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Femme identity discussion

  
  

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*
22:38 / 04.01.06
In the past, I've gotten myself into big trouble around self-identified femmes by being uninformed and skeptical about some core components of femme identity. I've since done a lot of reading and listening, but I'm still not quite there yet, so let's talk about what "femme" means.

A history of "butch-femme" from glbtq.com: not perfect, but a start. Also, A discussion of femme as transgression, and one of femme as gender transgressiveness, both of which I linked in the Head Shop Questions thread.

What I'm personally after, though, is understanding the assertion of some female-assigned femme-identified people that femme is their gender identity, not their gender expression or style, and that this makes them transgender. On this, Rachel Lanzerotti (my third link, above) has the following to say:

In the overlapping places where gender culture is being created, I am learning how I and others are affected by gender oppression. I can form and figure out my gender. I learn to push against expectations that my gender is uncomplicated because I am femme. Because of the way gender culture is coming together, some femmes, myself included, are asking whether and how femmes may be transgendered.

Amber Hollibaugh, interviewed in Femme, goes out on a gender-identity-politics limb, calls herself transgendered, and says there is "an aspect...of transgender experience" in femme identity. She says, "When you design girl-ness, when you make up the way you are female, that's a transgendered experience.... I think that transgender hasn't been mapped or named in the same way for femmes" (220). The interview is titled "Gender Warriors," echoing Transgender Warriors, the title of a recent book by transgender activist Leslie Feinberg.

Claiming transgendered status for femmes carries responsibility to identified transsexual and transgendered communities. I feel accountable to my transsexual lover and friends, in particular, to consider the dangers and uses of calling femmes transgendered.

What are the meanings of "transgendered"? Some use it synonymously with "transsexual," which historically has been used to describe people who change their physical sex. However, there are self-identified transsexual people who may not want and/or be able to make physical changes through hormones, surgeries, or other means. The "transgender umbrella" is a more recent concept that has been used to describe and include cross-dressers, boydykes, drag queens, bigendered people, and some butch dykes, as well as transsexual people. Important to many of these definitions is the concept of a gender continuum, which asserts that people may express and experience a range of possible genders, rather than one of two (male and female) genders as explained by the current, dichotomous system. The debate about the meanings of "transgendered" is in part a debate about categories within transsexual and transgender community groups, about who is included and how language affects and reflects outsiders' perceptions of transsexual and transgender people.

FTM International President Jamison Green offers the following controversial definition of "transgendered" in the March 1997 FTM International Newsletter, "Transgendered people-a nebulous category that can include anyone who crosses gender boundaries, regardless of whether that crossing is permanent or intentional; anyone who exhibits characteristics of a gender that does not match their apparent physical sex."

Summoning an equally varied bunch of gender-crossing people, Kate Bornstein urges in Gender Outlaw (Routledge, 1994), "So let's reclaim the word 'transgendered' so as to be more inclusive. Let's let it mean 'transgressively gendered.' Then, we have a group of people who break the rules, codes, and shackles of gender." (135)

If we use transgendered as an inclusive, nebulous category for those who cross gender confines and border lines, femmes fit that broad description. Femmes tease gender boundaries. We break gender rules. The assigned gender and chosen gender of a femme may be very different. The internal gender and the biological sex of a femme may be very different. Certainly some femmes are transgendered: femme MTFs, femme FTMs, some femme fags, drag queens, some femme men, what about femmes raised butch? femmes raised feminine? Some femmes are transgendered; I would not say all femmes are.

Though I cross gender in many ways, and certainly feel my tomboy femme gender is quite different from the female gender (and sex) I was assigned, I can't quite bring myself to call myself transgendered. It's just not the same for me as it is for my FTM lover, who has to make a decision about whether to explain every time someone gets the pronouns wrong, and who is saving a great deal of his income for surgeries. And this is different from my butch lover, who jokes about opening a store for butches with the slogan, "We'll only call you 'Sir' if you want us to." Seriously, though, using public bathrooms, going to the gym or pool, visiting health care providers, and so many of the other everyday events and decisions which many people take for granted are uniquely difficult and sometimes dangerous for people who are transgendered, in ways that differ from the experiences of people who are queer but not visibly transgendered.

One of the uses of "transgendered" is that it could be to gender as "queer" has been to sexuality. In other words, lesbians, gays, dykes, fags, bisexuals, pansexuals-even some sadomasochists and sex workers-can band together to call ourselves a big, powerful bunch of queers. Just so, transsexuals, FTMs, MTFs, transmen, transwomen, metamorphs, boydykes, dyke fags, shapeshifters, drag queens, faux queens, drag kings, cross-dressers-and even some butches, femmes, and intersexed people-can make ourselves a bigger group ("we are everywhere") by using "transgendered."

I'm personally interested in understanding this better, so I can better form an opinion of it, but this thread is for all kinds of discussion of femme identity from the elementary to the complex. I've done a bit of reading but I'm no expert, and I don't lay claim to femme identity myself. However, the following is a succinct description of my understanding of femme:

Women naturally have power. Femininity is how society bounds and controls women's power. Males who are (perceived as) feminine are similarly defined, bounded, and controlled, although they still partake of male privilege. Femme involves taking what is considered feminine and making it powerful, breaking the boundaries and controls placed on it by a society which devalues women. Although femme is dependent on society's definitions of womanhood and femininity, it strives to subvert them. Femme is open to all genders (some femme men call themselves fem instead). Sometimes, femmes hold femme to be a gender in itself, although this is debated both inside and outside femme communities.

Corrections? Discussion? More links?
 
 
runawayworld
19:55 / 28.01.06
according to the oxford dictionary femme:

femme |fem| (also fem) noun informal a lesbian or an effeminate male homosexual who takes a traditionally feminine sexual role.

this makes me wonder what a "traditionally feminine sexual role" is.

between my girlfriend and myself, she is more "femme" because she looks more like a traditional girl than i do. i am more "butch" in that i never wear dresses or, really, any specifically "girl" clothing, but i suppose i'm more androgenous. our sexual roles are equal as far as i can tell. i might drive more, but i get carsick easily when i don't drive... we pay for our own everything... we really just take care of ourselves for the most part...

as for femme as an identity, isn't that more of a preoccupation with feminity as a style much like emo and gangsta or other pop stylings? some of my friends identify themselves as "metal" or as "hardcore" according to music choice, but not all identities are based upon music. others identify themselves as "vegan" or "trad climbers" or "soccer players" or whatever. its really just what one decides to immerse themself into.

all of the above could just be evidence of my ignorance, though. maybe i should take more of an intro course and familiarize myself with the lingo of gender studies.
 
