renaissance poisson

misia wrote an interesting post with her experiences of femme turf. [now alas locked; sorry.]

hm. i am an anti-femme (not as in hating femmes, but more like an anti-hero :), and knitting stores have IMO changed a lot over the last 30 years, to become more general geek space than pure femme turf. such geek space can be found anywhere, and butch spaces certainly have loads of it -- hardware stores, tool shops, fishing tackle sections at canadian tire, do-it-yourself shipyard facilities all fall into that category. wherever we share passionate hobbies with other people, i suspect. SF conventions are wonderful geek space, so are lots of virtual places on the net.

geek space has a lot in common with what misia describes as femme turf: there's helpful communication between total strangers, there's knowledge-sharing, asking even the most basic questions is ok, show-and-tell is common.

what it doesn't have is the sort of behaviour that makes me uncomfortable in femme space: strongly proffered advice without being asked, and a large amount of solicitation, for example. i've also not actually noticed that there is enough distance when it comes to my aura of "i am just browsing and don't want help, unless i look around for it", which is usually respected in geek space, but always violated in femme space, though people will back off if i clearly reject help. and there definitely is also less physical distance, which is possibly the largest reason for me not liking femme space (and my desire for physical space isn't driven by fear of malice; i am just not into random touch).

i've lately been spending a lot of time in aromatherapy and natural health stores, and that's an interesting space -- it's not as femme-dominated as cosmetics counters in department stores, because it has herb geeks in it too. it still makes me itchy (no pun intended), but that's probably more because of the high new-age content, not because of the femme contingent.