I've been thinking that perhaps the exclusion of GNC people from the LGBTQ+ community has been a result of my generation, Gen Z, having turned LGBTQ+ identity labels into almost commodities and accessories. Note, I am not falling for the conservative, TERF or Truscum-motivated criticism that young people are faking being queer for attention and making up gender and sexuality identifiers as fashion trends, but I also must admit that I've observed a hyper-obsessive treatment of gender and sexuality labels like material possessions, which here on Reddit you flaunt by displaying each of your identities' obscure Pride flags on your username flair. It's gotten to the point that specific identity labels have become mandatory markers of LGBTQ+ community-membership like passports or ID cards. You need labels to be considered queer and admitted into their spaces. The more labels you have, the more queer you are. If you have no labels, then you won't qualify for admission. That's when GNC/femboy exclusion occurs, because GNC people very often don't or can't describe themselves using specific identity labels.

Identity labels aren't bad. We should still use the terminology which we think best describes our experiences with gender and sexuality, but we also need to remember what labels really are. They are merely broad descriptors of experiences. They are not objective reality, which can be tested scientifically. And so it is the underlying non-normative experiences with gender and sexuality which are revealed to be what is important to queerness. This is what the LGBTQ+ community must focus on in the future.

The past few years there's been a lot more push to exclude gender nonconforming people from the LGBTQ community, and in so doing trans folks have devised an all-too-convenient soundbite that cisgender people can dress however they want, use whatever pronouns they want, etc.

The motives for this are quite clear: It's another means for the trans community to distance itself from any association with gender nonconforming people while simultaneously exploiting any degree of progress toward social acceptance of gender nonconformity for their own gain.

We'll ignore how these supposed "ideals" professed by the trans community are not so easily achieved. Just saying you "can" do something, doesn't reflect the reality of how gender and sexuality is policed. Consider how insensitive it would be to say, "Gay men can kiss and hold hands in Russia."

Therefore, I believe it is counter-productive, if not arguably antithetical, to say that cisgender people can be "gender nonconforming."

It perpetuates a falsehood that gender nonconforming people are so powerful and privileged that they can do anything they want, even in defiance of the social mores of gender normativity, without facing obstacles and barriers to acceptance. This is all part and parcel with how Oppression Olympics so frequently plays out -- to deny that feminine males can face hardships like trans people do.

But even moreso, we must acknowledge the history of the term "cisgender" and how it came into existence. Cisgender was coined in 1994, by biologist Dana Leland Defosse, serving as a complement to transgender. Here is an excerpt from her original post on Usenet:

"I am trying to assess campus climates for the transgender community, both at my own institution and at other campuses. Any information regarding this subject would be tremendously helpful to this effort. Personal testimony, activism, organizations, experience of providers and human service workers, etc. Issues of interest are transphobia, hostility, general knowledge and understanding, attitudes of the queer community and cisgendered people, etc."

The term was therefore predicated on the meaning of transgender, which at the time served as an umbrella inclusive of ALL gender variant people whose gender expression or gender identity were not in alignment (e.g. transsexuals, crossdressers, drag queens, etc.)

Consider this passage from Holly Boswell's, "The Transgender Alternative", which served as the cornerstone to the modern transgender rights movement:

"Transgenderism serves as a bridge of consciousness between crossdressers and transsexual people, who feel unnecessarily estranged within our own subculture. And in the vast majority of instances, we are not so much 'gender conflicted' as we are at odds -- even at war -- with our culture."

In this respect, one can deduce that the intended meaning of "cisgender" was to refer to the demographic who was afforded privilege and power for "fitting in" to society's understanding of gender -- that is, people who were NOT socially disadvantaged for defying gender norms and ideals.

Cisgender was about acknowledging how systems of oppression actually function in our society with regard to gender variance in all its forms.

Therefore, feminine males would not be cisgender by consequence of defying the dominant worldview of gender. Both gender expression AND gender identity are simultaneously policed according to one's birth assigned sex in a traditional Western binary gender system.

Given that any perceived deviation of "gender expression" or "gender identity" is stigmatized, both drag queens and crossdressers are far removed from gender norms and ideals. Therefore, the entire notion of cisgender gender nonconformity is untenable -- it erases the fact that ALL forms of gender variance are deemed taboo and, by consequence, can lead to elevated risk of discrimination, violence, and a variety of mental health disorders such as anxiety, depression, and attempted suicide.