 
This Sunday
21:50 / 07.02.06
A friend of mine is fond of quite frequently chiding people (of any gender or persuasion or state) with one of the following: (a) 'Man up, femme,' and (b) 'Femme up, man.'
Do people pull the swish thing, the cartooned effeminate state, to either be attractively flirty or as a defensive tactic? Sure. Is that all there is to it: Identifier or assault tool?
I just don't really see the excessive end of this, really. There's an idea, certainly, that there's butcher than butch and girly-girl femme-extremes, but most people I know - and I'll broaden that to people I encounter fairly often over a period of time in social situations, there's fluctuations with situation and intent.
So, basically, I'm going to be a big ol' egotist and say we're making it up on the fly. Just like the rest of our interactions, we might angle naturally in a certain direction but the dramatic, clear-cut stuff is most likely put-on.
And has that 'which one's the man and which is the woman?' in homosexual relationships ever actually been an accurate or useful question? In a transsexual relationship? Alright, I'll buy that one, but two women are perfectly capable of having a physical relationship without one trying to be a man.
 
 
This Sunday
22:24 / 07.02.06
I should qualify the above by saying I have a tendency to try and get every one of my friends or folks I'm on friendly terms with into at least one nice dress. So I might have bought-in already, irrevocably addicted or manipulated to the femme kick. Or a feminizing kick. I've bought into the sexist stereotypes and fetishized the hell out of them while co-opting the whole kit as somehting marketable. Or, I just like dresses... and somehow controlling people's clothing.
I dunno; who's more femme, Andy Warhol or Audrey Hepburn? And who would do better in a pencil skirt and who needs the broomstick to keep brushing across their calves?
 
 
HCE
20:27 / 11.02.06
I look forward to seeing where else this thread will go. I can understand the notion of femme-as-trans in at least one sense: insofar as you are anything other than femme, dressing up or inhabiting a physical or psychological femme space is a crossing of sorts into another region. Such a crossing can be undertaken for a number of reasons. It can be done as a passport into a polarized butch/femme zone in which the heightening of differences is erotic. Also as a sort of armor as I sometimes describe it: although I look approximately femme when I'm not trying to look like anything, suiting up as high femme is definitely a defensive tactic: I'm broadcasting that while so dressed, I want to play by a specific and fairly narrow set of rules of engagement in which I will play a specific role. There's also something about the high femme look itself, with its layers of shaping garments and theatrical makeup, that creates a distance between the self and the world, and that distance is sometimes comforting.

I would particularly be interested in learning more about the notion of having an interior gender, if anybody has experience with or thoughts about that.
 
 
*
02:06 / 12.02.06
You mean about the notion of a gender identity, fred?
 
 
alas
13:34 / 12.02.06
I am interested in all the links that id entity listed, and have been mulling them without feeling like I could articulate anything worth sharing. So I'm glad that fred e. has taken this thread up. I too am not sure what you mean by "interior gender"...when I did a quick search on the topic, the closest thing I found seemed to be this Wikipedia discussion of our pal Judith Butler...

'this convergence is the crucible of Butler's famous "performative theory of gender," in which "gender" is a kind of repeated, largely "forced" (Foucault's "discipline") enactment or "performance" that in that very repetitive performance produces the imaginary fiction of a "core gender," as well as the distinction between the surface/exterior of "the body" and the "interior core." Paradoxically, it is a kind of forced, repetitive "doing" of gender that itself produces the fiction that an individual "has a" stable "gender" that "she/he" is just "expressing" in "her/his actions." And this imaginary fiction crucially produces an equally fictive distinction between an "interior" of "the body" and an "exterior" of "the body."'

Is there some new form of resistance to this traditional cultural studies rejection of "interior" selves? I'm interested!
 
 
*
17:02 / 12.02.06
Well, when I say interior gender, I am referring to the notion of a gender identity, as apart from gender assignment or gender expression. Many people in the trans communities use this terminology to describe our sense of where we are "supposed" to fall in the myriad genders available to us in society, according to the dictates of our own awareness of ourselves. The language of inner genders is most obviously exemplified in "feeling like a X in a Y body," but there is a huge spectrum of this sort of feeling.

It isn't really opposed to gender as performativity, although it's often thought to be— we all certainly use our gender expression to qualify and construct our social genders— but for many people, the experience of this performance is that it comes out of an inner state which is much harder to define. For many people, if our performative genders are too drastically opposed to this inner state it can cause a sort of cognitive dissonance which is unpleasant and stressful.

I don't hold that this inner gender is unchanging, but I think it's out of reach of most people to change it. I don't hold that it's biological or innate, either. I think in general it's simpler for people to adapt their external realities than attempt to adapt their internal realities, in this kind of case.

I think I see this disconnect between the gender one is expected to perform and one's inner sense of one's gender as a part of my definition of transgender, and so the "femme as transgender" identity is difficult for me. It's as hard for me to see this disconnect in female-assigned femme as it was for my dad to see the difference between gender and sexual orientation when I came out to him. Which probably means I have a mental block.
 
 
*
17:07 / 12.02.06
If performance of our genders reified an imaginary "core" gender identity which couldn't exist without that performance, how is it that people whose gender performativity has been solidly one thing all their lives may feel that the way they've been performing gender is fundamentally opposed to their internal gender identity? Wouldn't the performance of X gender create a "core" gender of X, and not of Y?

I can't say I'm that familiar with these arguments, so this is probably pretty basic and easily refuted.
 
 
alas
20:29 / 12.02.06
No, it's not a basic or easily refuted question, so far as I know; it seems like a pretty good one. I think it's safe to say that there is a general deep skepticism within cultural studies about "internal" identity, altogether, particularly in any way that is knowable or nameable, but I'm ready to stand corrected.

I have not read this material with transgender issues specifically in mind, but I think I may need to, as the issue of internal identity vs. performativity, the possible limits of the logic of performativity, is something I need to re-think through, right now. I would love it if someone who really knows Butler/Foucault (or other performative theory/gender gurus) etc. could better explore this with us.
 
 
HCE
20:34 / 12.02.06
For those of us still scrambling to get up to speed on the language, any examples (such as "feeling like X in a Y body") are enormously helpful.
 
 
elene
06:04 / 14.02.06
If performance of our genders reified an imaginary "core" gender identity which couldn't exist without that performance, how is it that people whose gender performativity has been solidly one thing all their lives may feel that the way they've been performing gender is fundamentally opposed to their internal gender identity?

I think in such cases the apparently solid role is in fact contested, an alternative role is being lived in fantasy or play, though possibly no one is aware of it. Which is not to claim that the alternative role, fantasy or whatever is inducing contention is a complete gender role.

I think the forced enactment mechanism works as long as one never seriously enacts the alternative. Once one has become aware one's restraints are a consensus, it can be difficult not to step beyond them. What surprises me about transsexualism is not that transsexuals exist, but rather that they can apparently construct a normative gender identity (the fiction of a "core gender") in the alternate gender when they hadn't been able to do so, at least to their own satisfaction, in their assigned gender. This may be due to some innate disposition, or it may be due to a deep refusal of the original assignment, but I don't think it implies that the performative mechanism doesn't work, merely that it didn't in a specific case, because something else was working harder.
 
 
alas
17:12 / 14.02.06
something else was working harder.

