Critical Femininities
Psychology & Sexuality
Editors: Rhea Ashley Hoskin & Karen L. Blair
Abstract: Critical femininities examines femininity through a nuanced, multidimensional framework, moving beyond femininity as a patriarchal tool, to instead consider the historical, ideological, and intersectional underpinnings of femininity, particularly those that contribute to femmephobia. While Critical Femininities is often deemed an emergent area of scholarship, this framing is both paradoxical and, conceivably, inaccurate. Rather than being a nascent field, interdisciplinary scholars have contributed to Critical Femininities for over 60 years, whether or not they labeled their research as such. Arguably, Critical Femininities is a field whose emergence can be traced back to the second wave of feminism or even earlier. However, while Dahl (2012) notes that the question of “what is femininity” is as old as de Beauvoir’s (1949) Second Sex, there is a continued lack of scholarly endeavours not only in terms of how the question of femininity has been addressed, but also in terms of how this question is integrated within research. In this article we theorize why Critical Femininities has remained in a continuous state of emerging without recognition for its contributions as a field. We argue that the field’s stalled emergence can be explained by the tendency to view femininity as unidimensional, anti-intellectual, and infantile. Moreover, we see this stalled emergence as a product of the masculine epistemological centre that informs the very fabrics of society. In response, we aim to facilitate the continued growth of the field, and to make visible the taken-for-granted presence of masculinity that remains pervasive within gender theory and epistemological frameworks.
Dr. Rhea Ashley Hoskin is an Ontario Women’s Health Scholar and an AMTD Global Talent postdoctoral fellow at the University of Waterloo. Rhea’s work focuses on femininities, femme theory, femme identities, critical femininities and femmephobia. In particular, her work applies femme theory to understand psychosocial and cultural phenomenon, various forms of oppression, perceptions of femininity and sources of prejudice rooted in the devaluating or regulation of femininity.
Dr. Karen L. Blair is the director of the KLB Research Lab and the Trent University Social Relations, Attitudes and Diversity Lab. Dr. Blair’s work focuses on LGBTQ Psychology, relationships and health, prejudice, femmephobia, hate crimes and Holocaust education.
Abstract: In recent years there has been rising popular discourse around ‘toxic masculinity’, and the problems of a hegemonic gender structure that facilitates male violence and misogyny. In the public debate over whether toxic masculinity is fact or fiction, ‘toxic femininity’ is often raised by men’s rights activists and others as an anti-feminist retort, to suggest that women can be ‘toxic’ too. This paper provides a sketch of how the term has been used so far, in tandem with an overview of the limitations of the more extensively discussed idea of ‘toxic masculinity’. This paper suggests that rather than deploying ‘toxic femininity’, it is more useful to consider what might be ‘toxic’ about some approaches to femininity. Drawing on existing theories of femininity, including emphasised, hegemonic, normative, patriarchal femininity, pariah femininities, and femmephobia, this paper offers the notion of ‘rigid femininities’ to explain the structures that keep us locked into a ‘toxic’ gender system. This paper utilises the term toxic femininity as a jumping-off point for theorising femininity broadly. In theorising femininity, this paper offers a conceptualisation of the ‘toxic’ attachments that reinforce the gendered power structure/essentialized gender.
Dr Hannah McCann is a Lecturer in Cultural Studies at the University of Melbourne. Her research sits within critical femininity studies and explores femme identity, beauty culture, and queer fandom. She has published in several feminist and queer theory journals including the European Journal of Women’s Studies, Women’s Studies Quarterly, and Sexualities. Her first monograph Queering Femininity: Sexuality, Feminism and the Politics of Presentation was published with Routledge in 2018, and her co-authored textbook Queer Theory Now: From Foundations to Futures was published in 2020 through Red Globe Press.
