Femme (/fɛm/pronunciationⓘ;[1]French:[fam], literally meaning'woman') is a term traditionally used to describe alesbian woman who exhibits afeminine identity orgender presentation.[2][3][4] While commonly viewed as a lesbian term, alternate meanings of the word also exist with some non-lesbian individuals using the word,[5][4] notably somegay men andbisexuals.[1] Somenon-binary andtransgender individuals also identify as lesbians using this term.[6]
Heavily associated with lesbianhistory andculture,[3]femme has been used among lesbians to distinguish traditionally feminine lesbians from theirbutch (i.e. masculine) lesbian counterparts and partners.[a] Derived from American lesbian communities followingWorld War II when women joined the workforce,[7] the identity became a characteristic of the working-classlesbian bar culture of the 1940s–1950s.[9] By the 1990s, the termfemme had additionally been adopted by bisexual women.[7]
Scholars Heidi M. Levitt and Sara K. Bridges state that the termsbutch andfemme are derived from the 1940s–1950s American lesbian communities following World War II "when women joined the work force and began wearing pants, creating the possibility for the development of a butch aesthetic andgender expression within gay women's communities." They state that "the butch–femme culture made lesbians visible for the first time."[7]
Femme lesbian scholarJoan Nestle describes the femme lesbian identity as being underrepresented in historical records, with femme women having been often attacked for passing as straight while also being accused of imitatingheteronormativity for pairing with a butch partner. In Nestle's text on femme identity, "The Femme Question", she challenges this commonly held belief by stating that butch–femme relationships are "filled with a deeply lesbian language of stance, dress, gesture, love, courage and autonomy."[10] Arlene Istar Lev argues that through their subversive appropriation of heteronormative gender roles, these identities were considered "complex erotic and social statements" rooted in "gendered erotic identities".[6] Nestle states that they publicly declared same-sex love between women at a time when there was no liberation movement to support or protect them, and adds that "in the 1950s particularly, butch–femme couples were the front-line warriors against sexual bigotry. Because they were so visible, they suffered the brunt of street violence. The irony of social change has made a radical, sexual, political statement of the 1950s appear today a reactionary, non feminist experience."[10]
Lesbian feminism saw a rejection of thebutch–femme dynamic and therefore femme identity. During the emergence of lesbian feminism, femme lesbians were accused by prominent lesbian feminist figures of apingpatriarchal beauty standards for wearing traditional feminine clothing. Black lesbian feminist poet and activistAudre Lorde wrote inTar Beach that "butch and femme role playing was the very opposite of what we felt being gay was all about – the love of women".[11]
Many bisexual women also active in the lesbian community felt pressured to identify as "lesbian", resulting inbisexual erasure factoring into the history offemme identities.[12] This is further impacted by the fact that bisexual communities and the related bisexual movement did not formalize until the 1970s.[12][13]
During the 1990s and the emergence of thelipstick lesbian identity into the mainstream,femme became a catch-all term to describe a feminine lesbian. Citing research from the 1990s, Levitt and Bridges stated that the termsbutch andfemme "began infiltrating bisexual communities, and women began writing about their experiences as bisexual femmes", but also that "very little empirical research has been conducted looking at the expression and experience of gender expression and gender identity within bisexual women."[7]
With expansion of the femme identity, sexual attraction differences between butches and femmes began to be analyzed.[7] ScholarsCheris Kramarae andDale Spender wrote, "Femme diversity is also manifested in the sexual arena. As many femmes may be attracted exclusively to butches, some are attracted to other femmes, and still others are also attracted to men and consider themselves bisexual."[14] Some research has indicated that butches are more likely to be exclusively lesbian, while femmes are sometimes bisexual.[8] In 2005, preliminary research conducted by Levitt and Bridges indicated that lesbians are more likely to identify as butch and have a more masculine gender expression than bisexual women. 4.5 percent of the bisexual women they studied identified as butch compared to the 30.1 percent of lesbians who did.[7] Lesbians were more sexually attracted to women whose gender expressions contrasted theirs, and bisexual women were more sexually attracted to those whose gender expressions were more similar to theirs. Levitt and Bridges theorized that "this finding may be in part due to the different aesthetics that are available and popular within lesbian and bisexual communities."[7]
The termfemme has also been used to refer togender non-conforming people who do not identify as lesbian or totransgender ornon-binary people. In 1994,Kate Bornstein chronicled their experience as a gender non-conforming person who is a femme lesbian in their bookGender Outlaw.[15] Praising the publication ofIvan Coyote'sPersistence: All Ways Butch and Femme in 2011, Bornstein said, "The butch/femme dynamic is a conscious, loving binary of desire and trust ... it's a dance of love and outlawed romance. Butches and femmes share a sense of tribe, extended family and kinship—no matter what our genders might be."[16] Since the late 2010s, influenced by the emergence of queer and transgender culture on sites such asTumblr, Everyday Feminism, andAutostraddle,femme has been expanded to describe feminine people across gender and sexuality categories includingheterosexual women,cisgender men andtransfeminine people.[17][18][19][20]
