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The Cultural Politics of Emotion by Sara Ahmed (2014)

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The Cultural Politics of Emotion by Sara Ahmed (2014)

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For many femme gay men, women feel like home, but not like family. We’re close enough to be loved, admired, even emotionally leaned on, but often not close enough to be fully seen. That’s not failure on our part, it’s a reminder that femininity may be cherished, but womanhood still draws the social lines.

“Discomfort is not simply a feeling that resides in a body; it is a feeling that is produced by the body’s relation to others.”​

For feminine gay men, this discomfort can manifest in spaces where their gender expression doesn't align with normative expectations, even among women friends.​

Sara Ahmed really gets at the tension that I seek to place at the forefront of this discussion: gay men, no matter how feminine they are, often never feel fully assimilated into their friendships with women. They lean on women for support and shared experience, yet the struggle and tension of gender binary means that an invisible line exists that says "you're almost like us, you almost fit in, but you won't ever be us, no matter how hard you try."

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The Cultural Politics of Emotion on JSTOR

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What do emotions do? How do emotions move us or get us stuck? In developing a theory of the cultural politics of emotion, Sara Ahmed focuses on the relationshi…

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Acceptable Femininity? Gay Male Misogyny and the Policing of Queer Femininities (2018)

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Acceptable Femininity? Gay Male Misogyny and the Policing of Queer Femininities (2018)

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This paper offers a critical examination of how certain expressions of femininity are marginalized within gay male communities.

While the "femme tax" term has not been accepted widely in academic circles and feminist thought, increasing amounts of work are being done to explore the subject and understand the ideas core to the way masculinity and femininity interact within gay individuals.

The authors challenge the notion that oppressed groups cannot perpetuate oppression themselves. They argue that some gay men, despite facing societal marginalization, can and do exhibit misogynistic behaviors, particularly towards expressions of femininity within queer spaces.​

The article discusses how certain forms of femininity are deemed "acceptable" while others are stigmatized. This policing reinforces a hierarchy that privileges masculinity, even within communities that are themselves marginalized.​

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Acceptable femininity? Gay male misogyny and the policing of queer femininities - Sadie E Hale, Tomás Ojeda, 2018

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While it represents a common form of gender-based violence, misogyny is an often-overlooked concept within academia and the queer community. Drawing on queer an…

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The Fear of Feminine Behavior Among Black Gay Men (2023)

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The Fear of Feminine Behavior Among Black Gay Men (2023)

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This podcast by the Pulitzer Center is really informative on how femininity can interact in gay circles.

The combination of transphobia, homophobia (both externalized and internalized), and misogynoir work together to create a complex image of policing gender and masculinity within the gay community.

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Podcast: The Fear of Feminine Behavior Among Black Gay Men

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In this podcast, you’ll hear three members of the LGBTQ+ community share their views on internalized homophobia and transphobia among Black gay men. They and the podcast’s host, Kameo Latortue, also…

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Judith Butler really explores gender as a regulatory ideal. You can perform femininity, but if your body doesn’t match the expected "woman" category, that performance is often marked as deviant.

Feminine gay men are read as "doing" femininity rather than "being" it, which can create subtle social exclusion even among women.

“To be undone by another is a primary necessity, an anguish, and a chance— to be addressed, claimed, bound to what is not me, but also to be moved, to be prompted to act.”

Feminine gay men live at the intersection of that undoing. They may feel undone, not fully legible or embraced, by both masculinity and womanhood. But that very dislocation is also where new forms of queer kinship and resistance can begin.

According to Judith Butler, we become who we are through recognition. But for feminine gay men, especially in friendships with women, that recognition is always partial. Femininity is seen, but gender still marks us as outsiders.

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Feminism is for Everybody by bell hooks (2000)

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Feminism is for Everybody by bell hooks (2000)

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This work offers tools to examine the emotional, relational, and gendered power dynamics that structure even our most intimate spaces.

“Patriarchy has no gender.”

hooks emphasizes that men, too, are socialized into a system that teaches them to suppress emotion, equate masculinity with dominance, and fear vulnerability. This hurts feminine men in particular, who are policed not only by straight culture, but also sometimes by queer communities trying to maintain proximity to patriarchal norms.

bell hooks reminds us that patriarchy doesn’t just hurt women, it also restricts men, especially those who dare to be soft. Feminine gay men are often welcomed for their emotional openness, but still held at a distance because of deep-rooted distrust of masculinity, even when that masculinity has been radically reimagined.

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Stanford Blatch's Character from Sex and The City

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Stanford Blatch's Character from Sex and The City

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In the popular HBO series Sex and the City, Carrie’s close gay friend, Stanford Blatch, is often framed as witty and stylish, but he’s rarely given his own storylines outside of her orbit. He is known as the archetype of the "gay best friend."

Stanford is included in girls' nights and brunches, but he’s never fully in the “girlhood” circle.