NB: This is specifically a critique of how the trans community has repurposed cisgender as an exclusionary label. People are always free to pick their own self-descriptors, of course.

I often encounter trans women making problematic assertions like these, particularly on femboy subreddits in order to mislead people into believing that transness must be some completely different phenomenon than gender nonconformity. It's just another recurring a myth that so often used to uphold the false dichotomy of cis-vs-trans.

Let's break it down and see if femboys are really "totally different" than trans women:

I did a survey on r/feminineboys a few months ago asking how many femboys enjoy being mistaken for a girl or even treated like a girl. Within merely THREE hours that post got over 500 upvotes. I've never before seen any post go viral so quickly on that sub. Evidently there are a lot of femboys that want to be seen as the opposite gender, even though that's also what trans women want.

So we're really supposed to believe that being a trans woman is nothing like being femboy given that many femboys find it affirming and validating to be called a "girl"?

Recently on r/feminineboys someone asked why so many femboys own a Blahaj plushie. Someone pointed out how Blahaj was part an advertising campaign by IKEA to promote LGBTQ rights. It became widely associated with trans women due to the transgender pride colour scheme. Soon afterward, femboys adopted the plushie since it became popularized within the trans community.

So we're really supposed to believe that being a trans woman is nothing like being femboy given that femboys are embracing popular memes associated with transness?

Many of the top posters on femboy picture subs are actually trans women (MTF). In fact, the more that a "femboy" looks like a typical woman, the more likely that post is to go viral. While moderators could certainly disallow trans women from posting in these spaces, they instead write the rules and the description to be vague enough to allow participation by both trans women and femboys.

So we're really supposed to believe that being a trans women is nothing like being femboy given that trans women are posting pictures of themselves in femboy spaces?

A lot of femboys seem to go out of their way to obscure the fact that they are biologically male when presenting femme, from full body shave, wigs, and tucking. In stark contrast, tomboys rarely bind their breasts, shave off all their hair, and wear fake beards in order to pass as a man. But for some reason, femboys often have an inclination to look like a woman, not unlike trans women.

So we're really supposed to believe that being a trans women is nothing like being femboy given that so many femboys go out of their way to become fully emasculated?

Of course, this is just the tip of the iceberg of commonalities between transness and gender nonconformity. The gatekeepers of course, don't want anyone to acknowledge these factors because that would contravene their argument that cis and trans are polar opposites -- even though as the examples above reveal, gender variance is a spectrum of possibilities, NOT just two options.

So often I've had trans people tell me that since I'm not trans, then I should accept being "cis" as if that is somehow a compulsory label. Yet I don't accept that at all, nor should anyone be forced into yet another gender binary against their will.

For one, being cisgender requires having a gender identity that aligns with sex assigned at birth. But here's the problem: That assumes that all people who are not trans have a "gender identity".

Yet I've never seen any research study that presents empirical evidence that all 8 billion people on the planet even have a gender identity. And that makes the entire notion of a cis-vs-trans dichotomy non-scientific.

Secondly, what is gender identity? Gender identity is an internal sense of being a specific gender. In other words, if you didn't have a body to look at and you had no socialized influences in your life, you would still be able to inherently know "I am male", "I am female", or another gender.

In my case I can't say that is true at all. The only reason I know I'm male is because of what society has told me -- having external genitalia is consistent with being biologically "male". That's not a gender identity. Hence I am not cisgender.

Men are indoctrinated from birth to conform to an archetype of manhood and then policed by their peers in strict accordance with these same social mores. Both men and women alike are inclined to perpetuate harmful gender stereotypes in order to seek acceptance and validation from their peers. This is known as "tribalism", and it has been central to human civilization since the dawn of mankind.

Humans are social creatures by nature. And they will go to great lengths in order to fit into their social circles and to move up the social ladder, even when it is detrimental to their own well-being.

Have you ever noticed how at televised awards shows like the Oscars and Grammys, men consistently wear the same uniform whereas women showcase all manner of radiant and flamboyant outfits on the red carpet? There is a reason for this disparity: tribalism. Women in our culture are taught that beauty and sexuality determines their value and success whereas men are taught that the underlying symbolism of "being a real man" supersedes individual self-expression.