Abstract: This study explores the gendered discourses of youth sexualities. More specifically, it reports on research examining t(w)een girls’ discursive construction and negotiation of their femininities in the context of sexting. Using a qualitative method, the study attempts to contribute to the understanding of the multidimensionality of femininity. In order to do so, it brings femme theory into focus and contributes to its growth by analysing tween and teen girls’ discursive positionings when narrating their sexting experiences. The results give evidence of the pervasiveness of femmephobia and draw attention to the fact that the use of specific linguistic strategies not only allow the participants in the study to occupy different femininities in their narratives, but also to regulate the in-group and out-group sexualities. Furthermore, the presence of coercive language provides a clearer understanding of the cultural devaluation of femininity.
Antonio García-Gómez is an Associate Professor of Linguistics at the University of Alcalá de Henares, Madrid, Spain, where he teaches discourse analysis and functional linguistics. He holds a PhD in Linguistics from the Universidad Complutense de Madrid. His expertise lies primarily in discourse analysis and discursive psychology. Professor García-Gómez’s first and most developed research interest is conflict talk. A main strand of his research has focused on the study of gender, identity and language use in new media. He has published numerous articles and authored two books. He presents regularly at conferences across Spain and Europe.
Abstract: In this conceptual analysis, we theorise breastfeeding as an embodied ‘dirty’ performance of femininity and draw on Hoskin’s (2019a) work on femme theory to propose that women who breastfeed in public, who do so for an ‘extended’ time, and who enjoy it are subject to femmephobic attacks. We integrate three streams of literature to unsettle the ‘taint’ of breastfeeding. We first theorise breastfeeding as an act of femininity where women perform gender trouble in line with Butler's work. We also draw on Douglas’ work on ‘dirt’ and Rivera’s work on emotional ‘dirty’ work to theorise that ‘taint’ is one way in which society stigmatises the phenomenon of breastfeeding. Specifically, we propose that embodied breastfeeding evokes ‘tainted’ emotions. We then draw on Schippers’ work on ‘containing’ pariah forms of femininity (lest they ‘contaminate’ patriarchy) by showing how femmephobic stigmatisation limits breastfeeding women’s corporeality and presence in shared spaces.
Lilith A. Whiley is a senior lecturer at Kingston Business School. Her inter-disciplinary research interests bring together Occupational Psychology and Human Resource Management primarily from a critical perspective.
Sarah Stutterheim is an assistant professor at the Department of Work and Social Psychology. Her research is mixed-method and focuses primarily on social stigma and its effects, particularly among vulnerable groups.
Gina Grandy: is a professor and dean at Hill and Levene Schools of Business. Her primary research interests are in leadership, gender, stigma, and identity.
Abstract: Consider the messages that Western, patriarchal cultures create and disseminate about femininity: that it is weak, passive, deceitful, and manipulative. Systems of male domination devalue femininity relative to hegemonic masculinity by framing feminine attributes as opposite and in service to men and masculinity, and naturalising these characteristics to female and feminine bodies. Much gender studies scholarship critiques the constraints of feminine socialisation in patriarchy. While such feminist critiques are important and necessary, they also unwittingly uphold the second-class status of femininity, reduce the complexity of all femininities, and erase the presence and power of multiple types of femininity. In this article, the authors situate their analysis in femme theory to show how, under specific conditions, feminine ways of being are powerful on their own terms. Drawing on data from exotic dancers and bedside nurses, the authors operationalise four types of feminine power: yielding, re-direction, vulnerability, and establishing connections, arguing that feminine strategies do not universally serve hegemonic masculinity, do yield success, and do increase joy.
Dr.Bernadette Barton is Professor of Sociology and Director of Gender Studies at Morehead State University. She is the author of Stripped: More Stories from Exotic Dancers (2017), Pray the Gay Away: The Extraordinary Lives of Bible Belt Gays (2014), and The Pornification of America: How Raunch Culture is Ruining Our Society (forthcoming). Barton writes and lectures on contemporary issues of gender, sexuality, religion, culture, and the sex industry.
Dr. Lisa C. (Ruchti) Huebner is a feminist sociologist and Professor of Women’s and Gender Studies at West Chester University of Pennsylvania. She is author of Catheters, Slurs, and Pick-up Lines: Professional Intimacy in Hospital Nursing (2012). Huebner writes, teaches, and appears in media about issues related to intersectionality, care work, sexual harassment and other forms of power-based violence.