Stanford is really representative of how femme gay men are emotionally aligned with women friends but remain on the edge of their social world.

His life exists largely to support, mirror, or humorously contrast Carrie’s. He is clearly loved by Carrie, but his subject-hood is limited; he's emotionally proximate, but structurally on the margins.

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SATC | Stanford Breaks-up with Marcus | Season 6 | Episode 10

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Whipping Girl by Julia Serano is a foundational text for understanding how femininity is policed, devalued, and scapegoated in both queer and mainstream spaces.

“Our culture is transfixed on the femininity of trans women in a way that is never paralleled for trans men.”

Femmephobia is Serano’s term for the societal disdain for femininity, especially when it’s embodied by someone who was assigned male at birth. She argues that this isn’t just homophobia or transphobia; it’s a distinct bias against femininity itself.

“Femininity is viewed as artificial, while masculinity is considered natural and inevitable.”

Serano argues that masculinity is seen as the “default," strong, stable, real, while femininity is seen as always excessive, always a performance. This means femme people (regardless of gender) are not fully believed.

So as Julia Serano shows, femmephobia isn't just about who we desire; It's about which forms of gender expression are seen as authentic. Feminine gay men often find themselves close to women emotionally, but still outside their social worlds, because patriarchy teaches all of us, even women, to see femininity in male bodies as suspect.

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Compulsory Heterosexuality and Lesbian Existence by Adrienne Rich (1980)

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Compulsory Heterosexuality and Lesbian Existence by Adrienne Rich (1980)

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Though often read as a radical feminist call to center lesbian identity, Compulsory Heterosexuality and Lesbian Existence is also an incredibly nuanced analysis of how patriarchy structures desire, relationships, and emotional intimacy.

Even though Rich is writing primarily about women's relationships to men, her insights help explain why some straight women might bond deeply with feminine gay men but still draw a subtle boundary, because they’ve been taught to relate to “men” in specific, constrained ways.

So even if I, as a femme gay man, am emotionally attuned, supportive, and aligned with my female friends:

I'm still perceived as a man within a system that conditions women to relate to men in emotionally limited or suspicious ways.

My femininity may be welcomed, but my male identity remains marked; and under compulsory heterosexuality, that mark complicates trust, belonging, and sisterhood.

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Femme Theory by Rhea Ashley Hoskin (2021)

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Femme Theory by Rhea Ashley Hoskin (2021)

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Hoskin's book, Femme Theory, argues that "femme" is not merely an identity but a vital theoretical lens that has been overlooked in both feminist and queer discourses. By centering queer femininities, the book seeks to counteract the masculinist biases prevalent in gender theory and to re-evaluate the assumptions embedded in cultural narratives about gender and power.

Hoskin argues that to be femme, especially as a queer person, is not a failure to be masculine. It’s a deliberate refusal to meet masculinity’s demands.

This makes femme identity inherently subversive, not because it challenges gender from the outside, but because it reconfigures it from within.

Hoskin writes that one of the most radical things about femme is how often it is misinterpreted; as inauthentic, performative, or weak. But instead of trying to correct that misreading, femme resistance embraces it.

“Femme refuses legibility on hegemonic terms.”

It doesn’t try to make itself palatable. It exists in excess, in emotion, in contradiction, and that’s what makes it resist assimilation.

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Ballroom Culture: the Language of Vogue Ted Talk 

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Ballroom Culture: the Language of Vogue Ted Talk 

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This video serves as a compelling example of how expressive forms like voguing challenge societal norms and celebrate femininity. Ballroom culture, with its emphasis on performance and self-expression, exemplifies how marginalized groups have created spaces to honor and empower femme identities.​

It expands on Hoskin's work as Ballroom and Voguing are such a strong and powerful way to reclaim femme as resistance. It is the characteristic refusal of legibility on hegemonic terms.

This video also highlights the importance of such spaces that allow for femininity to be placed at the forefront and the refusal to conform to societal standards. Voguing provides an outlet, a medium, for femme queer individuals, all while doing so in a way that places it at the zenith of popular culture and influence.

Ballroom is incredibly important to the art of dance, ever since Madonna placed it in the limelight with her song and music video Vogue. Phrases and musical motifs have found their way into the larger cultural zeitgeist, such as Kevin JZ Prodigy's "Here Comes the Hurricane B****", the FX show Pose, and of course, RuPaul's Drag Race.

Therefore, voguing is the embodiment of reclaiming femme as resistance.

It’s deliberately performative, challenging the idea that femininity must be natural to be valid.

It redefines realness, a key ballroom category, not as conformity, but as confidence and survival.

It transforms ridicule into art, pain into beauty, and marginalization into pageantry.

In ballroom, femininity is not taxed; it’s rewarded. It’s a currency, a craft, and a crown.

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Ballroom Culture: the Language of Vogue | Ronald Murray | TEDxColumbus