Experiences of femme identity: coming out, invisibility and femmephobia

Constructing respectability from disfavoured social positions: exploring young femininities and health as shaped by marginalisation and social context. A qualitative study in Northern Sweden

“…As background, Jewkes and Morell [8] state that health literature, epidemiology, and qualitative research have tended ‘to treat women as a homogeneous group and as victims of (all) men’ and deployed the categories woman or female ‘in a blunt and uncritical manner’ instead of exploring their agential capacities (p. 1730). Moreover, addressing issues of power are crucial [14], including the more general and systemic devaluation of femininity across genders and sexualities [7,15]. Intersectional approaches have the potential to capture interlinked ‘axes of oppression’, including dominant norms of ‘whiteness’ and ‘heteronormativity’ [7,16–18].…”

“…As Graham [5] notes, constructs of femininity may ‘shift over the life course as young people are exposed to different social and cultural contexts’ (p. 266). And, there is more than one way to construct, navigate and negotiate femininity, which can be dependent on place, time and micro-politics of life [5,8–10,13,15,17,29–35]. Performances and practices of femininity are thus understood as ‘social constructions’ intrinsically linked to health and illness [10,36].…”

“…Critical femininity studies, intersectional feminist approaches, and ‘queer fem(me)inist’ scholars question the understandings and theories of femininity that are limited to white, cisgender, heterosexual, female (able) bodies [7,12,15,17,40,41]. As pointed out by Hoskin [7] in concepts on femme theory and intersectionality, and Dahl and Sundén [41], ‘hegemonic’, ‘normative’ or ‘patriarchal’ femininity is not only tied to dominant gender norms, but also to class (upper-middle), race/ethnicity (whiteness), ability (able-bodied) and sexuality (heterosexuality).…”

“…And the risk of failure is tied to class (not bourgeois) and race (not white). Further, Blair and Hoskin [15] argue that ‘culturally sanctioned’ and ‘essentialised’ femininity consists of the Victorian model of ‘proper womanhood’ that ‘necessitates [a] white, heterosexually available, cis woman’, and espouses a biological determinist view of gender (p. 232).…”

“…In relation to femme theory, the concept of femmephobia is used to theorise ‘naturalised’ policing, stigmatisation and subordination of femininity in relation to the privilege and dominance of masculinity across genders and sexualities [7,15]. Hoskin [7] describes ‘femme’ as an ‘active subject’ and a ‘failed femininity’ who has failed or refused to ‘approximate the patriarchal feminine norm of white, cisgender, able-bodied virtuosity’ (p. 100), while ‘patriarchal femininity’ and ‘femmephobia’ operate by attempting to ‘turn an active (femme) subject into a passive object’ (p. 100).…”