[This is really off topic, but that's eerily similar to the blues line of this song under discussion in this Music thread--had you heard that song?]

Interesting post, elene. I would love to hear more, particularly about this most intriguing and mysterious conclusion...
 
 
elene
07:36 / 15.02.06
Har! I do indeed know the song, and I read the thread (STMTCG is a great idea), and I thought the same thing as I typed that line. I'm afraid there's no real connection though. Worse, my whole post is only an opinion piece.

Cases of gender role reversal are typically, and perhaps exclusively associated with intense internal, and often intense external, conflicts around the original gender. They don't come out of the blue, though it sometimes looks that way. The crucial ingredient of a performative mechanism malfunction is a refusal of the enforced gender, either by the victim or hir environment. One possible reason for such a refusal would be that the refused gender conflicts with the innate gender identity.

The big argument I've heard for an innate core identity concerns the David Reimer case. David Reimer was an identical twin whose penis was destroyed in an accident during circumcision and who was then brought up as a girl. He apparently resisted this at every turn and eventually, at the age of fifteen, started living as a boy, or youth. This is taken as proof that you can't turn a boy into a girl, that nature trumps nurture. I don't think it's that simple.

I think the David Reimer case is about lying and coercion, refusal and resistance. It's not about really being a boy, it's about refusing to be a girl and refusal to accept that a girl is less than highly feminine. If it is about being something, rather than not being something, it's about the young David being the same as his twin. The case is extremely upsetting and an appalling abuse.

Anyway, David Reimer is claimed by some as proof that gender is part of sex and immutable, and by others as proof of an innate and immutable gender identity. What is the innate gender identity though, other than exactly the postulated cause of transsexuals need to change their gender, and the inability of David Reimer's minders to change his? I see the gender identity concept as an extra level of indirection inserted between sex and gender permitting us to claim that our gender is innate even when it opposes our physical sex, and nothing more.

Sorry I can't do better, alas. This isn't really my thing.
 
 
*
03:33 / 16.02.06
I'm having trouble understanding why there's a need to deny the experiences of people who believe they have an innate gender identity. It seems to me like part of the whole postmodern fascination with "the world is not as we know it" spoooookiness. Is there a good rationale for this I'm just ignorant of? Can some people have an internal (if not innate) gender identity which they don't have any control over, without invalidating performativity as an effective mechanism on others?
 
 
elene
08:22 / 16.02.06
Sorry if I've given the impression I don't respect people's claims of recognising a gender identity in themselves, id.

I know from personal experience how easy it is as a child to develop a strong identification with adults of the opposite sex. Were that all gender identity implied I'd know what it was and I'd know what other transsexuals mean when they use the term. That's not what's meant by gender identity however, because there's no connection with one's physical sex implicit in such an identification. Gender identity, as the term is used among transsexuals, does not involve an identification at all. It is an internal flag specifying the sex a person ought to have.

I've tried to make it clear that I don't know whether such a thing exists, presuming, as we must, that it's not SRY, but I don't believe in the concept. I don't believe in God either, but I certainly can't prove there's no such thing. I think, if it lets some transsexuals feel better in their own skin then that's quite a good reason to accept it as part of a guiding story, a myth.

I'm also trying to clarify why I don't believe in it.

Do we believe in some mathematical identity that singles out those people who develop unusual mathematical abilities? We all have some mathematical ability, but I think we're all aware of the scale of the difference between a typical person's talents and those of the average mathematician. Additionally, at least while they're still young, many maths people cultivate a life-style full of (a quarter century ago, mind you) D&D, "Gödel, Escher, Bach," VAX service calls, discussion of Kronecker and constructivism, Doctor Who, fractals and the like (instead of sex and drugs and rock'n'roll).

I hope you don't believe there's a mathematical identity that drives otherwise normal people to be mathematicians, id, because mathematics is primarily something one does, not something one is. Still, I'm sure that the notion one is a mathematician can be of great help to many people striving to establish themselves in that profession.

Likewise, changing sex or gender is something one does and not changing sex or gender is too.

I find that thinking about these things is hands-on experience with Lacan's chain of signifiers. It just goes on and on from one to the next and it never ends. I don't have the feeling I'm ever likely to really know anything. At best I can hope to have some stories that seem to apply in specific cases. I can say: "oh! you're a boy, aren't you?" to a girl, and it means something. What it means, though, is ever beyond me and maybe never quite the same thing twice.
 
 
elene
10:20 / 16.02.06
Oh my, I regret forcing this thread so far into a transsexual context. I don't think femme is about gender identity, at least not in that sense, and I suppose I can only make this right by trying to restore the thread to its original course. Unfortunately in using the word femme to describe myself I'm invariably moving it out of it's original lesbian context, which may not be appropriate. Sorry.

Nevertheless, hi Fred. What you call high femme, which is put on like a mask and useful for putting a distance between oneself and one's world, is how I've experienced dressing femme too. Actually I've only ever used it when I really needed both a mask and distance, and that's surely where high femme looks come from. This is, if anything, about concealing identity, or at least hiding specific identity and individuality behind a formulaic construct.

Acting or being femme is something else, and has more to do with identity, who you are, what you need and what you believe in. Actually this is all about identity, because it's quite possible to have strongly butch/femme relationships without sex being involved at all, at least not explicitly. Needing, or being seen to need a mask and a formal system enforcing distance is a part of this identity.
 
 
This Sunday
11:59 / 16.02.06
This innate gender thing strikes me as moving in the gender-is-not-an-option or gender as not-social-construct direction. Which, is silly to me, but possibly life or death storm and druggy thunder to others.
 
 
*
17:07 / 16.02.06
Well, first, elene, I wasn't referring to your argument so much as the general theory of performativity and its resistance to an internal identity.

I think a lot of the objections to internal identity can be covered, given a flexibility in theorization as to how the identity is formed, what shapes it, and how it might change, and also a varies-with-individual clause. I certainly think that biology influences some people's personality, perception of their gender, etc., for instance, but I don't think that it solely determines gender, for all people or even necessarily for some. I think people who are too devoted to performativity, to the extent that they consider other people's experiences (which don't fit that theory) an illusion, are falling prey to a fallacy of seeing it as fundamentally opposed to any form of influence from biology. And yet we know that hormone levels, neurotransmitters, and neuroanatomy play a complex role in people's psychology. While people's environment almost certainly influences these factors, figuring out how will be an incredibly complex task, and I think we will eventually discover that performance cannot be considered the sole ultimate cause of gender any more than biology can.

But yes. This really doesn't have much to do with femme, at the moment.

My original query, I suppose, was spawned by wondering what makes it a good thing to identify female-assigned femme-identified people as transgender, in the way I've encountered in some groups.
 
