General During the 1990s and the emergence of the
lipstick lesbian identity into the mainstream,
femme became a catch-all term to describe a feminine lesbian. Citing research from the 1990s, Levitt and Bridges stated that the terms
butch and
femme "began infiltrating bisexual communities, and women began writing about their experiences as bisexual femmes", but also that "very little empirical research has been conducted looking at the expression and experience of gender expression and gender identity within bisexual women." Some research has indicated that butches are more likely to be exclusively lesbian, while femmes are sometimes bisexual. Praising the publication of
Ivan Coyote's
Persistence: All Ways Butch and Femme in 2011, Bornstein said, "The butch/femme dynamic is a conscious, loving binary of desire and trust ... it's a dance of love and outlawed romance. Butches and femmes share a sense of tribe, extended family and kinship—no matter what our genders might be." Since the late 2010s, influenced by the emergence of queer and transgender culture on sites such as
Tumblr, Everyday Feminism, and
Autostraddle,
femme has been expanded to describe feminine people across gender and sexuality categories including
heterosexual women,
cisgender men and
transfeminine people. The
postmodern queer conception of femme is a femme-identified person who does not always dress or act in a "traditionally feminine" (meaning a feminine aesthetic, such as wearing makeup, heels, and numerous accessories) way, but who expresses femme identity through feminine-associated behaviours, interactions and political views. Rather than an erotic identity rooted in lesbian women's culture, queer femme has been reframed into a
political identity that is inclusive of all who wish to identify with it, feminine-presenting or not. As femme has moved into the mainstream, it has also been connected to notions of
emotional labor,
witchcraft and
self-empowerment. Based on the understanding of
femme as describing a person (not necessarily a woman) who presents femininely, the expression "women and femmes" is sometimes used, but it has been criticized as conflating two different categories of identity.
Femme has also been used to describe a form of contemporary feminism which rejects the
gender binary and acknowledges that individuals can fall anywhere within the gender spectrum, resulting in the possibility to be gender-less, gender-fluid, femme or masculine of center. Often using the phrase "women and femmes", adherents to this definition of femme believe that misogyny is used not only against women to inflict theoretical and physical violence but primarily against all feminine people. Connecting cisgendered male violence to toxic masculinity, they believe that patriarchy not only negatively affects female-identified people but men as well. The term
femme is also essential to
ballroom culture through the terms
butch queen and
femme queen, denoting a
gay man and
transgender woman respectively.
Use of femme by bisexual women By the 1990s, the term
femme had additionally been adopted by
bisexual women. Citing research from the 1990s, Levitt and Bridges stated that the terms
butch and
femme "began infiltrating bisexual communities, and women began writing about their experiences as bisexual femmes", but also that "very little empirical research has been conducted looking at the expression and experience of gender expression and gender identity within bisexual women." This argument posits that the claim that only women with no attraction to men have identified as femmes is ahistoric. While today there is a common consensus that the term lesbian refers to women who exclusively feel attraction towards women and femmes, the term has carried various changing implications and expansive interpretations throughout history, particularly with the rise of political lesbianism in 1979. Hence, the adoption of
femme by bisexuals in the 1990s is considered by some to be a re-adoption by a portion of the same community following the distinction between lesbians and bisexual women and the lesbian separatist movement of the 1970s.
Femme identities online Theorists have used aesthetics to analyze and addresses the evolution of the word "femme" throughout the 21st century. Femme theorist Andi Schwartz uses comparisons of modern and historical associations of the femme identity to outline "soft femme theory." She asserts that in the mid-to-late 20th century, "femme" was used to describe rough, badass women. Today, however, especially on social media, the word "femme" is used to describe the "soft, sad girl" trope that is commonly seen online and in trending fashions. While Schwartz offers a critique of this aesthetic and the erasure of pre-internet femme identities, she also considers how "performing softness" as an identifier for femininity, both on and offline, can be effective in transgressing hegemonic gender norms.
Use of fem(me) by gay men From the 70s through 90s, gay male culture included the phrase "No Fats, No Femmes", and that persists in queer dating culture today. Constrained by character limitations on gay hookup apps such as
Grindr and
Scruff, "fem", "femm", and "femme" are used as an abbreviation for feminine. The ubiquitous phrase "No Fats, No Fems", indicating that a user does not want to be contacted by men of a certain size or
feminine men, has been challenged by some in the gay community for perpetuating
homonormative beauty ideals. "Fem" is used as a descriptor of one's appearance or mannerisms. ==Lesbian femme erasure==