femmeimplications

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A needed focus in tomboyism: potential in future academia

The topic of tomboy expression is often shadow in the presumed assumption of a phased part of one’s expression, meaning that it is a category for a girlhood cross-identification and behaviours which will only extend until they grow out of it (Jalas, 2005). The idea of tomboy is often met with an image of a girl in baggy pants, oversized shirts, and baseball hats, wearing their hair short or always tied back. While there are occasional references to tomboys scattered throughout the psychoanalytic literature within female and gender psychology, there is little specific exploration into its existence. Not to any mention how the notion of how tomboyism may intersect into the elements of femme theories. When discussing an unexplored connection like this may be considered, it is important to denounce and explain one's understanding. 

First and foremost, it is important to re reiterate that, unlike femme which is rooted heavily in the LGBTQI2ps+ community having deep intertwined connections into the queer identity, tomboyism does not inherently have ties in this community. The expression of tomboy ranges in ages anywhere from two through to the end of latency (Jalas, 2005). It is too broad of identity to intrinsically encompass the many individuals who develop within this expression; it could be assumed that the amount of spectrums in which interact with tomboyism is at this fault: prehomosexual, prebisexual and preheterosexual, + (Jalas, 2005). Though, it can form the basis for gender and sexual identifications ranging from normative heterosexual femininity identities to transgendered identities, to gender non-conforming. Secondly, the conscious adoption of masculinity has been viewed as a means of demonstrating self-acceptance and maturity (Hoskin, 2020). In this way, we can assume a sense of self-derived comfort felt in the use of the tomboy identity within girls as a way to safely explore their own interworks of their gender expressions (and possible gender identity). However, tomboyism is largely excluded in studies that focus on gender expression (i.e., how one embodies their outwardly presenting choice of gender to the world; typically discussed within the spectrum of masculinity and femininity).

Ones “revealed” or “concealed” gender expression can shape ones subjective interpretations of experiences (Anderson, 2020). The breaking of gender norms has been discussed as a fundamental component and is largely tied to the underlying foundation for discrimination against lesbian, gay, bisexual, and queer individuals (Anderson, 2020). More generally, this has been linked to how gender is psychologically, culturally, socially, and sexually central within LGBTIQ2sp+ lives (Anderson, 2020). Gender expression is the foundation for the perception of both sexual orientation and gender identity and somehow tomboyism is left out of these pivotal explorations. In one study, queer theory was used to examine the role of gender expression in self-contextualization of discriminatory encounters among both cisgender (cis) and transgender (trans) queer+ individuals (Anderson, 2020). This conceptual framework centred article argued that gender expression is a unique and necessarily-dependent lens for conceptualizing anti-queer discrimination (Anderson, 2020). Using an online collection of narrative stories sources by Anderson’s (2020), allowed them to form a racially diverse United States-based sample pool of 138 cisgender and transgender queer individuals. The indelible factor of gender expression yielded a thematic analysis of discrimination narratives being highlighted. These narratives were based around negative founded epithets, objectifying commentary, physical and threat/action of sexual violence (Anderson, 2020). 

However, as tomboy identity is not inherently queer in action, this paper focuses on how the type of discrimination experienced by participates impacted their interpretation of the events. The bases on which the study qualitatively summarized their findings was on whether or not their gender expression “revealed” or “concealed” their queerness (Anderson, 2020). Tomboys automatically have a revealed nonconformity of gender roles; I wonder what their unique experiences within this kind of discriminatory based violence would include. Furthermore, what their interpretations would be on these violations based on the wide cross-identification and complexities of their identity as it works around their gender identity. As mentioned, many tomboy individuals fall within a spectrum of prehomosexual, prebisexual and preheterosexual;  an adequate account of childhood female masculinity would address both potentially celebratory and painful aspects. It may have been beneficiary to the limited body of knowledge surrounding tomboy individuals if Anderson (2020) would have been included them in this study, even if it was a method for comparison. Interestingly, Anderson’s (2020) findings in their data exemplified how violations of gender norm expectations anywhere along the heterosexual matrix is met with an interpersonal and societal derogation and punishment; Tomboyism complicates this relationship. Working past this there would have to be more room for an exploration into how gender health and pathology work around these barriers created by the tomboy group, as the interaction of psychic and social dimensions, would be vast (Jalas, 2005). Gender expression is *arguably* not part of defining the LGBTQ2SP+ community but it is personally felt that tomboyism could only be truly studied in academia by integrating psychoanalytic and femme theoretical frameworks. The main reasoning behind adding the important femme lens within this valuation of tomboyism is due to the theories and terminologies being produced in this framework. These lack in other bodied frameworks and key insight would definitely be lost. For instances, how femmephobia may work within and through these valuations and devaluations of the tomboy experiences. There were no bodies of research which could be found that touched this nor how heteronormativity, Heterosexism and cisism would further complicate tomboyism as a method of gender expression to further these thoughts brought to light in this post.   