 
*
17:16 / 16.02.06
I think that gender is a many-faceted thing, that's all. We take some things that are not social constructs, fill them with social meaning, manipulate them into social roles, add other social constructs, bury some of the original meaning, twist the rest, inflate parts, and then impose the result on people, who react by twisting, burying, inflating, refusing, adapting, accepting, hammering, flaying, crossing, coring, etc.

I never thought I'd be the one arguing what other people are clearly seeing as determinism, but I do think that the feeling of some people that they have an inner identity which is at odds with their social conditioning needs to be recognized. Social construction theory has been used to oppress trans people and deny their experiences and make them liars just as bio-det has, and that's why I get excited when I see people taking either of them as givens.

I'm sorry. I expect people got tired of this tangent, and I'm just adding fuel to the fire.
 
 
This Sunday
17:23 / 16.02.06
I don't know that there's any better place for the tangent in question, since it seems, well, quite untangential and rooted right into the core of the matter. I also have a horrible suspicion that I'm on the wrong side of the argument by making it an issue of determinism or of semantics. I may be cross with myself by next week, but for now, no, it just doesn't make a whole lot of sense to me purely on the basis of work. It's too much effort. The impetus for that effort is just zipping along past me, unfortunately, and perhaps, if I understood that, I could see why it's worth the hassle.
 
 
elene
08:18 / 17.02.06
Going way back:

Women naturally have power. Femininity is how society bounds and controls women's power. Males who are (perceived as) feminine are similarly defined, bounded, and controlled, although they still partake of male privilege. Femme involves taking what is considered feminine and making it powerful, breaking the boundaries and controls placed on it by a society which devalues women. Although femme is dependent on society's definitions of womanhood and femininity, it strives to subvert them. Femme is open to all genders (some femme men call themselves fem instead). Sometimes, femmes hold femme to be a gender in itself, although this is debated both inside and outside femme communities.

Well, femme is subversive but mainly due to it's context. We invariable mean either a lesbian or a man, and lesbian is subversive in itself, as is feminine male. I do agree that femme seeks to empower, which is of course subversive too, whereas feminine seeks to disempower, and I agree with Rachel Lanzerotti's argument that femme is engendered, that she constructs her own gender. I think the system looks at the always new femme gender and likes it, and immediately appropriates it for it's definition of the feminine, and this happens over and over again. And I think it's exactly this generation of one's own personal gender that transgender's all about. Well, the positive side of it anyway.
 
 
alas
08:34 / 18.02.06
I found the "tangent" very useful and very very thought provoking, given where I'm coming from, so I'm glad we were there and I don't feel it's a side issue to this discussion. I think the question of

why there's a need to deny the experiences of people who believe they have an innate gender identity. It seems to me like part of the whole postmodern fascination with "the world is not as we know it" spoooookiness. Is there a good rationale for this I'm just ignorant of?

has been answered pretty well by id entity, who has also given me a huge amount to think about. I understand the resistance in post-structuralism to come from ideas that equate "interior" with "innate" (which I think id entity has really done a fine job of detangling) and I think also the mathemetician example is helpful: it's a kind of identity, can in fact be a deep and rich identity, but it results from doing, not being in some fundamental way. Not a "being" that is separable from the social system in which terms like "mathemetician" make sense as an identity category.

And let me say that I'm, personally, feeling like I'm not 100% sure of anything, here, but I know I do bring some resistance to ideas like "generation of one's own personal gender." I hope you all will help me explore this issue. And let me say from the start that I'm willing to come to understand that resistance, my skepticism, as a mental block on my part, or some form of internalized oppression. I am just genuinely uncertain of this issue. Because, on the other hand, I also find skepticism to be incredibly helpful to myself: I try to be as skeptical (or more) of my own theories as I am of anyone else's, which I hope keeps me reasonably humble.

I'm also a teacher, so I'm kind of paid to be skeptical of other people's theories, which I definitely try to do in a way that is respectful. We definitely all need and use and have "guiding myths" (which I also apply to my own world view; I mean "myth" in a deep and non-dismissive sense of that word). My goal is for those guiding myths to have integrity and not to wind up enmeshing one--myself or those who I am in any teaching/learning relationship with--more deeply into systems that are oppressive. (If that makes sense?)

For me, this idea of a "personal" gender identity has a naive sound to it, a consumerist-edge to it, that makes me nervous. Again, let me assure you that I am feeling my way in the dark, or at least in dim light, here, so please don't take this as an attack: I'm ready to learn from you. I suspect that you, elene, mean something fairly complex by it, but I'm hearing echoes of my students saying things like, "I just have my own personal spirituality" or "I'm not racist; I just see people as people." It seems to suggest that "the system" is this thing that some people just easily step outside of and are "free of"--at least for a moment--before "the system" steps in and appropriates their original ideas, forcing these individuals to step outside it again.

I am skeptical of the argument I just laid out, simply because I don't believe anyone is as "free" or outside the social system as that suggests, but I am also suspicious that I've oversimplified your stance, especially as you make clear that the meaning of any stance is context-dependent. Can you walk me through your position more carefully?

Finally, I'm also interested in this portion of your argument, elene: You said, "We invariably mean [by femme/fem] either a lesbian or a man, and lesbian is subversive in itself, as is feminine male." Is lesbian identity key and de riguer for femme identity? Is lesbian identity always "subversive"?

I have been thinking in this context of Cindy Jackson, and that might help me, anyway, ground this discussion, and better understand your argument, elene. She's clearly very "feminine" yet the very public way in which she announces and promotes her own use of plastic surgery makes her identity more complex, and interesting, to me than typical feminine identity. Yet, she's not subversive of the system but openly supportive of it: her overall message is: "you, ugly and aging reader, can be more perfectly feminine, and get hooked up with rich men, through the science of plastic surgery. (But buy my books to learn how to do it most efficiently.)"

She uses all the language of individualism--"I did it my way"--but seems, to me, thoroughly entangled with the system. (Her website used to have more of her philosophy, etc., but now a lot of that stuff is only available in her books, it would seem.)

Is she not "femme" because she is heterosexual? I'm interested!
 
 
HCE
14:29 / 18.02.06
Just a brief note to say how interesting this thread is and to mark a few questions for more exploration:

seeing it as fundamentally opposed to any form of influence from biology

There was also mention of doing rather than being, and I would like to suggest that this is a false dichotomy. In a very profound sense, your being is formed by doing. There's an excellent book on this topic (Embodied Cognition: Varela, Thompson, Rosch) which quotes another work (Cognitive Semantics: Lakoff) thus:

'Meaningful conceptual structures arise from two sources: (1) from the structured nature of bodily and social experience and (2) from our innate capacity to imaginatively project from certain well-structured aspects of bodily and interactional experience to abstract conceptual structures. Rational thought is the application of very general cognitive processes - focusing, scanning, superimposition, figure-ground reversal, etc. - to such structures.'

This statement would seem consonant with the view of cognition as enaction for which we are arguing.

