What an ominous sounding title, isn't it?

If you haven't read my last article you might want to take a peek at it.  In it I discussed gender terminology and how meanings can change over time (for example queer means something different than it did decades ago) and how some words (such as tranny) can be either considered offensive or part of the vernacular depending where in the world you are.

'Queer' in particular is fascinating to me.  I am not a linguist and I could be wrong or at the very least missing a lot of historical relevance but the word used to primarily mean 'strange' or 'unusual'.  I mean, it still does but it's not used in that context very often anymore.  It shifted to describing someone who is gay when people didn't really say the actual word.  It was more or less a code word, such as "a friend of Dorothy".  Look that one up if you're not familiar with it.  At any rate, 'queer' morphed into a slur, an insult. 

But what I love about the word is how the LGBTQ+ community took it back, so to speak.  It was collectively decided that we didn't WANT it to be a slur so we adopted it and proudly identified as queer.  I mean, the Q in LGBTQ+ is RIGHT THERE.

I like the word.  I like how inclusive it is and that is due to it being rather vague.  It covers a lot of territory without it needing to be specific, whether you're queer when it comes to sexuality or gender.  Am I queer?  Sure, why not.  To me it means that someone is not heterosexual and/or cisgender.

Anyway, the emergence of new words and the modification of existing words can be overwhelming and confusing to older generations.  I work for a college and I work with a lot of teenagers and young adults.  It's all I can do to keep up with their language and I consult Google more often than I'd like to admit.  The first time a student said "bet" to me was enlightening, lol.

I do want to stress that EVERY generation is like this.  Some of my colleagues bitch and bitch about "millennials" and their made-up words but when they were that age they also had their own language.  "Sick" doesn't always mean someone is ill, it can also mean that something is really cool.  At one point they may have had to explain to their own parents what 'groovy' or 'gear' meant.

Different subgroups of a broader community also create their own words and definitions.  I am not a science fiction fan but I am familiar with 'Trekkies' and the subgroup 'Trekkers'.  I like Taylor Swift so of course I know alllllll about Swifties.  If you like the Grateful Dead you might be a 'deadhead', and so on.  The queer community isn't much different.

As a proud member of the transgender community (and this is what my previous article explores) I am familiar and well-versed with what could be considered slightly more specific identifiers when it comes to gender.  Members of the transgender community may choose (if they wish) to identify as non-binary or as a crossdresser and so on.  My previous article also emphasized that different people may very well have different definitions and perspectives when it comes to what "qualifies" someone as transgender, as a crossdresser, etc.  I want to make it clear that no one (particularly myself) gets to decide what different identities mean for someone else.  That goes along with "enforcing" or "policing" someone's identity.  If someone identifies as transgender but you don't think they are, it's not your role to correct them or reprimand them.  

I want to make it clear that no one (particularly myself) gets to decide what different identities mean for someone else.

All of this is important context wise when it comes to the very subject of this post: The Femboy.

Who or what is a femboy?  Again, there's not a collective agreement on what qualifies someone as a femboy but it seems that a femboy is someone who is typically young who typically identifies as a male who wears dresses, makeup, and other feminine enhancements. 

You may be asking yourself aren't they a crossdresser?

I mean, yes?  Maybe?  If they choose to identify as such.  To me, and I can't reinforce this enough, my own perspective on this (coming from my own experiences) is that a crossdresser is someone who was assigned male at birth, still identifies as male, but likes to wear "girl clothes".  To me, what they wear doesn't move the needle on gender identity.  They are, to put it in overly simplistic terms, a guy who wears girl clothes. 

So why not just keep using the word?  Why do we need another word to describe the same identity? 

Well, in my humble opinion, it could be because the word 'crossdresser' has been stigmatized over the last few decades.  Not necessarily by crossdressers themselves, but by the rest of the world.  In my formative years gender identity wasn't as inclusive as it is now.  Any deviation from 'boys wearing boy clothes' was portrayed as funny, as sexual, and/or as kinky.  Most of the terms we use today, such as non-binary, didn't exist.  'Crossdresser' became a blanket term to describe a boy who wore girl clothes.

Since this is how a crossdresser was portrayed in movies and the like, a crossdresser could be ANYTHING, but almost always something negative.  Something dehumanizing.  A dude wearing panties was HILARIOUS.  A dude wearing a dress was CONFUSED.  A dude wearing nail polish was GAY.  You get the point.  It didn't take long for the general population to be taught that if a man wore anything femme, they were queer, but not queer as we use the word now, queer as in 'strange'.

This stigma still prevails today.  If you have ever come out to someone you may have used this very word.  I know I did.  I had no choice, it was pretty much the only word we had.  The risk was that much of the world had their own perspective on what 'crossdresser' meant.  When I told a girlfriend that I was a crossdresser, she may have likely translated the confession as "I am strange, I am gay, I am a pervert, I am confused". 

These words are probably not what you want your boyfriend to be.

I knew the stigma, I knew what 'crossdresser' meant to most people, but again, what else was I?  After that fateful coming out I had to deconstruct who I wasn't.  I wasn't confused, I didn't want to sleep with men, I do not want to transition, and so on.  I was (at least at the time) a boy who wore girl clothes.  To me, it didn't get more straightforward than that. 