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Photo credit: Tomboy Design Co.

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Femme Voices

Femme identity is coated in invisibility which is still very real, and can be extremely difficult to navigate. In order to speak on Femme of centred  implications, it is important to allow for a space of self-agency within this discussion. Prioritizing femme voices felt like a good way to include this factor and will be done by sourcing some direct  quotes  collected by prior articles/blogs.

Artemisia FemmeCock

Yat/Ta 

Maurice Tracy St. Louis

Unnamed participant in study done by Blair & Hoskins (2014)

Aja

Joss Barton St. Louis

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New vulnerabilities emerging in the world of femme

One area only recently being available for study is the use of the internet’s impact on society. Never before has there been such use of social media like today.; through this newly emerging area. opens examination into the intertwining collision with our understandings and perspectives of gender and gender expressions. There has been a steady increase in the discussions on queer feminineness within social media sites, such as here on Tumblr (Blair & Hoskin, 2014).

The term “selfie” first appeared in 2002 on an Australian online forum and is considered a self-portrait taken in the technocultural context of smartphones and/or front directed cameras typically posted to social media platforms in a public (Schwartz, 2020). For many there is no forethought about these now normalized photos, however, some scholars are beginning to link a cultural value and meaning behind selfies. Often linking to a sense of stigmatizing self-portraiture behind the screen of the one who posts and where these stigmatic ideologies are coming from (Schwartz, 2020). Unsurprisingly, the posting and responses to selfies have began to be tied to gender and gender expression in relation to how they are judged within their domain (Schwartz, 2020).

Femme has been conceptualized many ways (for a better understanding I recommend reading some prior blog posts!), in its most simplified understandings, it is a descriptor (primarily rooted in an identity understanding) where a queer person presents themselves and acts within a traditionally feminine manner. However, for femme to more so stand on its own, it relates to the normative, dualistic, binary conception of gender identity; there is a unique focus based in subverting these feminine founded expectation in which women must face purely for being women (or binaurally feminine). Femme as a theoretical framework supplementary provides a link to the concept of vulnerability (Schwartz, 2020). Vulnerability is feminized in society and is equated with a sense of devaluation which transients’ across any and all genders (as identity and within expressions) and sexual identities (Blair & Hoskin, 2014.; Schwartz, 2020). Distinctly, feminine shapes of ‘vulnerability’ are due to our societal tendency of linking feminine connotations with things like weakness, softness, dependency and subordination. All of this ties into the notion of femmephobia, which is a discrimination mindset that focuses on the devaluation and regulation of femininity (Blair & Hoskin, 2014). 

With this in mind, one study took the conception of femme selfies which allowed them to view responses to social media posts within this context of vulnerability as constituted by corporeal openness, psychological openness, and an openness to the other (Schwartz, 2020). Observing the behaviour need that is made by individuals social human needs, it created these vulnerable openings. Using the social substructure that is created within the femmephobic framework, one can see how an overt expressing of emotions or the desire for interdependence can be understood in terms of pathology and further becomes feminized: for example the notions of, “crazy,” “clingy,” or “needy” (Schwartz, 2020).

Schwatz (2020) views femmes taking, posting, and sharing selfies of themselves as an act of facing vulnerability by laying bare not only their faces and bodies (demonstrating corporeal openness) but their experiences and emotions, too: demonstrating psychological openness (Schwartz, 2020). Tackling the underlying hypothesis that vulnerability is one of the critical axes of femme internet culture (Schwartz, 2020). By basing the findings on six-months worth of online ethnography (ie. the scientific description of the customs of individual peoples and cultures) of femme internet culture on Instagram (Schwartz, 2020). As a participant-observe, Schwatz (2020) used their own research-based account to provide a description, an introductory explanation post, and  then specifically followed other femme accounts focused on intersecting marginalized identities, like radicalization, disability, fatness, and transgender identities  (Schwartz, 2020). Totalling four self posts which were posted on the research account acquired 79 followers and followed 114 users, Schwartz then interviewed seven femme Instagram account/operators additionally, continuously recording many other relevant posts that they came across (Schwartz, 2020). The seven interviewees were from a range of backgrounds including racial, ableness/sanism abilities, and a range of classes, sexual orientations, and gender identities (Schwartz, 2020). 