They go on to discuss the "locus of cultural knowledge such as folktales" which also seems to be relevant to the discussion of identity here.

Is it possible that femme presentation can arise, in the case of Cindy Jackon, through a sort of unquestioned cooperation between an internal identity and looks/behavior? And that femme can be trans when the public presentation is constructed in the context of questioning and purposefully creating a femme appearance/femme behavior? Which is to say, when it is a strategy rather than what you do by default?

elene and I (Hi elene!) have mentioned some possible uses for this strategy, but without knowing more about the trans experience, it is hard for me to say whether there is also, for trans people, a strategic rather than self-fulfillment-based element to how they shape their bodies and how they present themselves to others.

Sorry for the jumble here.
 
 
*
17:09 / 18.02.06
but without knowing more about the trans experience, it is hard for me to say whether there is also, for trans people, a strategic rather than self-fulfillment-based element to how they shape their bodies and how they present themselves to others.

I think it is possible for me to say that this varies wildly.

I've heard other trans men say that they transitioned to male to escape sexism. I've seen other people for whom the transition to another gender has been everything but advantageous in all ways, except for somehow making them happier and more comfortable.

For me personally, the decision to change my body occurred only when I came to the conclusion that living as third gender was impossible for me in my society, and asserting a male identity without modification was too tiring— I had to "butch it up" too much. My effeminacy was working against me, and that gender expression (because that for me is gender expression, not my gender identity) seemed more valuable to me than keeping my physical form the way it was.

I feel like it's pretty clear to me that there's a good deal about my own gender that I have constructed through my decisions, and through society's responses to my decisions. But I'm anxious to show that this doesn't mean I could have just as easily reconstructed my gender to something that didn't involve body modification, which I'm always afraid is where the social construction argument is headed with trans people. I have heard a lot of social constructionists argue that trans people shouldn't pursue body modifications because it's somehow superior, more revolushunarry, to "just live how you want to live and don't worry about what other people think." Which, now that I think about it, seems pretty contrary to the basic premise of social construction, which is that it's social.

Regarding femme and femininity: Femmes have told me that femme is different from feminine. The ways they give me are that "feminine" implies buying into the dominant discourse of how women should be. Femme implies subverting that discourse in some way. Femme implies reclamation and power in a way that, to them, feminine does not.

Thoughts?

Really enjoying everyone's contributions... and here I thought this thread would die unremarked.
 
 
HCE
17:43 / 18.02.06
I am conflicted about being femme in a way that I am not about being feminine, certainly, but I'm not confident enough about my grasp of the relevant language to explain why.

Can you tell me what the difference is between gender expression and gender identity? I think can tell from reading your post but I'm not positive.
 
 
alas
19:29 / 18.02.06
Is it possible that femme presentation can arise, in the case of Cindy Jackson, through a sort of unquestioned cooperation between an internal identity and looks/behavior? And that femme can be trans when the public presentation is constructed in the context of questioning and purposefully creating a femme appearance/femme behavior? Which is to say, when it is a strategy rather than what you do by default?

The thing is, from some things I've read by Cindy Jackson (before most of the interesting info went into her books, sold separately...) I'm not at all convinced that it's fair to characterize her transformation as an entirely "unquestioned cooperation," which is why I find her so interesting, and why I'm resisting seeing a bright line between her identity formation (feminine=status quo/bad) and ones grounded in a femme (subversive/good) identity. She's so overt about the process, showing exactly what she underwent and why, that, arguably, it ceases to be the "default" approach to female-self-improvement. The norm is to be sly about all such changes--not to announce exactly which and how many procedures you have and which ones worked, and show pictures of the whole process.... There's an element of almost campiness to it, an element of drag? (It's hard to pin down from her writing just how self-aware she is of this, but, I don't want to underestimate that in her.)

So: my questions about whether femme is limited to lesbian identity, and also whether lesbians are always and inevitably subversive to the structure are real, not rhetorical, questions.

Speaking of her pre-surgery life, Jackson once said, to a reporter: "I don't even associate myself with that person. She's dead. I cut her up." Yet, her bio today now emphasizes that she learned valuable lessons from having been less conventionally pretty in her early days--and that those experiences are as valuable to her as anything she's gained from surgery. (Ok, cliched, but, cliches are not always insincere...)

Her current bio is very pared down, but her older one spoke of watching her sister get dates in high school, but her feeling like the ugly duckling. Then she went to art school and learned, she says, about "human attraction" and classic proportions, and from there decided, seemingly quite carefully and deliberately, to make this change so that she could be happier and more comfortable in her life.

Despite receiving lots of criticism from people who have seen her as vain or lacking self-esteem, she asserts that it has been a great change and she feels more at home in her body than ever before, to the point where she completely dissociates herself from her old "ugly" incarnation.

In the FAQ to her website she advises people on the financial cost of it all:

"When I've been asked if I have any regrets about having cosmetic surgery, I can only think of one: That I didn't start having it a decade earlier than I did. Yet before I was left a small inheritance that got the ball rolling, I'd never considered having anything done; I was too busy trying to make the most of the opportunities that came my way and working flat out to keep the wolf from the door. Back then I thought cosmetic surgery was something other people had. It wasn't anything I'd aspired to or thought I'd ever be able to afford. Only when I had some extra money for the first time in my life did I get the idea to embark on my "self-improvement" plan. . . . . To those who are in a bleak financial situation similar to the one I had been in for most of my life with no means of paying for surgery, hang in there. Remember you never know what the future holds, and what was meant to be will be."

Me, I am an old-school, socialist feminist with a rural, working class background, in many ways, so I read that "I cut her up" statement, in particular, and I feel a kind of ... sorrow? betrayal? anger? Yet it still doesn't seem to me like something done "by default" but rather as a fairly logical "strategy" in response to a limiting social structure and the opportunities afforded by the marketplace.

It is a strategy that works, it would seem to me, only individually and does nothing to address the inequities of the social structure that created the initial oppression; it in fact reifies them. She's got to be close to 50, but looks 30. Widespread use of plastic surgery raises the bar for women's beauty, and has class implications: wealthy women have access to it disproportionate to poor women, and lack of plastic surgery becomes an easy visual clue to class distinctions....

And, ok, so, well, this is harder, but: I have a similar reaction when I hear that even a very few persons may have transitioned to male in order to "escape" sexism. (I'm not saying I'm proud of these feelings--I'm not--but they are real.) I realize that once such a transman is living as a man, he may very well be a critical ally in the fight to change the structure. He may be able to say things to men that they won't be able to hear from women. He will have a perspective that others won't have.

There's something that seems "destabilizing" in all this, just as I can read elements of camp/drag in Jackson's self-presentation, but is it inevitably really resistant to the structure? Does he not also have the possibility of simply "cutting her up"--utterly dissociating from the female body he once was, including political dissociation?

