F

F — A gender marker for female.

FAILURE — Lack of success; deficiency.

A normatively successful life is measured by a stable career with a comfortable income, home ownership, a happy marriage, and children. Social and financial success are inaccessible (and undesirable) to many queers.

Embracing failure allows for escape from punishing norms. Refusing to conform to cisnormative ideals of beauty, body, sex, and sexuality is liberating; the same is true about eschewing milestones which ostensibly measure success.

The metrics for success were not designed with queers in mind. Being, or choosing to be, queer—to reject cisheteronormativity through your body, your romantic relationships (or lack thereof), and your sexual encounters (or lack thereof)—is seen as a deficiency. We must be lacking, wanting, because it’s inconceivable that someone would happily shun the norms we’re told are the building blocks of a fulfilling life.

Queer failure is: failure to fuck properly; failure to form cisheterosexual monogamous reproductive relationships which follow the courtship-marriage-mortgage-children model; failure to conform to respectability politics and be “productive” members of society; and failure to have a “right” (cisgender) body and use it (fuck) the “right” way. These failures are compounded for disabled, fat, old, poor, and non-white people.

Who is afforded failure? Failure is a protest, but also a “quirky,” “alternative” indulgence—a luxury.

FAN FICTION, FAN FIC — Fictional stories written by fans rather than the original writers. Stories which exist outside of the canon of a fictional universe.

Fan fiction is an opportunity for fans to see themselves represented in popular media, often by literally inserting themselves into the story. This is especially true in genres with particularly bad representation of women and queer people, like science fiction and fantasy. Fan fic allows fans a space for identifying with characters they love, without compulsive cisheterosexuality.

Slash fic is the pairing of characters with interpersonal attraction and sexual relationships. The first published slash fic was of Star Trek characters Captain Kirk and Mr. Spock in the story “A Fragment Out of Time” by Diane Marchant in the 1974 fanzine Grup, Issue 3. The pairing came to be written as Kirk/Spock or K/S (hence the “slash”).

In addition to queering, fan fiction is also the site of increased positive representation for people of color, disabled people, and fat people. Fan fic authors might exploit a canon of ambiguity and write a popular character as being explicitly marginalized, or they might write an entirely new character who exists within the fictional universe.

There are many subgenres of fan fiction, each with their own histories, etiquette, and tropes.

FASCISM — A political ideology which prioritizes the nation and racial purity, with strictly regimented socio-economic policies, governed through a centralized dictatorship with opposition quelled by force.

Fascism is about creating (and policing) a nation. Nationhood is shared culture, ethnicity, and territory, and gender norms are a key part of culture. Because we subvert gender norms and thus threaten the homogeneity of the nation, queer people are targeted by fascism.

Ethnic minorities, disabled people, and the mentally ill are also targeted by fascists. Fascism functions and gains traction by manufacturing enemies and scapegoats. Because fascism is entirely focused on the nation and building a coherent nationality, it is inherently invested in Othering people who don’t conform to the ideals of the nation, despite the flimsiness of “racial purity” as a concept.

Gender non-conformity, including homosexuality, is policed and punished under fascism. Homophobia and transphobia are key facets of fascism. Feminisms which exclude the most marginalized women—like women of color and trans women and disabled women—are fasc-adjacent because they uphold and reproduce the same exclusionary ideals of fascists.

The Nazi persecution of queers involved: creating a culture of homophobia and violence, claiming that homosexuality is a disease and homosexuals must be destroyed; banning organized gay groups; destroying research on homosexuality and transsexuality; criminalizing homosexuality; raiding gay bars; targeting and arresting gay men (and queer people assumed to be men), and sending them to concentration camps for “extermination through work”; and castrating gay men across Europe.

In Nazi concentration camps, the pink triangle signified the crime of homosexuality, and the black triangle was for “asocials.” Lesbians were classed as asocials, because the criminalization of homosexuality was specific to “male homosexuality,” but the “asocial” label was used broadly for anyone whose lifestyle did not conform to Nazi ideals. Gay men suffered harsher treatment and were more likely to die in concentration camps than other “asocial” prisoners, reflecting the homophobia of both the Nazis’ guards and the other prisoners. Gay men were also subject to medical experiments to “cure” them of homosexuality. Imprisoned gay men and gay women were forced to have sex with each other and other prisoners.

