Transfeminine
Moving towards femininity from a male assignment at birth.
Transfeminine, usually shortened to transfem, describes someone assigned male at birth who moves toward femininity. Like transmasc it is an umbrella rather than a single identity.
It covers trans women, and it covers people who are not women: demigirls, feminine nonbinary people, agender people who want a feminine read, and people who have not settled on a noun and may not need one.
The word names a direction without demanding a destination. Someone can be entirely certain about wanting estrogen, a softer voice and to be read as feminine, while remaining unsure whether woman is the right word for her. Transfem holds that.
All trans women are transfeminine. Not all transfeminine people are trans women, and treating the words as interchangeable erases exactly the people the umbrella was built to include.
It implies nothing medical. Some transfem people take hormones, some have surgery, some do neither. Transition is a set of choices made one at a time, and no combination of them is required for the word to apply.
Transfem people, and trans women in particular, meet a specific kind of attention on general dating apps: attention directed at a category rather than a person. It is one of the main reasons t4t spaces exist, and one of the reasons this one does.
Transfem is not a cautious way of saying trans woman
The substitution happens constantly and it costs something. Transfem is wider: it takes in trans women and takes in people who are firmly not women, who would be misgendered if the words were swapped. Using transfem when you mean trans woman drains the term of its purpose.
The other confusion is with femme, which describes a feminine presentation, most often within lesbian and queer communities. A femme lesbian is not transfeminine. A transfem person is not necessarily femme. They describe different things and neither implies the other.
Saying it well
Say this
- I am transfem, though I am not a woman.
- Transfeminine, she/they.
- Moving toward feminine. The noun can wait.
- Transfem, and no, I am not going to answer that about surgery.
Not this
- So you are basically a trans woman
- Are you on hormones? (asked of a stranger)
- Have you had the surgery?
- Using transfem for someone who says trans woman
Questions people actually ask
What does transfem mean?
Transfeminine: someone assigned male at birth who moves toward femininity. It is an umbrella covering trans women and many people who are not women.
Is transfem the same as trans woman?
No. All trans women are transfem, but transfem also covers demigirls, feminine nonbinary people and others who are not women.
Do transfem people take hormones?
Some do and some do not. The word describes a direction of identity, not a medical decision.
Can a nonbinary person be transfem?
Yes, and many transfem people are nonbinary. That is much of why the umbrella exists.
Is transfem the same as femme?
No. Femme is a way of presenting, most often in lesbian and queer contexts. Transfem is about identity and direction. Someone can be both, and neither implies the other.
Is transfem the same as MTF?
Not quite. MTF, male to female, is an older shorthand for a trans woman or her transition, and it frames her as having started as male. Transfem describes a direction without conceding a starting point, and it also covers people who are not women.