Just as I am concerned when students (all females so far) have narrated experiences of cutting themselves as an expression of depression, I am concernd about narratives in which conflict is "happily" resolved through the cutting up of female bodies. I am not sure what to do with that concern, where to take it, or what the implications of it are.

Femme identity, I realize, does not necessarily rely on plastic surgery or psychological dissociation from the female body....

Let me reiterate, that I am in genuine conflict here; all this has some resonance for a different, difficult issue in my own life right now, which is partly why I still feel like I'm stumbling in the dark. I'm very worried that I'm going to sound conservative and evil. So much of my heart is with people who play in the system. There's a value in playing with the categories we are handed; there's a value in spending time/money on getting oneself into a "healthy" state. I respect what id entity and elene have been saying in the threads on this boards about the importance of the surgery for themselves.

I am genuinely seeking insight and guidance, and thanks for your willingness to patiently read my arguments. I look forward to hearing from you, and sincerely hope that my angle on the question of "femme" identity and gender transitioning isn't too far afield from id entity's intentions for the thread.
 
 
*
06:21 / 19.02.06
I didn't really have very clear intentions for this thread, so not to worry.

To answer the simpler (although never simple) questions and get them out of the way:

I've already said what gender identity is to me, upthread a bit. Gender expression, to me, is how one portrays oneself in society with regard to their identity. I associate it with the performativity aspect of gender, the "drag" portion of everyone's daily existence. I have to differentiate these things for myself, as a trans guy to whom the word masculine probably doesn't apply.

I don't know that femme is limited to lesbian identity, because I've certainly heard it in the gay men's community, although I feel like it started in lesbian circles. I've also heard it as an identity of male-assigned trans people who don't quite feel like women entirely. And there are the trans men who assert a fem/me identity as well.

Widespread use of plastic surgery raises the bar for women's beauty, and has class implications: wealthy women have access to it disproportionate to poor women, and lack of plastic surgery becomes an easy visual clue to class distinctions....

And of course this is true in US trans communities as well, since very few people in the US have healthcare which will cover any form of medical gender transition. Hierarchies of transness form, with "successful (former) transsexuals" at the top, and a whole collective of people at the bottom who don't pass as either normative gender, maybe who don't identify as either normative gender, and who can't or won't afford to "correct" their appearance for the comfort of others.

Certainly I feel that as someone who can transition medically to some extent (and only by virtue of geography, I might add, not wealth), I have a responsibility to see that I'm not upholding an oppressive system by doing so. But I also don't feel I can judge others' decisions.

An online associate of mine, whom I respect deeply, is a fairly gender-normative gay trans man. He does not let it become known that he is trans. He's been criticized for being "stealth" because people think he's not serving the trans community; in fact, in his own way, I think he's doing far more than I am. But that's not the point— the point is that trans people are no more obligated to dismantle the binary gender system than anyone else is. Indeed I'm not so sure it needs to be dismantled, just expanded on and made more flexible. One online acquaintance, when told that she reifies the binary gender by transitioning, responds "But you reify it by not transitioning." Which just reveals that double standard— if binary gender works for a non-trans person, they're not expected to go around mucking things up just because. But if binary gender (albeit with a transition between the two) works for a trans person, people still sometimes think we should be all about destroying categories for the sake of destroying categories.

Having only two gender categories can be oppressive, certainly. But I am pretty sure it would also be oppressive to have no categories at all, or to insist that no one rest comfortably in the category that happens to suit them.

Speaking of which: I have a similar reaction when I hear that even a very few persons may have transitioned to male in order to "escape" sexism...

I won't deny that many people who transition do uphold the binary gender system. Many people who transition even uphold sexist power structures. Others do not. I argue that this is not inherent in transitioning. It is not that people who transition are more responsible for upholding these gendered social structures, or that we have more obligation to dismantle them. It's that our relationship to gender is more visible as well as more complex, and so people are likely to pin all gender-political discourse on us. I understand that, and I think that to a certain extent, yes, we're exceptional cases that allow certain gender theories to be tested, etc. On the other hand, we're people, and we vary wildly as individuals. Like any other group of people, we'll have a huge range of how we relate to gender and gendered politics. It's really misleading to allow an image to be perpetuated that trans people have a bigger impact on constructs of gender and power than, say, white people. We don't. But we seem to get a lot more of the attention for it.

So no, I don't think transition is either inherently resistant to or complicit in the structure of gender, any more than any other relationship to gender might be. I question why it's necessary that it be seen as either inherently resistant or complicit. It's much more complicated than that.

Alas, I'm also interested in how you bring in self-cutting as an aspect of relation to one's body and embodied gender, alas. Statistically it is true that far more women than men cut, but there's no information that I'm aware of about the incidence of cutting in trans populations. Certainly I know both femaleward-vectored and maleward-vectored trans people who cut or who have cut. I would be very wary of using this behavior as evidence in support of a gender-politics agenda, however. This is an extremely delicate and complex issue even on an individual level. I think there are dangers associated both with taking the responsibility for cutting out of the hands of the individual, as might happen if one argues that it is an effect of gender oppression, and also with stigmatizing this behavior even more than it is already. As it happens, studies show that in certain people predisposed this way, cutting may serve to restore homeostasis and prevent dangerous emotional/neurochemical states from escalating into suicidality. I'm not qualified to delve into why this might be the case, and it makes me wary of venturing into too theoretical of territory with this very real, very personal issue.

Something else... you say that femme identity is not necessarily associated with modification and/or dissociation from the female body. I would go so far as to say that it is more likely to manifest in the opposite way— that the female-assigned femmes of my acquaintance celebrate their female bodies, and are less concerned with modifying them, and less angsty about their relationship with them, than the feminine non-femmes I know.

I don't know if this response is sufficiently coherent that anything of value might be gleaned from it, but for what it's worth, I offer it.

(Oh, and one last thing: I hope I haven't given the impression that I'm referring to surgery when I say "medical transition" or "gender transition." Various surgeries can be parts of such a transition, but they don't have to be. And surgery per se is not personally meaningful to me at this time; hormones, on the other hand, are. It is really counterproductive, I feel, to let a mythical "the surgery" stand in for the various aspects of social and medical gender transition.)
 
 
elene
07:29 / 20.02.06
For me, this idea of a "personal" gender identity has a naive sound to it, a consumerist-edge to it, that makes me nervous. ... I'm hearing echoes of my students saying things like, "I just have my own personal spirituality" or "I'm not racist; I just see people as people." It seems to suggest that "the system" is this thing that some people just easily step outside of and are "free of"--at least for a moment-- before "the system" steps in and appropriates their original ideas, forcing these individuals to step outside it again.

I am skeptical of the argument I just laid out, simply because I don't believe anyone is as "free" or outside the social system as that suggests

Yes, those are very good points, alas. I do have a notion of one's stepping outside of the system for a very short time, in a very limited way, before it responds to this situation and restores order by either assimilating the exception or correcting it, or both. This certainly happens, it's how the things remains bearable and it keeps the system balanced with respect to it's parts. What is a revolutionary act for the individual can also be an instance of systematic renewal for the organisation.

