I quite like the “femme” thing and, well, I wouldn’t say I fit 100% with it (I would be quite a butchy femme), but it probably corresponds more to me than either “woman”, “butch”, or any other gender subcategory.
What I like in “femme” identity is what I see as a notion of “constructed feminity”, in opposition to a natural mainstream feminity.
The term in itself shows this: it means “woman” in a foreign language (french), so how I see it is that you’re quite feminine in a “foreign way”.
The term “female-to-femme” that I have seen used sometimes (see femmes as trans identity on Sugarbutch Chronicles) also goes in this sense: there is a transition to “go femme”.
And now… well, those two terms actually puzzle me a bit.
Let’s start first with the trans’ thing. I can understand that some femmes feel as “transgender” and I think indeed the “femme” identity goes out of classical gender norms. I can understand also the
feeling of “transitionning”. But :
- first, there is the sort of “appropriation” of trans’ “vocabulary” even if, honestly, I don’t care much personally, I see trans’ as quite open and anyway I don’t think that the fact of defining as “female-to-femme” means that this person will consider having faced the same thing as a trans person.
- second, which is a bit paranoid but, well, after being excluded and excluded I think it’s quite natural to become it a bit, I am afraid that redefining “femme” as “female-to-femme” could be a way to exclude trans’ femmes. Now there again, I don’t think that if an individual defines as “female-to-femme” (as I can define as “male-to-femme”) it’s a problem, but it would become excluding to trans femmes if “female-to-femme” started replacing the “femme” term.
And now, since that was about the “female-to-femme” term, let’s talk a bit about the “femme” term itself.
As I said, it means “woman” in french. Obviously in french, we don’t use the term “femme” since it would be indistinguishable from “woman”, so we say “fem” (I think it also exists in english, but I think it is less frequent). Which is quite ironical, because it is pronouced the english way. So in the two languages, the terms sounds a bit “foreign”, crediting there again my theory of “non natural feminity”.
But, well, I wonder: why is it “femme” ? It is not “mujer” or “mulher” or “frau”. Now maybe it is because of pronunciation issue, but I wondered if it was because of some kind of… well, french women reputation, or something like that ? Does someone knows the origin of the term ? The truth is, I’m not even sure of the reputation we have. I know there is the term “french kiss” and I think some sensuality associated to french women, and on the other hand I think we are also thought to be dirty with hairy armpits. Already a femme/butch dichotomy, I guess :)