Abstract: This paper explores the discursive constructions of femininity and masculinity expressed by incels (involuntary celibates). Incels make up an online subculture of men who define themselves by their inability to find a romantic partner or to gain sexual access. They are one of many self-identified ideological groups that surface online in the manosphere. Situated within a new wave of misogyny, incels blame feminism for disrupting a natural order whereby women and broader societal structure is organized around heterosexual, monogamous couplings (Zimmerman, Ryan, & Duriesmith, 2018). Using femmephobia as a lens, this paper examines how incels employ heteropatriarchal conceptions of emphasized femininity to both devalue women and describe pervasive social conditions that force them to remain celibate. Femmephobia conceptualizes women’s expressions of femininity as inherently performative and directed towards a masculine subject. Through an online ethnography of incel-identified subreddits and a deep-reading of Elliot Rodger’s manifesto My Twisted World: The Story of Elliot Rodger, this paper situates incel discourse within contemporary work on critical femininity. It finds that incels use gendered actors (Stacy, Becky, and Chad) to illustrate and explain their status as incels. Further, these actors all operate within heteropatriarchal understandings of gender, and operationalize femininity or hegemonic masculinity for social capital. Through the use of these actors, incels demonstrate how they view sexual access and relationships as a unique form of capital that they are denied. Using Bourdieu’s (1986) concept of capital and Hakim’s (2011a; 2011b) understanding of erotic capital, this paper develops the concept of socio-sexual capital to understand how femininity and hegemonic masculinity are understood within online incel-identified communities and incel ideology. Taking gender as its starting point, this paper contributes to the emerging field of critical femininity through an understanding of misogyny and femmephobia expressed through constructions of femininity and hegemonic masculinity by incel-created gendered actors.
Lauren Menzie is a PhD candidate in the Department of Sociology at the University of Alberta. She has research interests and had published in the areas of quasi-criminal law and governance, online engagements with law and sexual violence, the evolution of Canadian laws governing sexual offending, and discourses around sexual consent.
Abstract: In Western philosophy, vulnerability and femininity have been positioned as subordinate and weak. Reparative readings of selfies can offer a way to reclaim both vulnerability and femininity as generative, connective, and political. In this paper, I examine femme selfies collected during an online ethnography of femme internet culture on Instagram. I draw from critical feminist scholarship on vulnerability and reparative readings of selfies to argue that selfies are a practice in vulnerability, and therefore a mode of embracing the feminine and feminine resistance. Using visual discourse analysis to read the selected selfies, I argue that femmes strategically mobilize vulnerability via selfies to (re)shape femme identity, create femme communities, and to make political claims about femme lives.
Andi Schwartz has a PhD in Gender, Feminist, and Women's Studies from York University. Her research interests include femme subjectivities, critical femininities, online subcultures and coun- terpublics, and radical softness. Andi also holds a Master's in Gender, Feminist and Women's Studies from York University and a Bachelor of Journalism from Carleton University. Her acad- emic work has been published in Psychology & Sexuality, First Monday, Feral Feminisms, Ada: A Journal of Gender, New Media and Technology, and the anthology On the Politics of Ugliness, edited by Sara Rodrigues and Ela Przybylo. She co-authored a chapter on Carly Rae Jepsen for the anthology, The Spaces and Places of Canadian Pop Culture, edited by Neil Shyminsky and Victoria Kannen.
Abstract: Drawing on interviews with fifteen queer fat femme women and gender nonconforming individuals, I explore queer fat femmes’ negotiations of dating in contemporary queer communities in Canada. Using thematic analysis to analyse the interviews, I identify how queer fat femmes’ experiences of dating in queer communities are often characterised by rejection and fetishisation. These experiences have significant and negative impacts, generating feelings of undesirability, fear, and failure. I connect the marginalisation of queer fat femmes in queer dating contexts to the reproduction and circulation of fatphobia and femmephobia in queer communities. Finally, I suggest that queer fat femmes’ responses to their marginalisation in queer dating contexts reflect resilience, as they find ways to navigate their oppressions and fulfill their needs.