You said, "We invariably mean [by femme/fem] either a lesbian or a man, and lesbian is subversive in itself, as is feminine male." Is lesbian identity key and de riguer for femme identity? Is lesbian identity always "subversive"?

I think this is actually an instance of my previous argument. Lesbianism and homosexuality oppose one of the bastions of our system, but less so today than in my youth because the system has changed to accommodate them. Lesbianism is an opposing force within the system, and the system must account for it. I think of things that work to prevent the system from collapsing into it's simplest form, a rigidly patriarchal hierarchy, as subversive. Certainly they'll never subvert all forms of the system, but I think they keep it in a much more flexible, energised mode than it would adopt without them.

Is she not "femme" because she is heterosexual?

I don't see myself as being in a position to define femme, alas. Though I've been a certain sort of queen and as a m2f transsexual I'm probably pretty far out on the feminine side of what's male, I've never thought of myself as femme, because a femme was a butch's girl. For sure, I've heard femme used much more loosely in recent years but I'm not sure how far one might fairly move the term outside it's original context without loosing it's meaning. I do think the term will have lost it's meaning at all if it implies is "like a straight woman."

On the other hand I don't want to, and I can't afford to knock Cindy Jackson. Are you sure older woman using surgery to enhance their attractiveness are supportive of the system? Many are certainly victims of their own fears and desires, but what does the system want of older women?
 
 
elene
08:40 / 20.02.06
... without knowing more about the trans experience, it is hard for me to say whether there is also, for trans people, a strategic rather than self-fulfillment- based element to how they shape their bodies and how they present themselves to others.

Hi fred! The issue of self fulfilment is essential to me. I'm certainly not doing this to oppose the patriarchy. I do regard my transition as an opportunity for myself and those who know me to confront our prejudices and preconceptions concerning gender and sex, and it's obviously a great learning experience for me. My notion of what a woman's life is and what a man's have changed significantly during transition, even though I naively believed I understood before. On the other hand, though I want to be comfortable as a woman I don't want destroy my previous self to do that. I remain very uncertain of my needing any plastic surgery, though I'm sure I'll eventually decide I need the most essential procedure, and in general I'm dead set against adopting aspects of the feminine that I think might be essential without first feeling the world force me to adopt them, and of course not always even in that case. I want to know what's really expected of a woman, but I'm more concerned not to fashion myself into a typical woman in advance of society's pressures, because she would in that case be a fantasy.

I hope I do manage a somewhat original solution to being a male woman that neither prevents me from being woman, nor forces any girl to think a woman must be like me. I would regard an original solution to my integration issues as in sense femme, and that would clearly be practically the opposite of becoming a stepford wife.
 
 
HCE
05:11 / 22.02.06
a somewhat original solution to being a male woman that neither prevents me from being woman, nor forces any girl to think a woman must be like me

That's a great, great description of how I approach it, except that I am a female woman.

I want to briefly thank everybody for all their efforts in this thread. You guys are wonderful.
 
 
alas
20:15 / 27.02.06
Thanks everyone for your helpful and thoughtful replies. I'm a bit overwhelmed these days and don't have time right now for as proper a response too all the ideas that you have provided here, and I fear that I have not yet done mental justice to your posts, esp. elene and id entity--I need to re-read them at least one more time, I'm quite sure. I value your thoughts, and appreciate that you've been really gracious towards my fallibility.

On that note, id entity, in particular, yes, I realized after I posted that I was "fixating" on the surgery aspect, and in so doing, playing into some problematic stereotypes about transitioning and the spectrum of ways that people live out trans lives. That really is problematic, and you were right to call me on it.

I want to take a moment, now, to engage this interesting point made by Elene--

On the other hand I don't want to, and I can't afford to knock Cindy Jackson. Are you sure older woman using surgery to enhance their attractiveness are supportive of the system? Many are certainly victims of their own fears and desires, but what does the system want of older women?

I basically agree, actually, and was trying to indicate that I do think she's complicated, that people (i.e., my students) often are too eager to judge her negatively (and they often do so for problematic reasons--"she should just care about the inner person; the outside person doesn't matter"). I find her public presentation of herself a useful place to explore reactions to and ideas about femininity.

I think this whole facet of our expanded discussion of femininity, femaleness, and femme identity (which is how I'm reading this thread), in fact, links pretty well to the recent Conversation discussion of digitally manipulated celebrity pictures. The Bordo piece that I mention in my first posting there (on p. 2? I think?) is particularly good on this topic of the pressures on older women.

Because the other reaction that many students inevitably have to CJ is: "it's just a personal choice; we have no right to judge at all. Feminism is all about making choices. We should just embrace choice."

Although I'm very sympathetic to her situation, and I find her very interesting and compelling as a kind of cultural "text," I do think CJ's ultimately chosen a pretty conservative, ethically dubious path, based on having read quite a bit of her old and current online materials. (Not her autobiography, however, which I definitely should read). I can't be SURE, but I can assert that from what I have seen, the public persona of Cindy Jackson is an element of our culture that is largely retrograde in its motivations and effects, and I resist that approach, and would urge any person who valued my advice to resist such a path.

(Believe me, as a woman who is aging and approaching a milestone birthday, I am very aware of the differences my appearance can make. Increasingly! And I definitely blame the system more for creating the reactionary, to me, logic of Cindy Jackson, than I blame Jackson herself.)

The thing I especially need to ponder is to what degree I believe we are all obligated to work against injustice. I certainly don't believe there's a single "right" way to fight for social justice, NOR do I believe that it's obvious from the outside whether someone is largely facilitating and/or even promoting the things that most create social inequity. I do still really resist the idea that there is some truly "pure" space, even I think a temporary space, completely outside the system, from which one can act.

I believe that, at least once we're adults (whatever that means!), our actions are always in a pretty muddy, murky territory. We have to act anyway, to be sure.

That being said, there are some "wrong" and harmful actions, or actions whose effects can be reasonably predicted to be harmful and negative. I can and do, and, in fact, must make ethical judgments of other people's decisions. An easy one, outside of this current discussion that (maybe?) most of us here agree on: It was wrong for Bush to declare war on Iraq, e.g. There are actions that are patently reactionary and conservative, and some are deliberately intended to be so. Other actions may be made mainly out of ignorance. Many people in the US supported Bush's actions out of, to me, an almost inexcusable ignorance. Or, maybe more broadly agreeable: It is wrong to deliberatly enslave other people, and it is wrong for non-slaveholders to benefit from that enslavement, even out of "ignorance."

It's sometimes my job to name and judge those actions--as a teacher, as a mentor, as a parent, as a citizen in a (putative) "democracy," etc. Because it's a democracy, and because I value other people's opinions, I don't necessarily get the last word and I'm not immune to having my judgments questioned.

