Can femme be theory? Exploring the epistemological and methodological possibilities of femme.

Abstract: Narrative-works are the lifeblood of femme scholarship. Through this medium, femmes write themselves into existence. In this article, I begin with my own story of femme and examine the backdrop of patriarchal femininity that positions pieces of me as being at odds, disjointed, and something needing to be reconciled. Indeed, many current frameworks and dominant framings for understanding femininity create disjunctures needing to be reconciled and fail to include diverse feminine perspectives in ways that constitute epistemic and hermeneutical injustices. Using my own femme becoming as a guide, I offer this process of femme reconcilement as a framework that can be applied to dislodge feminine normativity and challenge the assumptions researchers make about femininity within their work. In this article I highlight the importance of femme epistemologies; the importance of valuing feminine knowledge, and how the absented femme highlights the continued god-trick of objectivity. Here, I discuss how femme narratives can be used to bolster femme as theory and critical analytic. This situated knowledge holds the possibility to inform novel methodological frameworks and to substantially shift the way researchers think about femininity and feminine people.

Rhea Ashley Hoskin is an interdisciplinary feminist sociologist and an Ontario Women’s Health Scholar working as a postdoctoral researcher in the departments of gender studies & psychology at Queen’s University. Rhea’s work focuses on femininities, femme theory, femme identities, critical femininities, and femmephobia. In particular, her work examines perceptions of femininity and sources of prejudice rooted in the devaluing or regulation of femininity.

What do glitter, pointe shoes, & plastic drumsticks have in common? Using femme theory to consider the reclamation of disciplinary beauty/body practices

Abstract: This article focuses on the lived experiences of femme identity. I use the history of femme, growing out of a specifically lesbian context wherein femininity is queered through its refusal of heterosexual consumption to approach the broader messiness between femme-ininity and normative femininity. I draw on feminist and queer analytics, femme theory, and autotheory to argue that femme-ininity is always liminal and may be better understood not as a stable gendered practice reliant upon queerness for legitimation but as a non-fixed gendered practice that is femme on its own terms. Through an examination of my firsthand experiences of femme-ininity I demonstrate the ways that dominant conceptions of femme-ininity do not necessarily reflect my own experiences as a femme, particularly due to the legitimating force others (e.g. romantic partners) play in achieving femme-ininity. I advance a revised definition of femme-ininity that focuses primarily on intentional enjoyment of feminine embodiment rather than strictly sexuality in order to re-center femme practitioners themselves. Using athletic case studies to test this definition, I demonstrate that the juxtaposition between heteropatriarchal resistance and heteropatriarchal compliance used to frame comparisons between femme-ininity and normative femininity is less representative of femme experience than the recognition that femme gender transgressions coexist alongside internalized oppressions.

Jocelyne Bartram Scott, PhD is a Visiting Assistant Professor of Women’s and Gender Studies at Texas Tech University. Her research interests focus on the intersections of femmephobia, queer theory, and homosocial community creation among marginalized populations.

The Cauxin-femme binary:
Femme performativity as a response to violence in Guyana

Abstract: The Caribbean region has a long history of violence and conflict due to colonization and contemporary neocolonial policies and structures. The region’s political, economic, and social climate is overshadowed by activism that centers legal repeal of homophobic laws left intact by colonial powers. These movements have created a polarization between the mainstream groups seeking legal changes, and those who are denied and erased from these discourses. This article is an examination of lesbian, bisexual, queer and gay women of mixed-race middle-class status in the city of Georgetown, Guyana as they negotiate racialized heteropatriarchal violence, a space that offers a unique place in which to understand how different queer subjects experience violence within Guyana. This article examines a set of interrelated questions: In what ways do women who love women perceive their gender performances? In what ways is femme-ness embodied to resist violence and yet is a site of violence? The analysis reveals the ways in which women embody a strategic femme-ness in a political, racial, class, and gender hierarchical society. As the country becomes increasingly incorporated into a global queer culture, divisions within the queer community are further sharpened, with racial, class, sexual, gender, and regional boundaries shifting and forging new lived realities for queer subjects.

Preity Kumar holds a Ph.D. in gender, feminist and women’s Studies from York University, Toronto, Canada. Her work examines same-sex women’s relationships, violence and LGBTQ rights in Guyana and within the broader Caribbean. She has taught at York University and George Brown College. Additionally, she is a co-founder of Lotus, a community organization in Toronto which works with Caribbean women that addresses issues of domestic violence, poverty, marginalization and lack of spaces in the city.