*Importantly, they (the 7 interviewed) all posted femme centred posts/selfies, not always of themselves.*

This study was approved by the Office of Research Ethics at York University, and there were some interesting findings (Schwartz, 2020). In terms of corporal vulnerability, there was a base connection between vulnerability and visibility in femme Instagram culture, femmes used selfies to illustrate femme aesthetics; this is important due to the insight is then offered into what “femme” means  (Schwartz, 2020). In regards to the psychosocial vulnerabilities, the various experiences and emotions portrayed by those interviewed and additionally in the postings of the selfies themselves (Schwartz, 2020). The conception of the femme selfies allows femmes to have a sense of strategically accessing vulnerability, navigating some of the politics and builds on their voices and input in the discussions of femme aesthetics within/through social media usage (Schwartz, 2020). Schwartz (2020) study provides implicit insight into how these Instagram influencers navigated femmephobia and/or femme-bashing they faced within their virtual context.

“Celebrating the transfeminine body in this way [openly positing] while simultaneously naming the violence it endures is [I personally note this as a form of absent-minded agency] both an act of femme representation and a way of transforming vulnerability into an act of resistance to transphobia, cisnormativity, racism, and femmephobia (especially as they explicitly attribute this violence to cissexism and transphobia)”

By solely posting femme peoples, therefore, is a sort of political action and utilizes the feminist strategy of laying bare one’s body and lived experiences; connecting these experiences to larger social ~and systemic~ systems as mentioned in this quote (Schwartz, 2020). By connecting these individual’s experiences within various and intersecting systemic oppressions is how selfies become political and most importantly powerful.

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Why Femme Identity

Positionality makes a big difference in femme identity and for this reason alone it is often met with a sense of resistance at attempts to categorize the identity (Shewan, 2019). The notion of femme is all about stepping outside of traditional femininity, and into the realm of differentiating how femme and femininity are not synonymous (Shewan, 2019). In order to do this, we should first denounce this understanding of the two terms so that this can be explained.

Femininity refers to the socially constructed idea of what is feminine; this is not necessarily queer or tied to a specific gender expression but typically works within the binaries of cisnormative dialogue in which we typically find it. While invisible at points, the idea of femme has always and should always be more than masculinity’s counterpart, working in a mindset of a progressive identity, and gender expression seeping with radically (Hoskin, 2020).

Femme identity has more or less evolved into the framework of one queering femininity as an expression in oneself. The overall understandings of femme identity have been heavily impacted by the apprehension of gender conceptions beyond the scope of butch/femme (Hoskin, 2020). Femme theory works around a cisheteronormative notion of gender allowing for space where queer grasps of genders can grow. For example, femme theory can be a space where butch nonbinary transfeminine women can have a space in which their voices, experience, background, and cross reaching identities can be archived in a comprehensive setting. incompetency around what femme is or is not also challenged the notion of how trans people navigate their understands of self gender placement; a Transwomen should not have to be high femme to be gendered correctly.

One resourceful academic article (Levitt and Collins, 2020) examines the controversy about the meanings and appropriate uses of femme identities in a functionalist theoretical framework (ie. a framework that sees society as a complex system whose parts work together to promote solidarity and stability)

In order to examine this further the authors Levitt and Collins (2020), developed an explicate the links between gender and gender identities as discussed earlier, in order to reframe the disputes about femme gender. Looking at the links in a psychological domain, cultural domain, Interpersonal domain,

And sexual domain (Levitt and Collins, 2020). With this in mind, they are able to 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 (Levitt and Collins, 2020). Femmephobia refers to the devaluation and regulation of femininity which is viewed as a separate and at times overlapping, a phenomenon specific to gender in terms of femininity; rather than gender/sex: woman, or sex: female (Hoskin, 2020).