Now, closer to this discussion: I don't want to stop or censor Cindy Jackson; I don't plan on "outing" a "sleuth" transman. I certainly would not say that the sexism of a transman is worse than the sexism of anyone else, my own internalized sexism included. Nor do I believe that transmen should have any "additional" burden of fighting sexism. Nor do I think that "femme" is more conservative or reactionary than "butch" or any other female identity. Nor do I think that a straight, female woman who wears makeup is "more reactionary" inherently than similar women who don't wear makeup.

But do I think that working against patriarchal structures should be everyone's burden? Yes. I'm a feminist; that's almost the definition of feminism.

So I still assert that choosing to transition in order to escape sexism is an understandable but problematic choice, and I would hope that anyone considering that path would feel able to explore other options to take with or instead of that option. Same thing with plastic surgery to avoid the effects of ageism: deeply understandable, possibly the best of a bunch of bad options, but problematic. And, while id entity has given me food for thought on the cutting thing, I think I'd still say the same thing: deeply understandable, possibly even necessary in certain circumstances (feeling grave uncertainty there), but almost certainly problematic. Anorexia? Understandable as a reaction to our messed up food culture and the relative lack of control young women (its usual victims) have in our world, yes, but, harmful, and regardless of pro-ana rhetoric, deeply problematic.

One of the effects of oppression is to feel that one has no choice but to _____. And then it's tempting to make a virtue of such a choice. I know I do this. All too often the "blank" in that sentence is an action whereby, if one has the means, one tries to cut one's losses and get out of the crab barrel if and when the getting is good, and take no one and nothing with you that might hold you back. Additionally, one of the effects of oppression is that we can get cut off from the wisest voices, by a variety of means, and so lose sight of other options. (Group political activity is "pointless" "useless" "feel-good" "all talk and no action" "too radical" "too slow" "never works anyway" "outdated.")

However, once again, I also agree that people who are more "visible" in the system as a result of being in any sort of non-dominant group (whether by virtue of perceived gender, race, orientation, personal history, etc.), particularly as they gain any kind of real or (more often) token "power" in the system, tend to be burdened with higher expectations for fighting the system in obvious ways. And powerful people are let off the hook. And I want to be wary of that impulse as I make judgments.

Finally, I guess what I'm trying to get at here, in this meandering mess, is that it's really hard to sort out what in "femininity" is a troubled and problematic result of oppression, and to what degree anyone should be held accountable for their choices. When is it an arrogant gesture to call someone to account for their actions and when is it a respectful gesture? Can judgment be a gesture that recognizes both 1) that the other person is a being capable of making moral choices, and 2) that their choices matter and have consequences outside themselves?

In some ways, by taking Cindy Jackson, pro-ana sites, and other women (no matter how they got to occupy that category) seriously and judging their actions I am saying: "You are not trivial. I respect you, but I think you are wrong, here." (Both halves of the latter sentence seem key, to me.)

This framing of femme identity as potentially a kind of "trans" identity, or a kind of "transgressive" identity, seems to open up a space for these questions, and that's definitely a good thing. (I think! I think!)
 
 
*
19:06 / 01.04.06
So, is it a product of sexism that people devalue, or are suspicious of, femme behaviors and styles as compared to butch or masculine ones?
 
 
alas
16:22 / 03.04.06
So, is it a product of sexism that people devalue, or are suspicious of, femme behaviors and styles as compared to butch or masculine ones?

Short answer: Yes.

But this short answer is complicated by the fact that many "femme" behaviors/physical presentations also result from processes that have the effect of harming individual bodies in some serious ways. E.g., genital mutilation, foot binding, and a whole variety of Western fashions (corsets to high heeled shoes to the face lift and liposuction) all have been means to "feminine" behaviors/physical presentations by which women's "value" has been judged. (This evaluation continues both before and after the practices have fallen out of style or even been ruled illegal, and it often plays out in very complex ways.)

Since some of these "femme" characteristics result from processes that seriously damage bodies (or potentially do so) and often either temporarily or permanently make them less capable of acting/moving in the world, I think the answer must be more complex than a simple yes/no.

Additionally, female-presenting persons who conform to those behaviors AND non-conforming women are typically valued or rejected by intimate relations and public institutions as a result of their conformity to femme behavior, or lack thereof, despite their being less "valued" than masculine behaviors. (Example: In many places, women seeking jobs in professional fields are still advised that wearing a skirt to an interview, rather than a pant-suit is more "appropriate," will make them appear more hireable, because they won't seem too "aggressive," which is often valued as "assertiveness" in male applicants.)

I believe that that the potential physical harm and the complexly restraining effect of these practices, needs to be explored and reckoned with in serious ways across the society--not just by women who are then left in a double-bind. And this analysis must include the fact that these feminised forms of restraint/physical harm may still be attractive in some ways to various people along whatever gender spectrum is operating.

I would want to be certain that those people who especially are attracted to physically damaging "femme" characteristics as forms of self-presentation (as I am) are very aware of the potential negative consequences of their choices, and, if they are female-identified from birth, about the pressure on us to choose to find certain behaviors/presentations attractive and to scorn others.

I want us all to know of real--I mean really real, truly possible and even potentially attractive--alternatives to restraining/damaging femme behaviors and to have those alternatives genuinely accessible to us. (E.g., obviously "just leave your home/family/country" is not always a "real" possibility to individuals seeking to make a decision about gender conformity, for a whole slew of reasons).

In that kind of world, I would have more faith in femme choices as choices. Even my own choices.
 
 
Homeless Halo
20:00 / 03.04.06
I'd posit that I'm less than qualified to make judgements regarding the veritable onslaught of ideas presented thus far, however, my interest in related matters is historically strong so I will continue endeavoring to understand and communicate on these subjects.

I didn't intend to reply, until elene said:

"...at least while they're still young, many maths people cultivate a life-style full of (a quarter century ago, mind you) D&D, "Gödel, Escher, Bach," VAX service calls, discussion of Kronecker and constructivism, Doctor Who, fractals and the like (instead of sex and drugs and rock'n'roll).

Which effictively describes not only my childhood, but my last four dates. (if you removed the "instead of" and included "escape artistry and 'kung fu' re-runs" it would describe ALL of my dates)

So, if you're interested in discussing mathematics and "geek" as being innate vs. learned behavior, we could go all day, but I'm fairly unaware of transgender issues, at least in the practical sense. Because of this, I'm certain my views are somewhat biased, and my lack of tact could easily lead to my offending any number of people.

I am interested that this "femme" identity, and supposedly other "gender-identities" (?)are somehow inherently "subversive". Especially in the sense of identical actions by seperate persons being interpreted in different contexts.

How does this work, and what exactly is being subverted, etc?

Forgive my ignorance, and my lacking conversational skills, as noted above, I'd do better discussing the (il)logical ramifications of the Continuum Hypothesis.
 
  

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