Queer eye for the housewife: Julianne Moore, radical femme-ininity, and destabilizing the suburban family

Abstract: This article uses the concept of “radical femme-ininity” to signal the queering of femininity as a political gesture, one that relies on misinterpretations of cisgender femininity as straight in order to disrupt normative expectations around gender roles and gendered behavior. I situate my analysis in relation to theories about femme identity, femininity in heteronormative spaces, and queerness/lesbianism as a productively destabilizing lens with which to engage media representation. I focus on the role of the housewife as one of the most seemingly banal and yet fraught positions historically presented to (white, middle-class) women. Particularly, I examine how actor Julianne Moore embodies these roles via a radically femme-inine representation that queers and refuses social convention. Normative articulations of the housewife writ large cast her as a guardian of familial and marital integrity. As such, housewife characters can destabilize ideas around marriage, domestic labor, motherhood, and feminine virtue from within the context of legible—but not always actual—heteronormativity. Moore often plays characters who question feminine behavioral norms and operate under the cloak of femme-ness (both straight and queer) to buck social expectation. This essay explores two of Moore’s films in which her character’s radical femme-ninity and lesbian identification unsettle expectations of her role as a housewife: The Hours and The Kids are All Right.

Aviva Dove-Viebahn, PhD, is an Assistant Professor of Film and Media Studies at Arizona State University and a Contributing Editor for the Scholar Writing Program at Ms. Magazine.

Theorizing TL esthetics: Forming a femme gaze through yes or no 2.5

Abstract: After a long fight, same-sex marriage in Taiwan became legal on 24 May 2019. This milestone does not however address the hegemony that exists inside queer communities, namely, the idea that femininity is the excluded other in gay communities and that femmes are perceived as potential traitors within Taiwanese lesbian society. Such misogynistic ideologies render queer communities less democratic and egalitarian than imagined. This paper coins the term “butchiarchy” as part of an analysis of the Thai lesbian film, Yes or No 2.5 (2015), a box-office hit in Taiwan, in order to reveal the hierarchical structure pervasive within lesbian communities. While reinforcing a butchiarchal norm, the film also mobilizes a femme gaze that plays with the scenes depicting the ambivalent affection between the two butch characters, which echoes the BL (Boys’ Love/Yaoi) fever that has swept the popular culture industry in East Asian countries. To distinguish from BL, this paper intends to adopt the term “TL,” as T stands for butch in East Asia, to describe the concept of “Butches’ Love,” which differentiates from BL that emphasizes Boys’ love. By rethinking terms through which femme is represented as well as experienced, this paper points out how, on the one hand, femme is constantly abjected in order to affirm a constructed lesbian sexuality that problematically recognizes butch as the priori lesbian agent. On the other hand, the femme gazes troubles the butchiarchal surveillance that denies homosexuality in femmes and thus creates a possible scenario that recognizes the operative power of the sub-minority.

Fan-Ting Cheng holds a PhD in Theatre and Performance Studies from the University of California, Los Angeles. She is currently an Associate Professor in Graduate Institute of Taiwan Literature at National Taiwan University. Her academic interests include contemporary performance, queer politics, island discourse, and pop culture.

TBG and Po: Discourses on authentic desire in 2010s lesbian subcultures in Hong Kong, China, and Taiwan

Abstract: Across lesbian communities in Hong Kong, China (PRC), and Taiwan (ROC), a group of masculine-presenting, assigned-female-at-birth individuals have come to be known as tomboys. Their partners are often normatively-feminine women who are labeled po (wife) in the mandarin-speaking China and Taiwan and TBG (“TomBoy’s Girl”) in the former colony. Throughout the late twentieth century and the 2000s, po and TBG had been conceptualized as latent heterosexuals whose heterosexuality was “falsely” displaced onto the tomboy lover, and it was also widely suspected that these women would eventually return to their “true” heteronormative lives. On the other hand, the 2010s era also sees queer women in the three Chinese societies increasingly leaning towards doing away with tomboy, TBG, po and all kinds of sexual identity categories altogether. How has the decades-old image of the “falsely-desiring” TBG/po evolved in this context of postidentity politics? In what ways is TBG/po desire imagined to be “real” or “fake”? And how has the true/false framework itself been transformed by postcategory yearnings? This article traces the shifting discourses on “authentic desire” ascribed to TBG and po women by first examining two media texts popular in the three lesbian circles—Yes or No and Girls Love—and second by looking into how women in these circles interpret these texts.

Carman K. M. Fung is a PhD candidate at the University of Melbourne. She has previously received a MPhil in multidisciplinary gender studies at the University of Cambridge and a BA in comparative literature at the University of Hong Kong.

