Challenging femmephobia

[johanna_hypatia]

Disparaging or even hostile attitudes toward femmes and femininity I've often heard from both cis women and trans women invite a look at a hatred that I've found to be very prevalent and yet hardly ever acknowledged, let alone analyzed. We need to call it out for what it is, another form of misogynyI suppose in response to comments I've encountered

Comments

[nodesignation]

Yeah, I was a bit frustrated with those comments as well. It's hard to decide what to focus on when there is so much to respond to.

Like invisione, I think that the devaluing of femininity is a society-wide pattern. The straight patriarchal world might expect femininity in women, but that's because it expects women to be weak and helpless. Even in the good ole boys club of CEOs and corporate power, the only women who get ahead are the ones who take on some traditionally masculine traits (and often end up getting called bitches because of it).

I think many of these conversations miss a lot by focusing only within a specific space (in my experience, queer cis women, sometimes discussing trans guys as well). Let me share a recent experience:

I was in a discussion specifically on this subject where they were comparing the experiences of cis women femmes and cis women butches and masculine trans guys (no femme trans guys were around in fact, there were only two people who were questioning if they might be trans guys). The masculine identified folk were all adamant that they received no privilege for their masculine behavior because it cost them so much to be gender non-conforming or trans. They couldn't separate out being gender non-conforming or trans from being masculine. From their perspective, it was the same thing. It was their blind spot because they could only see cis femme women and masculine trans men.

But if you widen the perspective to look at trans women, femme cis men, femme trans men, etc, then the devaluing of femininity and privileging of masculinity becomes more clear as a dynamic separate from transphobia. Alternately, when entering patriarchal cis-centric spaces, femme cis women might gain some privilege for meeting gender expectations, but are still experiencing a devaluing of their femininity.

[johanna_hypatia]

Thank you. I got especially jazzed by your observation:When trans women and transfeminine genderqueers are assumed to be conformist, apolitical, and weak while trans men and transmasculine genderqueers are assumed to be radical, with it, and hip, that’s transmisogyny (and femmephobia, and subversivism).

That needed so badly to be said. Before Julia Serano published Whipping Girl, I thought I'd been all alone in thinking this. Likewise, it was a thrill to find your analysis stating it even more strongly and succinctly. (What does subversivism mean?)

Alternately, when entering patriarchal cis-centric spaces, femme cis women might gain some privilege for meeting gender expectations, but are still experiencing a devaluing of their femininity.

Exactly-- that's why I felt it necessary to situate my complaint within the milieu of queer feminism, where I'm at home.

I've had to process my share of guilt in queer space as I admire my courageous gender-variant sisters with all the crap they have to take from the world, while I skate through life as a straight-acting woman who isn't straight at all. Thus the "subversive" angle if I feel called on to justify who I am. Or "secret agent" as in Melissa Etheridge's clever song. And trans people wrote the damn book on survival through having to pretend to be someone they're not.

My main point was that anyone with feminist consciousness and queer sexuality, no matter how superficially conforming, will experience pain and struggle when in those patriarchal spaces (i.e. life in general). To be accused by our comrades of capitulating to that oppressive system when we're inherently just as against it is an extra level of pain and oppression that we really don't need, coming from our own side.