Thepostmodern queer conception of femme is a femme-identified person who does not always dress or act in a "traditionally feminine" (meaning a feminine aesthetic, such as wearing makeup, heels, and numerous accessories) way, but who expresses femme identity through feminine-associated behaviours, interactions and political views.[21] Rather than an erotic identity rooted in lesbian women's culture, queer femme has been reframed into apolitical identity that is inclusive of all who wish to identify with it, feminine-presenting or not. As femme has moved into the mainstream, it has also been connected to notions ofemotional labor,witchcraft andself-empowerment.[22]
Based on the understanding offemme as describing a person (not necessarily a woman) who presents femininely, the expression "women and femmes" is sometimes used, but it has been criticized as conflating two different categories of identity.[23]
Femme has also been used to describe a form of contemporary feminism which rejects thegender binary and acknowledges that individuals can fall anywhere within the gender spectrum, resulting in the possibility to be gender-less, gender-fluid, femme or masculine of center. Often using the phrase "women and femmes", adherents to this definition of femme believe that misogyny is used not only against women to inflict theoretical and physical violence but primarily against all feminine people. Connecting cisgendered male violence to toxic masculinity, they believe that patriarchy not only negatively affects female-identified people but men as well.[21][22][20]
Many prominent femme-identified voices in mainstream media tend to be transfeminine and or non-binary individuals.[24][25][26] The termfemme is also essential toballroom culture through the termsbutch queen andfemme queen, denoting agay man andtransgender woman respectively.[27]
By the 1990s, the termfemme had additionally been adopted bybisexual women. Citing research from the 1990s, Levitt and Bridges stated that the termsbutch andfemme "began infiltrating bisexual communities, and women began writing about their experiences as bisexual femmes", but also that "very little empirical research has been conducted looking at the expression and experience of gender expression and gender identity within bisexual women."[7]
It has however also been argued bybi+ and other queer activists that since the term bisexual is relatively newer than lesbian, and the term bisexual as a sexual orientation only began to take shape in the mid-19th century, bisexual women historically once formed part of the lesbian community and thus used the term femme as a sub-group of lesbians.[28][29] This argument posits that the claim that only women with no attraction to men have identified as femmes is ahistoric.[30]
While today there is a common consensus that the term lesbian refers to women who exclusively feel attraction towards women and femmes, the term has carried various changing implications and expansive interpretations throughout history, particularly with the rise of political lesbianism in 1979.[31]
Hence, the adoption offemme by bisexuals in the 1990s is considered by some to be a re-adoption by a portion of the same community following the distinction between lesbians and bisexual women[32] and the lesbian separatist movement of the 1970s.[33]
Theorists have used aesthetics to analyze and addresses the evolution of the word "femme" throughout the 21st century. Femme theorist Andi Schwartz uses comparisons of modern and historical associations of the femme identity to outline "soft femme theory." She asserts that in the mid-to-late 20th century, "femme" was used to describe rough, badass women. Today, however, especially on social media, the word "femme" is used to describe the "soft, sad girl" trope that is commonly seen online and in trending fashions. While Schwartz offers a critique of this aesthetic and the erasure of pre-internet femme identities, she also considers how "performing softness" as an identifier for femininity, both on and offline, can be effective in transgressing hegemonic gender norms.[34]
From the 70s through 90s, gay male culture included the phrase "No Fats, No Femmes",[35][36] and that persists in queer dating culture today. Constrained by character limitations on gay hookup apps such asGrindr andScruff, "fem", "femm", and "femme" are used as an abbreviation for feminine. The ubiquitous phrase "No Fats, No Fems", indicating that a user does not want to be contacted by men of a certain size orfeminine men, has been challenged by some in the gay community for perpetuatinghomonormative beauty ideals. "Fem" is used as a descriptor of one's appearance or mannerisms.[37][38][39]
The contemporaryqueer concepts of femme have been challenged by lesbians who still use the term based on its original meaning.[40] With concern about theerasure of lesbian culture and history, it has been argued that taking a term from an already marginalised society is a form ofmisogynist appropriation that undervalues lesbian identities, history and women's autonomy to self-identify outside patriarchal structures.[41]
In her paper,Femme Theory: Refocusing the Intersectional Lens, femme theorist Rhea Hoskin offers an intersectional framework of femme theory and addresses the capabilities of subversive femininities. She uses an intersectional lens to address discourse surrounding femme-phobia and the ways in which this issue is not taken seriously as a form of oppression within the queer community and especially in academic feminist queer spaces.[42]
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