Restricting bodily autonomy and policing morality are key to building a fascist state. The Nazis created a Reich Central Office for the Combating of Homosexuality and Abortion. Eugenics are also a key tool of fascism. Selective human breeding is intended to “breed out” undesirable qualities; this is usually done either through killing “undesirable” people or forcibly sterilizing them.

After the Holocaust, queer people were not recognized as victims. The Holocaust was seen to “belong” to Jews, and other groups which were targeted and systemically murdered were not immediately recognized (e.g., Romani people, ethnic Poles and other Slavs, Soviet citizens, the disabled, the mentally ill, Jehovah’s witnesses, and anarchists and communists). Studying the persecution of gay people by the Nazis was further impeded by the continuation of institutional and cultural homophobia in Germany and the West at large. The criminalization of homosexuality in Germany remained on the books until 1994; gay Holocaust victims were not allowed access to pensions or other reparations before then because they were still classified as criminals. Homosexuals who were imprisoned by the Nazis and survived the concentration camps could be re-imprisoned for “repeat offenses,” and some were forced to serve the anti-gay sentences given to them by the Nazis, regardless of the time they spent in camps. The Nazis’ anti-gay policies and their targeting of the early gay rights movement in Germany was not considered suitable subject matter for Holocaust historians until the 1980s.

FATPHOBIA — Fear of, or contempt for, fat people. Behavior based on those feelings. A system of oppression in which fat people are marginalized and subject to violence.

Fat people are more likely to be unemployed, to face medical discrimination, to be subject to traumatic bullying in schools from a young age, and to be poor. Fat people, as a group, suffer medical abuse through neglect; their health problems and complaints and pain are likely to be dismissed or blamed on their weight. This is worse for fat women, trans people, and people of color, who are also less likely to be believed by doctors and have historically been subject to medical abuse.

Fatphobia is also a function of capitalism and a vehicle for consumerism: the shame or fear of being fat pressures us to buy dietary products, “control top” clothes, and gym memberships. Most clothing retailers don’t make clothes for fat bodies—not because it isn’t cost-effective, but because they don’t want fat people wearing their clothes and tarnishing their brand.

Fat-shaming and body-shaming are part of fatphobia. Fatphobia intersects closely with ableism, misogyny, and classism. Fatphobia attaches moral value to dieting, eating “healthy” foods, and exercising, which are less accessible to disabled people and poor people. There is also more pressure on women than men to conform to thin beauty standards and the socially acceptable amount of consumption fueled by self-hatred.

Fatphobia is systemic but also manifests in individual interactions, including: making comments about someone’s weight or appearance on the premise that being fat is undesirable (“You look great. Have you lost weight?”); assuming that “fatness” and “unhealthiness” are synonymous; unsolicited dietary advice; moralizing about food, diets, or eating; “before and after” pictures which do not address fatphobia; confusing one fat person for another; commenting on who is “allowed” to wear certain clothes; political or community organizing which does not account for accessibility for fat people (seating, capacity, weight limits); talking about “guilty” food or exercise habits where a fat body is the feared or implied negative outcome; and assuming that fat people have the same levels of access to medical care without institutional discrimination or neglect.

Fatphobia is also sexualized: presuming that fat people (especially fat women) are more sexually available or should be grateful for sexual attention; presuming that fat people are asexual or celibate because of their fatness; and fetishizing fat people as sex objects.

Gay culture hypersexualizes bodies, but only conventionally attractive bodies, and fatphobia is a major problem in gay communities and in discourse around attraction.

Fatphobia contributes to the normalization of eating disorders, which are already very common for queers and trans people. Talking about fatness (including your own) as ugly or undesirable is also a facet of fatphobia. Many people, especially trans people and queers, have discomfort with their bodies and many have internalized fatphobia. It’s not helpful to be harsh on yourself for feeling fat and wishing you weren’t, but we should be mindful of how and who we’re talking to about this: if we tell our fat friends that we “feel fat and gross,” then we’re implying that they are gross because they’re fat, especially if we are less fat than them.

Like all systems of oppression, fatphobia intersects with other marginalizations: classism, racism, ableism, misogyny, agism, queerphobia, and transphobia.

see also: SEX (n.); MALE

FEMALE ASSIGNED AT BIRTH (FAAB) — A variation on “Assigned Female At Birth (AFAB).”