Their findings begin with a historical account of femme contexts, beginning within the context of 1940s and 1950s USA until the present (Levitt and Collins, 2020). Following how this identity evolved within the sociological climate of the second world and how this indulges gender identity is felt like an authentic internal sense of gender (Levitt and Collins, 2020). They explored how Butch and femme women were expected to be attracted to each other and to befriend similarly gendered women and followed with how this evolved and resist both strong heterosexism and cisgenderism in which they found mutual support and the solidarity (Levitt and Collins, 2020). Touching on how there was a period which saw butch women as claiming male privilege and viewed femme women as willing subjects to objectification (Levitt and Collins, 2020). This historical background is an important factor as the journal like paper later conceptualizes the functions of femme identities (Levitt and Collins, 2020). Their exploration of how the femme identity both describe ones own gender as well as a romantic attraction and affirmation of masculine genders that do not conform to the cisgender binary fit into the above-mentioned understandings of femmes inner workings with femininity (Levitt and Collins, 2020). The second variety of femme that was examined follows this same dialogue as they probe into the way women claim femme identity as an affirmation of LGBTQ + femininity since they may be affirming or rejecting an understanding of gender diversity further feeding into the radicalizing or essentializing of femininity as a concept (Levitt and Collins, 2020).

Their findings conclude with how all of these domains work synonymously with resisting differing forms of stigma found through femme identities (Levitt and Collins, 2020). Commenting on those women whose identity is tied to combatting femmephobia, there is a sense in which their identity creates an autonomous sense of gender that celebrates feminine independence, rather than to succumb to pressure to be masculine or be seen as subservient to masculinity (Levitt and Collins, 2020).

It is important to note that this is just a basic insight into the realm of femme and femininity. There is much to unpack with the premise of feminine ideals and it can be challenging as femme is not typically included in these discussions. For instance, this diagrams gives a very inclusive and easy to grasp understandings of the different social factors that reinforce and work within each other. However, Femme is not included in this nor would it be easily added. 

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It is helpful to view these societal conception not as categories but more as a continuum that is fluidly moving on and around a spectrum (as photographed).    

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A brief introduction of gender identity and gender expression.

Both of these corresponds with what our society currently understandings and expects of gender.

The difference between gender identity and gender expression is easy to conflate as these two things interact and work within societies concepts. Both of these concepts around gender have a whole slew of labels with unique origins, histories, and uses. 

Gender identity is the personal and unique sense of one's own gender. This can correlate with a person's assigned sex at birth or can differ from it. If this is of interests to you here are some key terms in which you can and should explore further with a simple google search: cis man, cis women, trans man, trans women, non-binary person, intersex agender. Regardless of your gender identity or possible lack of, there is still typically a sense of gender expression. Expression is how you outwardly present your gender to the world; which would fall into any number of things: androgynous, masculine, tomboyish. Within the LGBTQ2S+ community, there are tons of terms for varied gender expression like femme and butch. You could be a femme cis-man or a masculine non-binary person, or a butch transwoman, or femme transman. Gender expression can reflect a person's gender identity, however, it is important to grasp that this is not always the case. 

If these terms interests you, they can easily be known to you with a simple google search. However, for your convenience, there is a handout publicly accessible found here with a list of queer-based terminology to guide you in your exploration into the world of genders, sexual orientations, and everything in between. Another great resource that is recommended in which all used terms would be found is within the textbook by Riggs, D. W., & Peel, E. (2019), titled Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual, Trans, Intersex, and Queer Psychology: An Introduction, which covers all of these in-depth. In addition, there is a host of subjects which provide a well-rounded understanding of the LGBTQI2SP+ community. 

These are seemingly endless combinations of genders and gender expressions due to them being all uniquely understood by many individuals within our society. There are many intricacies within this, even though gender expression does not define your gender, people often use their gender expression to communicate something about themselves to the outward world. Take a transwoman who may feel more comfortable in a dress; this is not because all women have some innate desire to wear a dress more so it signals to the society that she is a woman. This could further be examined in/how dresses are automatically coded through gendered means as an association with womanhood. Some find comfort into this association but there are those who do not necessarily use these coded gendered means. Clothes do not inherently have any gender, it is our society that prescribes to them. Which is why when there are cis, trans, non-binary, +, men who may choose to wear that same dress it does not automatically cross into their identity but more so how they are choosing to be expressive.