Examination of Two Queered Genders

Much by accident I just came across this quote:

Marilyn was revered as a tigress, but she was loved (and pitied) as a kitten. In that sense her sexuality did not present a challenge; vulnerability made her manageable–it guaranteed her femininity.

The threat of other lustful man-killers is diminished by intimations of their androgyny. Mae West looked all girl but her style was decidedly butch. “It’s [men's] game,” she says with trademark smarminess of her multiple, casual seductions in She Done Him Wrong. “I happen to be smart enough to play it their way.” Marlene Dietrich in tux and top hat is also both hyperfeminine and faux homme, a man in drag in drag. -My Enemy, My Love By Judith Levine p. 92

It goes on to talk about the book’s real point in bringing this up: the antipode to the Seducer or femme fatale, The Slave. But, that’s not really what intrigued me about it. I especially love this line: Mae West looked all girl but her style was decidedly butch. It is an angle I hadn’t really contemplated before, but basically Mae West as femme. It’s pretty damn obvious now that I’m thinking about it, but it just wasn’t a connection I’d made before. Though she wasn’t queer in the sense of sleeping with women, but she did have an affinity toward gay men and wrote The Drag.

Mae West

The two ways used to describe Mae West and Marlene Dietrich are both incredibly queer, while Marilyn Monroe is more of an archetype for traditional femininity. Mae West was femme in look, butch in action, or simply a description of a type of queer femininity, or simply femmeininity. Marlene Dietrich was a man in drag in drag, a queer masculinity on a female body so that it is not the same as masculine because it is also overtly feminine.

Of course, this has the threat of falling into the trap of femme = weak and butch = strong, or femme = passive and butch = active/aggressor, but that’s not what I’m taking it to mean. While the original writer may have had those gender stereotypical ideas in mind, though I don’t know because I haven’t talked to her, I don’t believe that saying Mae West is femme in look butch in action is necessarily falling into the same gender stereotypes any more than us calling ourselves butch or femme does.

Mae was a lover of elegant dresses, furs, jewels, nearly anything extravagant. While many femmes can be and are strong, straightforward, and aggressive there is a difference between a strong femininity and a strong masculinity though they can look quite the same, otherwise we wouldn’t use terms to differentiate them, and that is what I’m taking the phrase to mean. I see her as a drag queen, or a faux queen, a term I have found for female drag queens, putting on her extravagance for all the world to see in a very masculine manner.

Marlene Dietrich

Similarly with Marlene Dietrich, there is a big difference between a faux homme, as termed by the author of the quote, and a butch. I take it to be an element of faggetry within it, that extra addition of femininity to the butch that may make you do a double-take. It makes me think of Emmit in Queer as Folk (Onyx and I are watching through the series–now on Season 5!), a queer masculinity that, while masculine, has a touch of the feminine within it as well, though that isn’t a perfect representation, but he could also be termed “a man in drag in drag.”

On a more personal note, I found myself identifying with both the statements. These are, of course, only two of an infinite number of queer genders in the gender galaxy, but are especially interesting to me because I identify with them.

Most of the time I’m in femme drag, I look all femme but my style is decidedly butch. Yet I also absolutely love to get into boi/butch drag on occasion as well, but when I do it it’s never to pass, it’s always to pass as queer, a fagette rather than a man. Hence hyperfeminine and faux homme, a man in drag in drag. I absolutely love it.

Lately I have been struggling with the different genders within me, my femme drag queen and boi fagette sides as I affectionately call them, though there are more gendered sides than that, but those are the easiest to categorize (but not box in). I was amazed when I found the quote above since it clicked with me so perfectly. I embrace those exact styles up above: a drag queen femmeininity which is more butch in style but femme in look, and a faggette butchness which is very faux homme.

-Scarlet Lotus Sexgeek

Last 5 posts by Scarlet Lotus St. Syr

• Dear The Femme's Guide - August 22nd, 2009
• Review: Hard Love & How to Fuck in High Heels - August 21st, 2009
• Interviewees needed for Butch/Femme Identity Study - July 8th, 2009
• Visible: A Femmethology - Virtual Tour Day - April 7th, 2009
• Culinary Comfort: Curry Bake - April 6th, 2009

Tags: Boi, butch, faux homme, faux queen, femme, Femme Fatale, gender, gender galaxy, identities, Mae West, Marlene Dietrich, queer