FEMALE TO MALE (FTM, F2M) — An outdated shorthand for a trans man, or other trans person, who was assigned female at birth.

The FTM terminology positions maleness as an objective and a destination, with transition being a journey to that point; but this is extremely reductive, and most trans people do not experience their transition this way. Many trans people never identified with their assigned gender: a trans man, despite being assigned female, may have always been a man, whether or not he had the vocabulary to explain that experience.

This nomenclature also suggests that female and male are discrete categories, and that after a particular medical intervention (euphemistically called “the surgery” by ignorant cis people), maleness is achieved. The reality is that many trans people don’t have trans-related medical intervention; and there are those who pursue a wide variety of treatments, some of them ongoing for the rest of their lives.

Rather than describe themselves in terms related to their transition, most trans people prefer to use words which accurately describe their genders, like “demi-boy,” “gender fluid,” or “man.”

FEMININE, FEMININITY — Characteristics associated with women and girls, in opposition to men and boys. These include behaviors, aesthetics, and character attributes, as well as objects and professions which are gendered as being “for girls.”

The “ideal” femininity—as prescribed by patriarchy, white supremacy, and capitalism (these three are inseparable)—is white, thin, wealthy, and cis. Failure to be these things is failure to be feminine, and if you’re a woman (trans or cis) or assigned female at birth, that failure is punished.

Femininity is treated differently in different contexts: on stage, on the street, in the home, in the workplace. These contexts each have “acceptable” prescribed expressions of femininity which are rewarded, and deviance from them is punished, often with violence (e.g., street harassment, or employment discrimination if you don’t wear makeup). In many contexts, femininity (and feminized behavior) is more likely to be rewarded if it’s performed by men, such as men being nurturing, or men making an effort with their personal style.

When a body is read as feminine it becomes a public object, subject to the gaze and the physical reactions of the people around it. Women, feminine or not, experience this all the time because they are deemed inherently feminine; and men who are effeminate are “relinquishing” the privilege of their anonymity, their invisibility in public space. Trans women face a particular kind of invisibility and erasure in public space when they are read as masculine men; rather than a privilege, being read as a man is invalidating and can trigger dysphoria. There is a large spectrum of violence faced by all women, all feminine people, and all people who are read as women.

Along with bodies, work is extremely gendered. Care work, working with children, domestic work, cleaning, nursing, and service work are all considered to be “feminine.” There are also fields which are thought to be “frivolous” and feminine, which women and effeminate men are mocked for enjoying, but which are dominated by men, whose profits in these industries far exceed women’s: fashion and cooking are two examples.

Femininity is often pushed on people who don’t want it, like trans men and gender non-conforming kids. They are “feminized” in the same way that trans women are coercively masculinized.

see also: FEMME; GENDER; WOMAN; GIRL; MASCULINE; MISOGYNY; FEMMEPHOBIA

FEMINISM — A diverse political movement which purports that men and women have equal value. There are so many strands and “waves” of feminism that a less vague definition of the movement as a whole becomes ineffective. Modern feminism is notably divided on a few axes: between third-wave and fourth-wave feminists, and progressive neoliberal feminists and post-colonial anti-capitalist feminists.

Feminism as a political movement began with the suffragettes with the goal of giving (white) women equal rights to (white) men; it has since moved on to goals of liberation of everyone oppressed under patriarchy.

Third-wave feminism is premised on the idea that the personal is political. This idea is largely premised on an individualist notion of oppression rather than a structural one. “Feminism is the theory; lesbianism is the practice,” a phrase coined by trans-exclusionary radical feminist (TERF) Ti-Grace Atkinson encapsulates this. This challenges us as legitimate subjects of feminism if we are not lesbians (and implicitly, if we are not cis women). And if we are, then we are criticized if we are too hegemonically feminine: too appeasing of the male gaze, too willing to do housework, too comfortable wearing the bra we should be burning. The question becomes “Does doing _______ make me a bad feminist?,” when the real discussion shouldn’t be about individual choices but rather systems of oppression which make individual choices coercive, or remove the possibility of choice entirely. People are calling each other “bad feminists” for wearing makeup or kitten heels, but not for detaining and deporting pregnant women seeking asylum. Third-wave feminism is also notoriously transphobic, and modern TERFs uphold this tradition whilst ignoring both the shared struggles of trans people with cis women, and the progression that feminist discourse has made over the past 50 years.

