Femme
A feminine presentation claimed deliberately, usually within sapphic and queer contexts.
Femme describes a feminine presentation that is claimed rather than assumed. The distinction matters: a woman being feminine is unremarkable, and a queer person being femme is a choice made in a context where femininity is regularly read as evidence that they are not queer at all.
Like butch, it comes from mid-twentieth-century lesbian bar culture, where the two were social roles with their own codes. Femmes did a specific and dangerous job in those spaces, and the fiction of the period that cast them as the passive half was written by people who were not there.
Femme invisibility is the recurring theme. A femme is read as straight by strangers, and sometimes as insufficiently queer by their own communities, which is a particular way of being erased twice.
Trans women use it, and so do trans men, nonbinary people and cis men. It describes presentation and stance, not gender, and it is not a softer synonym for woman.
High femme, soft femme and futch all exist as further detail, and are used the way anyone uses a more precise word: when the general one was not saying enough.
Femme is not the passive half of anything
The pairing with butch is regularly read as a copy of a straight couple, with butch as the man and femme as the woman. Both halves of that reading are wrong, and the second is the one that gets used to dismiss femmes as not really part of anything.
Femme is an active claim. It describes someone choosing a femininity that will be misread constantly, in a community where being misread as straight has real costs.
Saying it well
Say this
- I am femme.
- Femme, and queer, and the two are not in tension.
- A femme trans woman.
- High femme, if you want the detail.
Not this
- So you are the girl in the relationship
- You do not look queer
- Femme is just being a normal woman
- So you are the passive one
Questions people actually ask
What does femme mean?
A feminine presentation claimed deliberately, most often in sapphic and queer contexts.
Is femme just another word for woman?
No. It describes a stance and a presentation, and it is used by trans men, nonbinary people and cis men as well as women.
What is femme invisibility?
Being read as straight by strangers and sometimes as insufficiently queer within one's own community.
What is the opposite of femme?
Butch is the counterpart. They are a pair rather than opposites, and neither ranks above the other.
Can trans women be femme?
Yes, and many are. The word is about presentation and stance, not about anyone's history.