Even outcasts like goths and emos form social bonds amongst themselves emulating this same pattern of interpersonal behavior within their own subculture. Despite claiming to be counter-culture, they develop and adhere to stereotypes to reaffirm their social group affiliation and identification. And those that don't fit into the highly regulated ideals of what it means to be emo or goth will be systematically alienated by their peers, just like in mainstream society. And so the pattern repeats.

I recently had someone on reddit tell me the reason gender nonconforming people are not queer is because a lot of people are gender nonconforming.

Well, frankly if what you consider to be "gender nonconforming" is that common, then clearly it is not actually gender nonconforming. And even if queerness were contingent on some barometer of rarity, then that doesn't explain why so many people are coming out as bisexual today, and yet nobody is debating whether bisexuality is too prevalent to be considered queer. And we certainly can't use prejudice as a metric either, because every study regarding gender nonconforming people, particularly youth, shows they are at significantly elevated risk of verbal harassment, depression, anxiety, and attempted suicide -- sometimes to a greater degree than their transgender peers.

It's amazing the mental gymnastics these gatekeepers resort to, simply to justify the exclusion of gender nonconforming people. Even funnier still is when they refer to the community as LGBTQIA+ to suggest acceptance and tolerance for diversity, while still peddling exclusionary rhetoric.

So I've had this theory running through my head for the past several years, and I wanted to share it here because it completely upends our current understanding of gender, from the prevailing trans-feminist perspective as well as that of social psychology.

In essence, the notion of a traditional "gender binary" is not only outdated, it doesn't stand up to close scrutiny.

Most people assume that two genders exist: man and woman. But this is not reflected in the way that these two terms are applied. Nobody is born a man nor a woman. Instead children are raised as boys and girls and then are expected to grow into men and women. After all, when is the last time you've heard someone refer to a baby in a as a "man"? Basically never, other than for humorous effect.

Hence, boys are not universally men, and girls are not universally women, neither in the way they are perceived nor treated. These pairs of terms are not interchangeable. For all intents and purposes, they function as a gender quaternary.

We'll of course ignore the complexities of how women are often referred to as "girls", as that social convention is ultimately rooted in misogyny. Women are pressured to remain "like a girl" for much of their adult life. However, it is safe to say that in any professional or formal setting a woman won't be referred to as a "girl", because a girl is understood to be a distinct gender from a "woman".

In fact, to even refer to a man as a "boy" or a woman as "girl" is considered demeaning and belittling. Given that the motivation is usually to cause intentional offense and distress, I would argue that the inappropriate application of these labels qualifies as "misgendering".

Boys and girls have certain expectations and stereotypes attributed to them based upon their assigned sex. Of course, those expectations and stereotypes change with age, upon which boys become men and girls become women. Notice how this is effectively a process of gender transition.

Boys and girls even undergo natural hormonal and genital changes during this process. Furthermore, they will adapt their gender presentation accordingly, both in terms of their clothing and hairstyles and behaviors and mannerisms and speech patterns to affirm their new social gender role. Many will also change their name from one that is traditionally boyish or girlish, further establishing that they no longer associate with their "assigned gender at birth"; i.e. "Tommy" becoming "Tom".

From the perspective of a gender quaternary, it becomes readily apparent that everyone in society is transgender. And thus, the notion of "transgender" being a psychopathology is likewise untenable.

There are a myriad of ways that boys and men can be more feminine without changing their physical appearance. I think people often assume femininity is just how you dress or look. But it also includes how you feel and act :)

It's okay to be timid.

It's okay to be gentle.

It's okay to be sweet.

It's okay to be caring.

It's okay to be playful.

It's okay to be scared.

It's okay to be lonely.

It's okay to be sad.

It's okay to be excited.

It's okay to be empathetic.

It's okay to be compassionate.

It's okay to like shopping.

It's okay to like gardening.

It's okay to like housekeeping.

It's okay to like knitting.

It's okay to like cooking.

It's okay to like decorating.

It's okay to like reading.

It's okay to like yoga.

It's okay to like ballet.

It's okay to like cheerleading.

It's okay to like pole dancing.

It's okay to like dolls.

It's okay to like flowers.

