document updated 14 years ago, on Sep 24, 2010

What is the root cause (or causes) of the stigma that feminine males face?

Gender policing

It is undoubtedly true that children get teased about gender-variance, especially once puberty starts.

It is pervasive, including from the medical professionals who are supposed to help.

TODO: figure out if gender policing is distinct from transphobia, or if it's all part of the same spectrum. Gender policing is something that all adolescents face, while transphobia is something that people who blatantly cross gender boundaries face. But it's all part of the same effort by others to try to maintain the ostensibly "rigid" boundaries.

Misogyny

It's easy to figure out whether it's due to misogyny — compare the response that masculine females get to the response that feminine males get, subtract the two, and the result is misogyny.

It is absolutely the case that there is a huge difference.

You can also compare masculine females (tomboys) to feminine females (girly girls) — it's more fashionable to be a tomboy.

Homophobia

Although gender identity and sexual orientation are distinct, many people read male femininity (and female masculinity) as only gay.

It seems like Western culture is more homophobic of men. This suggests that the above rule (the difference of the two is misogyny) isn't correct.

TODO: explore this more

Intersectionality

What if the combination of gender policing and misogyny add up to more than the sum of the parts? How can I possibly resolve the independent variables then?