Femme

A gay man whose style, voice or manner leans feminine, often worn with pride: the opposite of masc, borrowed from an older lesbian identity.

Femme describes a gay man whose style, voice or manner leans feminine: expressive hands, a lighter voice, a love of fashion, makeup, glitter or a well-timed hair flip. It can be a whole identity or a mood for the evening. Today many men use it about themselves with pride, as the opposite of masc and as a refusal to tone themselves down.

It is a word with two lives. For gay men it is a style; among lesbians, femme is a much older identity, the feminine partner in the butch-femme culture of the mid-20th century, and that history is still very much alive. When a gay man calls himself femme he is borrowing a word with a proud lesbian past.

Where it comes from

Femme is simply French for woman, and English slang used it for a young woman from the 19th century. Its queer life starts early. Green's Dictionary of Slang records femme for an effeminate gay man as early as 1932, and for a feminine lesbian from 1947, when a source already notes that "femme [is] common in gay parlance". In Australia it also meant a drag performer, and from 1970 the word could mean the "passive" partner in any couple, straight or gay.

For a long time, being femme was what got gay men spotted, mocked and beaten, long before the word had any pride attached. The older words for it, nelly, sissy, swish, flamer, were mostly insults. Femme has been used for us since at least 1932, but it never carried quite the same sting, which is one reason it has caught on as the self-label of choice.

Femme and the apps

On the apps, femme men meet the other side of the coin: "masc4masc" and "no femmes" lines. Grindr's 2018 Kindr campaign singled out exactly that kind of profile text, along with other discriminatory language. Many femme men answer by putting the word front and center in their bios: if someone is going to filter you out, better make it easy.

Femme is not a role

A common mistake is to assume a femme man is always a bottom and a masc one always a top. Plenty of femme tops would like a word. Femme is about expression, not about what happens in bed, and not about gender identity either: most femme gay men are men, just men with more sparkle.

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