Advanced Topics in Trans Theories: Femme

3 units

In the current moment, femme is used to index a variety of gender and sexual expressions. This course explores the aesthetics and politics of femme through the lens of trans theories. A quick search for femme in relation to gender and sexuality will show that one of its origin stories is within lesbian communities often in relation to the butch/femme relationship. The lipstick lesbian is the figure who emerges here as exemplifying a kind of adherence to traditional forms of femininity even while being queer. Trans women are often criticized for attachments to similar forms of gender expression. Femininity is often derided as unserious or, worse, hopelessly entangled in the dynamics of heteropatriarchy. To be feminine, then, is often taken as a sign of a retrograde politics or submission to normative ideals of gender. This course will take up this problem as a way of beginning to think through what interventions femme might make into our ordinary ways of understanding gender and sexuality.