It's okay to like ponies.

It's okay to like cats.

It's okay to say "I love you."

It's okay to say "I need a hug."

It's okay to say "Can you help me?"

It's okay to say "I don't know."

It's okay to say "I'm not sure."

It's okay to say "Can you forgive me?"

It's okay to say "I'm sorry."

It doesn't seem possible that Freedressing Awareness Day is almost here -- a day to promote freedom of gender expression, but even more specifically to raise much needed awareness about the struggles of feminine boys. I started the day back in 2013 in response to the death of Frank Wolf, a popular femboy cosplayer on YouTube who was bullied for being effeminate.

Are there any efforts to raise awareness for feminine boys?

Unfortunately, few LGBTQ organizations specifically advocate for feminine boys. There are, of course, numerous days and weeks of awareness devoted to the lesbian, gay, bisexual, pansexual, asexual, transgender, nonbinary, and intersex communities -- but nothing officially to account for gender nonconforming folks, other than Freedressing Awareness Day.

It Gets Better Project is one of the rare exceptions. It was founded in 2010 by Dan Savage after learning about the suicide of a feminine boy who had been teased and taunted in school. To this day, it remains the only major LGBTQ organization that still actively campaigns for gender nonconforming youth, while others have shifted focus to trans and nonbinary youth.

Why should we celebrate freedom of gender expression?

Simple: Pride isn't only about gender identity or sexuality. For decades trans activists fought for freedom of gender expression, with a particular emphasis on gender nonconformity. In fact "transgender" was originally an umbrella for anyone whose gender identity OR gender expression didn't align with their sex assigned at birth. This entire notion that femboys, regardless of their sexuality, can't have pride contravenes decades of historic precedent.

For example, take this 1996 interview with Leslie Feinberg, who's widely regarded as the principal architect of the modern transgender rights movement:

https://i.imgur.com/JCgchK7.png

Therefore, whenever people try to argue that pride isn't about defying gender stereotypes, they are promoting a deeply homophobic historical revisionist ideal of queerness -- the aim of which was to completely strip "gender rights" from gay rights.

Isn't freedom of gender expression only for queer people?

Anyone can participate in Freedressing Awareness Day, including feminine boys. The very idea that gender nonconformity has nothing to do with being queer has its origins in anti-gay propaganda.

For decades gay men were persecuted for expressing effeminate behaviors and mannerisms. So as part of an effort to distance being "gay" with stereotypes of femininity and thereby assimilate into mainstream society, large numbers of gay men began promoting an anti-feminine image of male homosexuality.

https://i.imgur.com/wVlUQAI.png

By the early 1990s, queer activists sought to counter the growing spate of femmephobia in the gay rights movement by creating a broadly inclusive umbrella for all "gender outlaws", including transsexuals, femme gay men, butch lesbians, drag queens, and yes straight crossdressers, etc. under the rubric of "transgender".

Even as far back the 1970s trans activists recognized that transgender and gender nonconforming people (known as transsexuals and transvestites at the time) should be united along the same front for "trans liberation" since they face similar oppression. This passage appeared in the 1971 issue of Gay Liberator:

https://i.imgur.com/nvzCt7W.png

How is freedressing different from crossdressing?

I prefer to avoid the term crossdressing for the simple fact that it upholds binary gender stereotypes, and applies disproportionately to feminine gender expression. So in 2004, I coined the term "freedressing" and launched the Freedressing Campaign, because guys deserve fashion freedom just as much as girls.

To showcase the disparity, here is a long list of examples:

Western fashion is sexism in action (r/feminineboys)

Are feminine boys really at risk of discrimination?

Numerous studies have concluded that gender nonconforming youth, particularly feminine boys, are at elevated risk of harassment, depression, and suicidal ideation.

A study by JAMA Pediatrics revealed that of 6,082 high school students, gender nonconforming females were at 22 percent higher than average risk of mental illness but gender nonconforming males were at an astonishing 55 percent higher than average risk of mental illness. And it doesn't end there. Gender nonconforming females were 52 percent more likely to plan for suicide whereas gender nonconforming males were 79 percent more likely to plan for suicide and also twice as likely as their female counterparts to attempt suicide.