The emergence of new terminology, such as nonbinary, was really exciting to me.  Maybe we could, well, retire the word crossdresser or at the very least we had another option to identify as.  If I were to come out to someone now I would absolutely use another word and not necessarily nonbinary, but it seems that this is the word that most people are familiar with, or at least it's something they have heard before.

None of this is meant to criticize or shame anyone who identifies as a crossdresser.  Please understand.  This also goes with anyone who enjoys messing with gender roles when it comes to a kink. 

Like the reinvention of 'queer', it's important that a community has their own language and their own definitions.  It's empowering.  'Femboy' could very well be doing that.  Like any addition to language, someone created it and soon a definition of what the word meant came.  Sure, it may have a lot in common with 'crossdresser' but like Trekkie and Trekker, there is a difference.    I admit I am not an expert on the origin of femboy, so I could be wrong or at very least missing some key details, but it SEEMS to me that it, like so many queer-related terms, can be very broad.

I think when we're young (or at least navigating the early days of your journey) there's a lot of uncertainty on who you are and what this means and if you are alone.  Finding a word can be immensely comforting.

Is a femboy a kink?  Is there a sexual or erotic aspect?  Sure, maybe.  Like crossdressing, there may or may not be a sexual component associated with that person.  But even if there's not, someone else may decide that there is.  If someone is nonbinary, transgender, or a crossdresser, it's very likely someone else may decide that they are who they are because they are aroused by how they present.  This thinking and projection is a remnant of how boys wearing girl clothes were portrayed for decades in the media.  To some, there's not a difference between a guy who posts thirst pics online of them wearing a corset and someone who transitioned. 

Of course, the sexual aspect can also be projected.  Again, no shade but if a dude wears lingerie because it turns him on, he may assume that ALL people who were assigned male at birth ALSO wear girl clothes for kinky reasons. 

I see a lot of gender related content on my Twitter page and that includes femboys and the related hashtag.  From what I can tell a femboy is someone who might be very open with their presentation and hit the mall or go to school in full makeup or even just a skirt.  The opposite side of the spectrum is also there as there are just as many femboys who hide their face when they post selfies in their new dress.  Are both extremes femboys?  Sure, of course.  Again, no one should be policing someone else's identity.

As more and more people identify as such, the word can become more and more inclusive.  A LOT of femboys I see on social media tend to be younger and have a more androgynous look to them.  But like so many other gender related terms, this word will also broaden.  I am decades older than many femboys but is there anything or anyone stopping me from identifying as a femboy?  No.  Not really.  I mean, I suppose it's possible someone might slide into my DM and tell me I am too old to be a femboy.  I mean, I get emails from other transgender women who tell me that I am not transgender because I didn't and will not transition.  Simply put, I do not meet someone else's definition of what identifying as transgender means.  

And that's fine.  I am not going to argue with someone else.  I don't care if I meet anyone else's version of a word.  I mean, I am sometimes told that I don't LOOK autistic.  I want to ask what an autistic person is SUPPOSED to look like, but trust me, talk to me for three minutes and my autism is going to be very, very obvious.  Also, this is 2200+ word article about a word that the majority of the English speaking world has likely never heard of.  If you couldn't tell, gender is one of my special interests.  Of course, not every autistic person is the same, just like every nonbinary person is unique.

Is femboy a trendy word?  Will it be around in two years?  Who knows?  Will it expand and become the F in LGBTQF+?  Who can say?  New words come and go and it may fade into obscurity like 67 (thank goodness) did.  Would I be a femboy were I decades younger?  Maybe?  At the very least I would have appreciated the option of doing so. 

Is femboy an important word?   Yes.  Why?  Your perspective on the importance of gender identifying terminology may differ but I think when we're young (or at least navigating the early days of your journey) there's a lot of uncertainty on who you are and what this means and if you are alone.  Finding a word can be immensely comforting.  Although I would eventually have some misgivings about identifying as a crossdresser, I was incredibly relieved to learn the word when I was a teenager.  Knowing that there were others like me, that there were SO MANY others like me that there was a word for us taught me that I was not alone.  I was a crossdresser and there are countless other crossdressers.

These days other words fit me better:  nonbinary, transgender, and bi-gender.  Femboy is another option for those discovering who they are.  It might be perfect, it might not.  It may be a good fit for now, but over time maybe a different term is more accurate.  As we progress on our journey we learn more about ourselves.  We grow, and we outgrow, and we change.  We create ourselves, we discover ourselves.

One more thing:

We need to let the younger generation create the world they will be living in.  We need to help them do this.  We need to listen and make decisions that will benefit them as they grow into the leaders of tomorrow.  They will stumble as my generation did, they will make mistakes, as my generation did, they will learn from their mistakes, as my generation did.  Generations should teach.  We teach from our own experience.  We do this in broad ways, we do this in small ways.  I teach my students based on my mistakes and what I learn.  I teach my nieces from my own experiences.  We were all young, we all fought against our parents and their generation.  We did not learn by being TOLD what to do.  We learned from making mistakes, the same mistakes that our parents LET us make.  But we should be doing more than that.  We should let people create themselves, their communities, their language. 

Love, Hannah