Allison Taylor is a PhD candidate in the department of Gender, Feminist and Women’s Studies at York University. Taylor’s SSHRC-funded, doctoral research explores queer fat femme identities, embodiments, and negotiations of femmephobia, fatphobia, and other intersecting oppressions in Canada. Her work has been published in places such as Fat Studies: An Interdisciplinary Journal of Body Weight and Society, Psychology & Sexuality, and the Journal of Lesbian Studies.
Abstract: Prejudice towards trans women is an under-examined but a critical social problem in Turkey. Patriarchal femininity sanctions women who do not comply with the idealised female bodies and feminine norms. On the other hand, ideals of hegemonic masculinity necessitate that men avoid femininity. In that sense, prejudice against trans women ostensibly stands at the intersection of hegemonic masculinity ideology and femininities that diverge from patriarchal feminine norms. Therefore, this study examines the mediatory effect of femmephobia in the link between masculinity ideology and prejudice towards trans women as measured by negative affect and social distancing motivations. Results indicate that femmephobia significantly mediates the relationship between the endorsement of masculinity ideology and prejudice towards trans women. Among three mandates of masculinity ideology, the endorsement of the antifemininity mandate was the most solid indirect predictor of negative affect and social distance through femmephobia, followed by mandates of toughness and status, respectively. Although participant gender does not have an indirect effect on the outcome variables, it has a direct effect on men’s social distancing intentions but not on negative emotions. The results are discussed in the light of existing literature which intersects with the devaluation of femininity.
Beril Türkoğlu has received her PhD in social psychology from the Middle East Technical University, Turkey, in 2019. She had been visiting scholar at the University of South Florida, Gender and Interpersonal Relations Dynamics Lab, USA. Her research is mainly focused on the dynamics of precarious manhood and womanhood; prejudice and discrimination towards sexual and gender minorities; and gender stereotypes. She is also interested in political psychology with a specific focus on socio-political attitudes and political orientation. She has been an active member of Initiative for Critical Studies of Masculinities (ICSM) in Turkey, and a member of an editorial board of Masculinities: A Journal of Identity and Culture. She works as an assistant professor at Ankara Medipol University since 2019.
Gülden Sayılan is a social psychologist from Turkey who has received her PhD degree from Middle East Technical University. Her research interests include social psychology of gender, prejudice and discrimination against sexual and gender minorities, masculinity studies and political psychology. She has co-authored several articles and book chapters related to prejudice and discrimination against gender minorities. Also, she has been a member of editorial board of the international peer reviewed journal named Masculinities: A Journal of Identity and Culture since 2013. She has been working as a research assistant at Ankara Yıldırım Beyazıt University.
Abstract: Finding power within femininity, typically through masculinised dimensions of femininity, has long been a mechanism through which to recuperate feminised identities, experiences, and aesthetics within feminism. However, privileging powerfulness to the exclusion of dimensions of powerlessness, such as vulnerability, pathologizes femininity and maintains masculinism within feminism. Using queer femme autoethnography alongside intersectional feminist, femme, queer, and critical race theories, I demonstrate this tension surrounding how feminist feminine-of-centre folx negotiate masculinist pressures related to powerfulness and powerlessness in order to be considered properly feminist. I argue that continuing to prioritise powerfulness exclusively within feminism leaves little space for valuing femininized experiences, affects, and qualities, which are concomitant components of femininity. Ultimately, I conclude that the one-dimensional assertion that femininity is powerful, and only acceptable or potentially feminist when powerful, serves as a re-instantiation of a masculinist recuperation framework within feminism’s relationship to femininity. I assert that moving forward critical femininity studies should advocate for moving towards an acceptance framework regarding feminism and femininity in order to move beyond individualistic debates surrounding acceptable feminist femininities.
Jocelyne Bartram Scott is a Visiting Assistant Professor of Women's and Gender Studies at Texas Tech University. Her research focuses on the intersections of critical femininity studies with feminist and queer theory and critical race theory. Her current major research project addresses the role of femmephobia in homosocial community creation for marginalized populations.