me! … Now you’ve graduated! Now you know that you can want somebody and still have power, because what I need is to be the object of your desire’. I like women who enjoy possessing me in certain ways. Like putting her hand on my ass in public – some people think that’s sexist, but to me it is a way of sexually and physically possessing me, or taking me into her care, that rocks my world.”
Shar Rednour, “The Joys of Butch”
Dagger: On Butch Women

it’s choosing all the extravagant lingerie only your fantasy self would dare to wear – and then daring to, for her. it’s wanting to be a fantasy come true for a butch, and being vulnerable enough to try. it’s being so much more vulnerable than they ever realise, because their reaction means everything, makes your fantasy come true. being desired by her for being fem, and for wanting to be desirable to her, for wanting to make her want to pin you down and fuck you raw and delirious. it’s in the seam that runs the back of your calves right up your thighs, the garters revealed when she pushes up your skirt and groans to see them. it’s how you feel when she wants you like that, one bra strap pulled down so she can suck your tit, panties pushed to one side so she can fuck you, completely and gloriously fem more then than at any other time.

it’s wanting butches to want me this bad cos of how badly I want them. it’s needing to know because most of the time I wonder if I ever could be, if I could ever be desired as much, as intensely, as I desire these women who so completely rock my world. it’s the excitement when I put in that work and am rewarded with a glance, or a gaze; when she gets my number and her eyes linger on my lips, her hand at my waist. or when she picks me up for a date and looks me up and down, all shining and ready to hit the town, and I know she’s already thinking about how much of a mess she’s gonna make of me later. it’s getting all dressed up in anticipation of being undone. fem hunger is when I put in all that work – not so much to go out, but to make it extra fun for her when we’re back behind closed doors, an erotic adventure of tease and revelation, being taken apart and remade the way she wants me to be, disarrayed and stained by her mouth and hands and cunt.

“For me, and many other femmes, the core of femme sexuality lies in femme hunger, in a particularly femme strength of sexual openness, vulnerability, and need. For me it can be summed up by the image of ‘her fist/slams into my cunt up through my cervix/and grabs my heart/I don’t mind.’ When I have sex… I need to feel the touching burn through the layers of numbness I have wrapped around myself. I need intensity; I need to get filled up and fed. To open up, give it all up and be loved, not hated, for my intensity, for how much pleasure I can feel and how vulnerable it makes me. It is a vulnerability that can be both incredibly powerful and incredibly terrifying.”
Leah Lakshmi Piepzna-Samarasinha, “On Being A Bisexual Femme”
Femme

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“I begin to imagine myself being the woman that a woman always wanted. That’s when I begin to eroticise. That’s what I begin to feel from my lover’s hands. I begin to fantasise myself becoming more and more female in order to comprehend and meet what I feel happening in her body. I don’t want her not to be female to me. Her need is female but it’s butch because I am asking her to expose her desire through the movement of her hands on my body, and I’ll respond. I want to give up power in response to her need… I can feel the impact, and I begin to play and respond to that hunger and desire. And I begin to eroticise the fantasy that she can’t get enough of me. It makes me want to enflame my body… I am making every part of my body accessible to that woman. I completely trust her. There’s no place she cannot touch me. My body is literally open to any way she interprets her sexual need. My power is that I know how to read her inside of her own passion.”
Amber Hollibaugh, “What We’re Rollin’ Around In Bed With”
My Dangerous Desires

it’s wanting her to have absolute control of me. taking me into her hands and getting me to do whatever it is she needs to come, hard and long, using me to get her there. it’s wanting to be more than naked for her – it’s wanting to be stripped down to the soul, laid completely bare and hers for the taking, physically and spiritually, for all I have to give. it’s inviting her in, all the way, letting her plunge as deep and hungrily as she needs to, however she needs to, giving it all up to her willingly. and it’s needing her to take it from me, take it like it belongs to her and I can’t resist. I can’t. like getting fucked by a butch is what I was born to do. like that’s what I was made for, every curve, every crevice designed just for her gratification, to get her where she needs to go.

this hunger is what happens when my energy responds to hers, when they converge and crackle and these intoxicating dynamics between us flare up. it’s when I feel most alive, in her arms, under her hands, my skin ignited by her touch, my heart aflame with passion for her. it’s for needing how we are together, butch and fem, flame and gasoline. it’s wanting how she wants to be for me, how she lets me know I’m hers, to care for and to devour; holding the door for me with one hand and grabbing my ass as I pass her by with the other. it’s what stirs when I watch her, the way she stands and how she gestures, the way she looks in the clothes she wears and how brazen she is in the world, how proud and strong.

“Butches are extremely romantic. They get so much pleasure out of the erotic tension between butch and femme. It’s exciting for a femme to give herself to her. And for her to feel a femme’s nurturing and possessive qualities. To feel attractive and desirable – all that stuff is really special to a butch woman because she was never brought up to know that she deserved that or could have it, whereas men take it for granted… I love the way a butch makes me feel like her pleasure is in turning me on, getting me wet, and getting me off. Like she just wants to live in my asshole or my pussy forever. That I may be impatient with my own orgasm, but she’s not… when she has a handle on my pussy, when she knows it really, I belong to her.”
Susie Bright, “The Joys of Butch”
Dagger: On Butch Women

and it’s what makes you chase the look on her face when you’re being her own personal porn star, shameless and insatiable, and so goddamn hot for her.

it’s also the simplest need of all: to be loved and appreciated, to be wanted so badly, to feel so adored, just for being. for the way it makes most sense for you to be, and for how much she is just as hot for that. for how much sense you make together, for how much heat you make together, and for how profoundly vital all that shared love and desire can be.

Madeline: “When they put their hands on you and that sound comes out, that ahhh…”
Amber: “You could die for that sound, for that look… it is a shocking thing, to be unequivocally loved for your femaleness in this culture. That’s why femmes love their butches so much…it is a femme attitude of adoring a butch that is the weight of the other side.”
Madeline: “Worship.”
Amber: “Complete worship”
Amber Hollibaugh and Madeline Davis, “The Femme Tapes”
The Persistent Desire