The paper I wrote for my Gender and Sexual Orientation class. It is rather long and somewhat academic.
Simone de Beauvoir (1949) states in The Second Sex “one is not born a woman, but, rather, becomes one.” Judith Butler (1990) asserts in her analysis of gender in Gender Trouble that woman is to copy as copy is to copy, therefore there is no original when speaking of traditional gender roles or gender in and of itself, it is all a reproduction of something else. If these two statements are taken to be true, than anyone could become a woman, a man, or any other gender role which they desire. If women are not born then no other gendered identity is born either. Is gender, then, whatever we make of it?
Traditionally in our society gender roles are supposed to follow the sex which the gendered body is representing. Male bodies grow up to be men/masculine and female bodies grow up to be women/feminine. This isn’t always the case. Transgendered people throw off these two neatly defined gender categories which are socialized into us from day one. While multiple definitions can be applied to the term ‘transgender,’ it is generally and broadly defined as any gender deviance from the (two) traditional socially accepted genders (OutProud, 2007).
The term femme can have multiple meanings and interpretations as well: “[m]any femmes are lesbians, but femmes are also drag queens, straight sex workers, nelly fags, all strong women and sassy men” (Camilleri & Rose, 2002). Some have gone so far as to say “[t]rying to define femme is like trying to capture the essence of mystery” (Drinkwater, 2006) because it is an extremely subjectively defined identity, as all identities are. Specifically in this paper, however, the use of the gender femme in relation to genetic females who identify as femme will be examined.