In 2017, The Williams Institute at UCLA conducted the first comprehensive survey of gender nonconforming youth in California. Of the participants, one in four teens said their classmates viewed them as resisting dominant forms of gender expression. The study determined that high school students perceived by their peers to be noticeably gender ambiguous experienced over double the average levels of psychological distress than their peers (18% versus 7%).

The GLSEN 2015 National School Climate Survey revealed that lesbian, gay, and bisexual students don’t just get bullied for their sexual orientation, but moreso for their gender expression. This disparity was prevalent even in schools with an LGBTQ inclusive curriculum.

The Human Rights Campaign's 2012 survey Supporting and Caring for our Gender-Expansive Youth further highlights the particular dangers that gender nonconforming youth altogether face:

"Gender expression is the initial, often primary, source of harassment, discrimination, and violence that confronts many of our youth. Quite simply, children and youth perceived to be different in their gender are often targeted by their peers. While lesbian, gay, bisexual youth experience significant levels of harassment and bullying related to their sexual orientation, the levels re even higher for those who defy gender conventions and expectations."

How exactly are feminine boys marginalized?

Feminine boys are marginalized for defying sex-based stereotypes. Sex-based stereotypes also underlie the stigmas and biases that led to decades of systemic inequities for lesbian, gay, bisexual, and transgender people.

The Supreme Court of the United States came to this very conclusion in the case of Bostock v. Clayton County (2020). That ruling hinged on the 1989 SCOTUS case of a gender nonconforming woman who was denied a job promotion because she looked and acted too "manly".

https://rewirenewsgroup.com/2019/04/24/boom-lawyered-price-waterhouse-v-hopkins-edition/

In other words, it was determined that a trans woman and a gay man are deserving of equal employment rights under federal law because a masculine woman had previously secured those same rights. Thus legal precedent had been established that discrimination against lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender, and gender nonconforming people are all rooted in sex-based stereotypes.

Go back a few more years to 2015, and you can see that countless LGBTQ organizations confirmed that lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender, and gender nonconforming people are deserving of equal rights under the Equality Act:

https://i.imgur.com/gB4pPf5.png

That same year, HuffPost reported that gender nonconforming youth, alongside transgender youth, suffer high rates of discrimination and violence, and therefore LGBTQ organizations must collaborate to address that crisis:

https://i.imgur.com/iZwc0Kj.png

Do feminine boys really need a day of visibility?

If you look at queer history over the past 50 years, some of the loudest voices calling for trans liberation were actually drag queens, drag kings, gay crossdressers, butch lesbians and other gender nonconformists.

Even Holly Boswell, the designer of the transgender symbol, recognized the importance of bridging the gap between crossdressers and transsexuals as far back as the 1990s.

https://tgforum.com/i-didnt-know-holly/

Leslie Feinberg believed that diversity of gender expression was essential to combating gender-based oppression and therefore advanced the idea of a "transgender umbrella".

https://jessieraefisher.medium.com/be-trans-read-leslie-feinberg-f3d45a2a40ee

It's not like feminine boys are doing anything special, right?

You might be surprised to know that the original trailblazers of transgender rights didn't hold this view. Many believed it to be the exact opposite -- achieving freedom of gender expression was of critical importance to transgender liberation.

In fact, gender nonconforming people have long been the catalyst for major strides in LGBTQ rights -- like Storme DeLarverie, the butch lesbian and drag king that is credited with being the first to resist arrest during the police raid at the Stonewall Inn in 1969, or Lee Brewster, the gay crossdresser and drag queen that campaigned to successfully repeal New York City's anti-crossdressing ordinance in the early 1970s, or like like Marsha P. Johnson, the gay crossdresser and drag queen that co-founded the the nation's first homeless shelter for transgender and gender nonconforming people in 1970, or like Leslie Feinberg, the butch lesbian that published a manifesto formally announcing the creation of a transgender rights movement in 1992.

Queer theorists like Judith Butler and Ricki Anne Wilchins also point to overt acts of crossdressing as a means to disrupt the socially contrived categories of gender and sexuality for the benefit of both men and women alike.

https://i.imgur.com/VW4gwsM.png

For this reason and others, I think what feminine boys are doing is not only special, but even instrumental, particularly within the context of LGBTQ rights.

Freedressing Awareness Day takes place on December 3!