Femme

Femme is a term that refers to a queer person whose gender expression is considered to be feminine. It was originally used to distinguish feminine lesbian and bisexual women from butch women, and it is still one of the main uses of the term. It is common for trans and nonbinary individuals to use the term to refer to their identity or expression even if they do not identify as lesbian or bisexual women. However, this last usage is a bit controversial. A common definition of femme is someone who queers or subverts femininity, as opposed to a butch person, who rejects femininity.

International Femme Appreciation Day is celebrated on the first Saturday of July.

Usage
Some argue that the word femme can only be used to describe people in the LGBTQ+ spectrum, and it can be a synonym of the expression lipstick lesbian in some cases. That means that cisgender straight women should not use the term to describe themselves, as it would be considered appropriation. Because there are many stereotypes surrounding femininity, the term femme is often used to subvert cultural expectations about how a woman should look like. For this reason, many (but not all) people that identify as femme do not try to adhere to these stereotypes. This is similar to how the word queer was reclaimed by the LGBTQ community.

Femme has been used for women as well as for people who identify outside of the gender binary. Nonbinary femmes struggle against the misconception that nonbinary people must have an androgynous expression, since their own expression is feminine.

Some people claim that in the same way that nobody uses the words bear or twink unless they are gay men, nobody should use words such as femme or butch unless they are women. Therefore, they consider it appropriation.

Flags
There is no universally-accepted flag for the femme identity, but several have been proposed. Below are some of them.

Notable femme people


There are many more notable people who have a gender identity outside of the binary. The following are only some of those notable people who specifically describe their own identity by the name "femme," "fem," or a close analog to it.


 * Dev Blair is a multimedia artist who is a nonbinary femme.
 * Kate Bornstein (b. 1948) is an author, playwright, performance artist, and gender theorist. Bornstein is "a non-binary femme-identified trans person".
 * Sand C. Chang, PhD., is a Chinese-American clinical psychologist and educator. Dr. Chang is one of the authors of A Clinician's Guide to Gender-Affirming Care: Working with Transgender and Gender Nonconforming Clients. They are nonbinary, genderqueer, genderfluid, demiboy, and femme.
 * Sharon daVanport is an activist who founded what is now the Autistic Women & Nonbinary Network (formerly Autism Women's Network ). DaVanport is a nonbinary femme.
 * Sassafras Lowrey is an author and journalist, known for her books about dogs. Lowrey is genderqueer, trans, femme, queer, polyamorous, and asexual.

Further information

 * (note: article contains reclaimed slurs)