Fourth-wave feminism is focused on identity politics, and how our identities inform our material conditions. But feminism itself is action, not an identity. When people (especially men, or cishet white women) claim, “I’m an intersectional feminist,” it’s prudent to ask, what is your feminism doing to undermine the effects of patriarchy on the most vulnerable? This is an example of the limits of identity politics: claiming a feminist identity is more about virtue signaling than it is about changing the material effects of patriarchy.

Progressive neoliberal feminism (appropriately called “white feminism”) upholds white supremacy through a feminist rhetoric: by prioritizing the voices and the lesser struggles of white women over women of color; by painting white women as perpetual victims of racialized masculine aggression à la King Kong; and by advocating “solutions” which further disenfranchise people of color (e.g., prison, policing, voting for the white woman in the 2016 US presidential elections who enjoyed slave/prison labor in the Arkansas governor’s mansion and thought of black teenagers as “super predators”).

White feminism, when trans-inclusive, tends to prioritize getting pronouns right rather than, for example, reducing the danger to trans women who are street-based sex workers. White feminism is also known as carceral feminism, which views criminalization as the most legitimate way to end gendered violence. This upholds and justifies prisons, police, and war as “feminist” institutions. A perfect example of this is the proposed “non-binary prisons” in England.

Decolonial and anti-capitalist feminism instead focuses on the liberation of all marginalized people; the struggles under patriarchy, capitalism, and white supremacy are seen as inextricable. The carceral state with its policing and surveillance apparatuses and its imperialist foreign policies are directly oppositional to the goals and ideals of liberation. Therefore the goals of white feminism and decolonial feminism are often at odds.

FEMME — A queer femininity. A queer identity.

Femme is distinct from feminine.

Femme arose out of working-class lesbian bar culture, as a counterpoint to butch. Femme meant “a lesbian whose appearance and behavior are traditionally feminine.” There is heated intra-community debate and speculation on exactly what femme means and who is allowed access to it. I suggest that anyone who is queer and feels an affinity toward femmeness has a legitimate claim to it.

There are many femme aesthetics: soft femme, high femme, hard femme, messy femme, and more. Aesthetic is the first site of punishment for femmes but it isn’t the only or even necessarily most significant aspect of femmeness. Femme aesthetics (like all aesthetics) are interfered with by capitalism, which means that it’s more expensive to be femme. Who has the luxury of affording how they want to look, and who has the safety to look the way they want to look? Capitalism loves a trans femme aesthetic on stage because it’s “fierce” and “edgy” and fits into a certain kind of marketing and branding, but does not even pay lip service to the personhood of trans women and trans femmes who worry about getting home safely. Capitalism also prescribes the femmeness and femininity that we can access (e.g., through what clothing sizes are available). There are only certain types of femmeness which are celebrated, and even then only in specific contexts (e.g., on stage or online). Even in queer circles, the word femme gets used interchangeably with feminine. Femme has a lot of currency in queer scenes right now, and is at risk of being co-opted by mainstream cishet culture: there are currently high-street retailers selling “femme forever” graphic tees; they’re co-opting, butchering, and then trying to sell femme back to us.

Fat femmes are held to a much higher standard of femininity in order to be visible. When different bodies wear the same femme look, it’s perceived very differently: a thin white woman might be considered “high femme glam” but a person of color or a fat person or a poor person might be labeled something racist or classist in the same outfit. So people of color, fat people, poor people, and sex workers all develop their own version of femme, which are then appropriated by the mainstream. White wealthy cis femmes—even if they are actively unlearning their classism, racism, and transphobia—are still oppressors. Their femmeness will be rewarded in more contexts than the femmeness of black and brown femmes, trans femmes, and poor femmes.

Some femme signifiers are very queer and decidedly not performed for the straight male gaze: dark lipstick, “witchy” aesthetics, and girly tattoos.

Femme isn’t only aesthetic; it’s also relational (like all gender identities and expressions). Femme can be the allowance, by yourself, to love and feel vulnerable and nurture, and find strength in all these “weak” feminine emotions. But this is complicated, because women (and people assigned “womanhood”) who are not femme are also expected to be “feminine” in these ways, and are more likely to take on feminized labor like care work.