Why femme stories matter: Constructing femme theory through historical femme life writing

Abstract: We argue that historical femme life writing forms a rich resource for femme theory that contributes to, challenges, and extends contemporary academic femme literature. We focus on the experiences of femmes during the second-wave feminist movement, specifically within the context of 1970s and 1980s U.S. lesbian feminism. The texts we examine include My Dangerous Desires by Amber Hollibaugh (2000), A Restricted Country by Joan Nestle (1987), Minnie Bruce Pratt’s (1995) S/he, and selections from The Persistent Desire: A Femme-Butch Reader, edited by Nestle (1992). Informed by Clare Hemmings’ (2011) and Victoria Hesford’s (2013) critiques that past feminisms are often retold using reductive narratives, we (re)read this femme life writing to foreground the ways in which femmes have historically troubled and resisted monolithic accounts of lesbian feminism, lesbian identities, femininity, and sexuality. By centering queer feminine voices from this period to highlight major themes of this life writing, and drawing on Andi Schwartz’s (2018) positioning of femme cultural production as a basis for theory, we argue that earlier iterations of queer femininities are relevant to and important for contemporary femme theory. Ultimately, we analyze what historical femme life writing reveals about the place of femininity within the lesbian and feminist communities of their time, how these dynamics inform current perceptions of queer and femme politics, and how femmes resist their cultural and critical marginalization.

Laura Brightwell is a Ph.D. candidate in the department of Gender, Feminist and Women's Studies at York University where she researches femmephobia in queer communities and seeks to develop a femme theory through femme cultural production.

Allison Taylor is a Ph.D. candidate in the department of Gender, Feminist and Women’s Studies at York University where she researches queer fat femme identities and embodiments alongside their strategies for resisting femmephobia and fatphobia in Canadian queer communities.

Making intelligible the controversies over femme identities: A functionalist approach to conceptualizing the subversive meanings of femme genders

Abstract: Quite a number of heated arguments have been put forth in the controversy about the meanings and appropriate uses of femme identities. In this article, the authors apply a functionalist theoretical framework, developed to explicate the links between gender and gender identities, to reframe the disputes about femme gender. They position two femme identities as responding to distinctive forms of oppression—one that centralizes the affirmation of gender diversity in the face of cisgenderism, and one that centralizes lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender, and queer (LGBTQ+) femininity to counter femmephobia. They consider the subversive functions of the two identities in terms of unmet needs across four domains. These needs include the need for authenticity in identity (psychological domain); for the prizing of socially devalued characteristics (cultural domain); for security and affiliation (interpersonal domain); and for aesthetic desirability rather than shame (sexual domain). Instead of seeing the two femme identities as at odds, they see them as serving some shared functions, but also distinctive functions in resisting stigma of varied forms. The framework can be applied to other forms of femme-inity (and other genders) to distinguish the varied meanings inherent in gender identities and facilitate research that advances gender theory.

Heidi M. Levitt, Ph.D., is a Professor in the Clinical Psychology program at the University of Massachusetts Boston. She is a past-president of the Society for Qualitative Inquiry in Psychology and is a fellow of American Psychological Association Division 5 [Quantitative and Qualitative Methods], Division 29 [Society for the Advancement of Psychotherapy], Division 32 [Society of Humanistic Psychology], and Division 44 [Society for the Psychology of Sexual Orientation and Gender Diversity].

Kathleen M. Collins, MA, is a doctoral candidate in clinical psychology at the University of Massachusetts Boston. She studies the processes through which heterosexism impacts LGBTQ + mental health using mixed methods.

“Femme ain’t frail”: (re)considering femininity, aging, and gender theory

We analyze the intersection of femme, aging, and later-in-life disability by using the popular, contemporary slogan “femme ain’t frail” to explore who is erased, excluded, and overlooked when fem(me)ininity is conceptualized as strong, fierce, and chosen. Building from Lisa Walker’s position that dominant femme discourse marginalizes the experiences of aging femmes, we analyze the narratives of Amber Hollibaugh, Joan Nestle, Mary Frances Platt and Sharon Wachsler to explore femme experiences of later-in-life disability and aging, and to further trouble existing, popular constructions of femme identity that are predicated upon youth and able-bodiedness. We elaborate on discourses of femme and frailty, bringing them together to explore the ways femme is or, can be, frail. Insofar as femme is located in vulnerability, and vulnerability is associated with frailty, we see how femme might, indeed, be frail, and why this relationship is important to explore, not disavow. We contend that considerations of the frailty of fem(me)ininity can challenge the ageist and ableist orientation of contemporary femme politics and the broader cultural devaluation of fem(me)ininity.

Jami McFarland is a PhD candidate in the Department of Women’s Studies & Feminist Research at Western University. McFarland’s SSHRC-funded, doctoral research focuses on representations of LGBT/Queer aging in Canadian and American film and television.

Allison Taylor is a PhD candidate in the department of Gender, Feminist and Women’s Studies at York University. Taylor’s SSHRC-funded dissertation research explores queer fat femme identities and embodiments alongside their strategies for resisting femmephobia and fatphobia in Canadian queer communities.