Every discussion we have spawns more discussions so here we go again.

I'm gay and extremely active in the queer community with a lot of friends in activist circles who are trans, genderqueer, bi, pan, and so on. Literally until Femboy Hooters I'd never even come across the term. Here's what I think I see and y'all tell me if I'm off.

Femboys themselves seem to mostly be gay boys, although some are potentially trans eggs waiting to crack, but largely they seem to be comfortable with being gay and cis and male. They all seem to dress up pretty hardcore in feminine clothes and wear make up, but they're not drag queens or genderqueer, or they don't identify as such at least.

What's weird to me (yet still makes sense) is that the vast majority of people attracted to them are straight guys. As one dude said, "Men make better women." So of course there's the overtone of misogyny there. I've been approached before by straight men asking me if I'd be willing to wear panties or take hormones or get a tit job, but I hadn't really thought about it until I saw the preponderance of femboys out there in the world. Now how can I say these guys are straight if they want to fuck a cis man? Pretty simple, they don't see me as one. They see me as a woman who they want to feminize more.

I tried looking at the etymology and history of the term but there's nothing much. I did uncover a trove of femboys who hate trans people and who also differentiate themselves from what they call tr^ps. If you hate trans people your gay card should get revoked automatically so fuck them, but it seems to confirm my suspicion that this seems to have a misogynist bent to it. This may just be a label for the types of gay guys I knew who were very feminine and liked to date straight men, who treated them like garbage and both of them had really conservative personal politics.

But I don't know and I want to learn so tell me what's up, I'm old and I need my porridge.

  • Reversi [none/use name]
    ·
    4 years ago

    https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Larry_Craig_scandal

    Always existed. "Straight rightist man hates gay people, but fucks gay people, but isn't gay, he promises" with added hyperfeminization aesthetic. A modernized pederasty, really.

    • gayhobbes [he/him]
      ·
      4 years ago

      Hm yeah but this seems a little different to me. I think Larry Craig was a closeted gay/bi/pan man who got him some strange in stalls. These guys literally are doing a whole M. Butterfly thing with their femboys. It's almost like they hate women so much but are sexually attracted to them that they'll date a man so long as he comes off as a woman but doesn't per se identify as one. The sexual pathology fits, but I don't know if I'm correct with it being a femboy thing or their admirers or all of it.

      • Nakoichi [he/him]
        ·
        4 years ago

        A trans comrade put it this way

        homophobia and transphobia are both constructed on the foundation of misogyny;

        homophobia: fucking men is a womanly activity, therefore men who fuck men are acting like women, and women are bad, therefore gay men are bad. |¦| fucking women is a manly activity, therefore women who fuck women are acting like men, therefore reaching above their station and usurping men as the ruling gender

        Transphobia: the gender divide is to be seen as immutable law, else it cannot oppress. To seek escape from this arbitrary assignment (whether within or without the confines of the male/female dichotomy; see: binary trans men, binary trans women, or NB people) is to question its validity as a whole, and thus threatens its divisive power. These are also corollaries to the homophobia principles; since gender is to be seen as immutable, (men who would ask to be seen as women ¦ women who would ask to be seen as men) must be treated as exceptionally abhorrent

        • gayhobbes [he/him]
          ·
          4 years ago

          This is a good point--I've almost always said there's no such thing as homophobia and transphobia, really, they're just twisted spawn of misogyny because I've never met someone who hates gays but is totally okay with women.

            • gayhobbes [he/him]
              ·
              4 years ago

              Wait wait wait wait wait holy fuck look at this:

              At death, the IRS seized almost everything he had. One of the things that the IRS did not seize was a pair of diamond cuff links, given to him by client and friend, Donald Trump. The diamond cuff links were later declared to be fake by an appraiser.

              I CANNOT EVEN.

                • gayhobbes [he/him]
                  ·
                  4 years ago

                  Hm, that doesn't look like Trump in the pic with Cohn, and I'd be surprised if he managed to get a young Trump to fluff him, but I wouldn't be surprised if he didn't mind being seen out with him all the time.

    • russianattack [he/him]
      ·
      4 years ago

      Craig said, "I'm not gay, and I don't cruise, and I don't hit on men. ... I don't go around anywhere hitting on men, and by God, if I did, I wouldn't do it in Boise, Idaho! Jiminy!"

    • throwawaylemmy [none/use name]
      ·
      4 years ago

      This is different as it's cruising in a public bathroom (though in a different way than normal cruising IIRC) than "femboys."