Femme is rebellion, doing anything for yourself and for other femmes rather than for straight men or the male gaze. It’s communication, how we engage with our world and how we ask for things, and flagging interest in each other—in other words, it’s consent. It’s using “femme4femme” to uplift and empower and validate ourselves.

Femme can be a resistance to the failure to live up to or embody prescribed femininity, but it is also regarded as a failure itself by patriarchy, regardless of its embodiment: hard femme is a failure because it is not “correct,” but high femme is also a failure because it is assumed to be performed for the male gaze.

The etymology of femme comes from the Italian “femminiello,” a non-derogatory term for feminine people who are assigned male: trans women, feminine gay cis men, cross-dressing cis men. “En femme” is French to describe cross-dressers.

Femme has always been queer, and not binary.

The debate right now on femme and who’s allowed to claim femme isn’t very nuanced, and has lots of unexamined transphobia and transmisogyny. The people who bear the brunt of the violence of this debate are trans women and other transmisogyny affected people. Sapphic women in the West popularized the “butch” and femme labels in the 1940s, but the practice is much older; and the recorded history of femme is whitewashed and mostly told through the male gaze. We should, hopefully, be reflecting on our material experiences when deciding who “gets” to use a word like femme.

Femmeness is often invisible (on people read as women) because it is mistaken for cishetero femininity. This is reflected in the Sapphic complaint of not knowing if a girl is straight or queer because she’s femme/feminine, and of straight women appropriating queer culture and looks. While femme is made invisible in queer communities, it’s hyper-visible in wider society where femininity is subject to constant gaze and judgement. Femme can be empowering for assigned female at birth (AFAB) people who have been prescribed a very narrow femininity: it can seem that the only way to subvert patriarchy is to reject femininity altogether, but femme is a subversive alternative to hegemonic femininity. Femme allows us to re-engage with femininity on our terms, instead of in the limited ways it’s been forced upon us.

Femme can be very empowering, especially for assigned male at birth (AMAB) people who have been denied femininity. Performing femme when you’re read as a man by the public is an inherently political and hyper-visible act, because of the way society treats men who are “feminine” or “dressing like women.” The cultural context of wearing lipstick or dresses is extremely dependent on how the public perceives you.

Femmeness is subject to an objectifying gaze and blatantly disregards gender expectations, and is therefore subversive.

Femme is a queer identity and a gender itself, for queers: “My gender is ‘femme’.” Pronouns do not indicate femmeness or lack thereof; femmes can use any pronouns, and not everyone who uses the traditionally feminine “she/her” pronouns is a femme.

In French, “femme” has different meanings depending on its context: it can mean woman, wife, feminine lesbian, or feminine queer person. In English, the word does not mean woman or wife: “Elle est une femme” (“She is a woman” in French) and “She is a femme” (English) do not mean the same things. Lots of English words are borrowed and adapted from French (and other languages), and their meaning is different in English!

FEMMEPHOBIA — The marginalization of femmes. The devaluation of femininity.

This is perhaps better understood as misogyny (when directed at women) and queerphobia (when directed at men and other people who aren’t women).

The concept of femmephobia conflates misogyny with femininity and implies a “masc privilege.” Masculine women, butches, and mascs who aren’t men do not benefit from femmephobia. On the other hand, men have male privilege and benefit from the devaluation of femininity (i.e., misogyny). Cishet, masculine men also benefit from the oppression of feminine men (i.e., queerphobia).

Still, there is a legitimate need to examine the different manifestations of misogyny and queerphobia, how they punish us, and how we can undermine them.

There is the assumption that femininity is more performative than masculinity; that masculinity is the “default” and femininity is artificial, extravagant, indulgent, fussy, and fake. Rituals of femininity (e.g., doing your nails) are scrutinized and shamed, while the beauty rituals of masculinity (e.g., going to the gym) are lauded.

Patriarchy devalues or delegitimizes everything which is perceived as femme or feminine. It’s easier to attack “fake boobs” (they’re not fake) and acrylic nails than to attack patriarchy because as a system of oppression it isn’t tangible in the same way. But this does a massive disservice to feminism as a movement: people marginalized by patriarchy should not be policing which facets of femininity are permissible, trying to delineate a boundary which positions them on the “good” side and breast implants on the “bad” side. Deriding things which are coded as feminine as weak—like makeup or feminized labor or being sexually submissive—does not ascribe a contrary “strength” to feminism as a movement.