'Oh - do they let straight people do that?' This was the response that Anna Dunwoodie got last summer, when, at a social gathering, she introduced herself as one of the programmers for the London Lesbian & Gay Film Festival. The person asking the question was a lesbian; ironically, they were in London's Candy Bar at the time.

Anna is a femme. She's used to not being recognised as queer, even in her own community. 'There are only two clubs in London where I haven't been questioned at the door - Duckie and Club Wotever. Last month I tried to go to another club and was asked if I knew this was for gay people.'

But the incident at the Candy Bar stuck in her throat. She decided it was time to bring femmes into the place we belong - the limelight; specifically, the large screen. And so the femme strand of this year's LLGFF came into being.

Femmes have for a long time had bad press among lesbians - when, in the early 90s, the media latched onto the 'lipstick lesbian' (a world apart, might I add, from femme) as the acceptable face of dykedom, we were treated with suspicion by lesbians, who saw us as playing a mainstream game for approval. When I came out in the mid-80s, anybody with a single strand of hair longer than buzz-cut was accused of 'heterosexual privilege' - passing as straight, and reaping the social rewards. In the 70s, lesbian feminists vilified any woman who dared to play with her appearance - femmes were accused of collaborating with the enemy and sexual identity fraud, internalised misogyny and oppression of other women. All for wearing a dash of lippy to a protest march!



Even lately, with the last decade's fabulous cultural explorations of all forms of female masculinity, whenever it's present, femme has often been painted as an eager and sometimes out-of-place hanger-on in the new queer world, but without its own radicalism. Relegated to the ranks of mere 'admirers' of butches, drag kings, trans-guys and bois, we've been radical only by association, because we happen to be (or wish we were) draped on the arms of the real gender warriors.

Femme hasn't been a by-word for cutting-edge subculture; femmes haven't been seen as the ones in our community who are pioneering the interesting debates about gender and sexuality. Let's face it, we've not been seen as terribly hip.

But the tide is turning; several recent examples show that femme is on the rise. In London's Transfabulous festival last year, a heated debate on femme power sprang up during a symposium featuring speakers Judith 'Jack' Halberstam (Female Masculinity, The Drag King Book) and Del LaGrace Volcano (Sex Works, The Drag King Book - and currently working on a book about femmes).

In this year's LLGFF, the film Boy I Am features Halberstam commenting on how femme identities have been sidelined. 'What's happened to the category of femme to the extent that it's a companion category, or to the extent that it's completely autonomous from butch or trans?' she asks.

At gender-queer clubs just a few years ago, drag kings were the de rigueur queer performers. Now, in a flurry of feather boas, corsets, suspenders, false eyelashes and heels, burlesque performers and femme dragsters are regularly seen onstage. Off-stage, we're theorising about ourselves, holding conferences and making films. We're part of the new queer.

In a new documentary screening at the LLGFF, femme is celebrated as a radical gender identity. 'FtF: Female to Femme is,' says Dunwoodie, 'as far as I know, the first feature-length documentary about femme in at least seven years.

'There have been loads of drag king films - masculinity as performance within a lesbian context - and there's been a lot of really interesting FtM (female to male trans) work, sometimes with a crossover with drag king stuff. More recently, there have been the US West Coast queer films about masculinity, like By Hook or By Crook. The focus in dyke/ queer culture has been on the masculine, and on its subversive use by women and the trans community.'

FtF: Female to Femme sees film-makers Elizabeth Stark (femme author, co-founder of the first international femme conference, featured in the film in a fetching red frock) and Kami Chisholm (butch academic not featured in the film) interview a number of femmes - artists, activists and academics. Several lesbian celebs feature: Guinevere Turner (The L Word, Go Fish, American Psycho), Leslie Mah (high priestess of cool and member of punk-bitch band Tribe 8), Bitch (formerly of Bitch and Animal musical duo), and writer/ activist Jewelle Gomez.

The subjects are broad-ranging; the tone swerves from sexy and light-hearted to weighty and intellectual: femme as performance (lots of striptease and burlesque for the dirty-minded); 'femme-bashing'; the internal struggle about whether or not to accept that handbags are necessary; being misread as straight, and being overlooked by academics reinterpreting old texts through a queer lens (Shakespearean text, according to recent queer literary theory, can be read as queer because of the cross-dressing female: Rosalind, Viola, Portia and her maid).

But perhaps one of the most interesting - and controversial - aspects of the film is that some of the femmes interviewed talk about femme as a transgender identity. The film-makers ask their interviewees to use the language common to FtM and MtF communities: the process of realising and accepting you're a femme becomes 'transitioning'; femmes talk about the body dysphoria they experienced before transitioning; there's even a parody of a FtF transition support group, with Leslie Mah sobbing into her tattooed and formidable chest as she relives the moment when she realised she was femme.

'I really identify,' says Stark, 'with other transgendered people's descriptions of having a social misunderstanding of my body.'
While it's a refreshing and original look at femme, I can't help but feel that the transgender analogy is a little forced. What woman in the Western world doesn't feel body dysphoria, or doesn't experience her body being misunderstood and socially misread on a daily basis? Yes, coming into themselves as femmes has helped many women to come to terms with this - or, at least, to have a place to stand in the world where their bodies make sense. But have we changed gender? Is femme a separate gender? To call ourselves transgender because we've undergone what's essentially a process of self-realisation seems laboured.

It also seems to echo modern (American, and increasingly, British) popular culture's obsession with naming, dissecting, defining - and publicly disclosing - every aspect of our emotional processing. In an age of Oprah, Dr Phil and Trisha, the public, compulsive confession of our private selves is a mark of emotional wellbeing, enlightenment, and individual freedom.

Having said all of that, it's great that the film-makers are asking fresh questions about femme identity, and the link between femme and trans. Dunwoodie has an interesting take: 'I was talking to a trans-guy friend of mine about this film. He said he really identified with what the femmes in this film say. In the straight world, they "pass" as straight; he too is invisible as queer in the mainstream, which means he experiences a certain level of comfort on a day-to-day basis that he didn't have before he transitioned, but he'd never intended to be in the world as a straight man. In the lesbian world, he's invisible - like femmes are.'

She concedes that FtF is a film rooted in American culture. 'So, I'm hoping there'll be a good discussion after the screening - a discussion based in our community here in London and relevant to our lives. I'd love to hear less theoretical, more personal responses to the questions that the film raises.

'And that's why it's so lovely that we have the world première of an absolutely gorgeous short film, Fem. It's a sumptuous, very sexy butch homage to femmes, made by our very own film-maker Inge Blackman. And with it, you can see the beginnings of the change in our own country.'


• Take part in the debate: FtF: Female to Femme screens at NFT3 on April 1st, 4pm, followed by a panel discussion.
• Inge Blackman's Fem screens as part of Radical Desire, a programme of short films on femmes, with live performances by London's own Bird Club: NFT1, March 31st, 6.15pm.
http://www.llgff.org.uk