Femme resistance: the fem(me)inine art of failure

ABSTRACT

Using femme theory, Foucault, and queer failure as analytical frameworks, the current paper demonstrates the role of feminine failure in resisting and subverting systems of oppression, subsequently providing the minute shifts in power necessary to expand the terms of patriarchal femininity. More specifically, the current paper draws on contemporary modes of art and aesthetics to examine the productive potential of failing to embody patriarchal femininity, positing this failure as a form of femme resistance. By hijacking cultural signifiers of adornment, femme and feminine failure celebrate that which is culturally shamed (queer, fat, disabled, variant, poor, and racially minoritised bodies), expose systems of erasure, challenge binary systems of meaning, and promote feminine growth. Examining each of these themes in turn, the current paper argues that feminine failure challenges the pillars of patriarchal femininity and discursive systems of normativity. To this end, femme as a theoretical framework demonstrates the freedom of failure by exposing the heterogeneous multiplicities of femininity, and offering possibilities that normativity never could. This critical discursive essay contributes to the emergent application of femme as a theoretical framework.

KEYWORDS:

• Femme
• queer femininity
• queer resistance
• femininities
• femme theory
• critical femininities

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the authors.

Notes

1. The term feminine failure refers specifically to patriarchal femininity.

2. For an elaboration of this term see (Hoskin, 2017b).

3. In some articulations of femme, the erotic is central to emphasize the pleasures and relationality of femme subjectivity, such as Nestle’s (1987, 1992) writings on fem(me) sexuality. Erotics refer to the powerful personification of love, and empowered creative energy (Lorde, 1984). When adopted from a femme perspective, the erotic is an assertion and reclamation of the feminine life-force (Lorde, 1984). Erotics are also defined as a mix of desire, pleasure, wounding and the ‘interrelations with others, the land, and ancestors’ (Rifkin as cited in Scudeler, 2015, p. 21). Conversely, the suppression of the erotic is a fundamental component in the maintenance of oppressive power.

4. Although Audre Lorde’s work on the erotic is not about femme, we use Lorde’s notion of the erotic as a theoretical framing to help think through femme beyond a mere aesthetic.

5. Some examples of femmephobia include patterns of femme exclusion and masculine privileging within gay men’s communities (Miller & Behm-Morawitz, 2016), lesbian communities (Blair & Hoskin, 2015; Taylor, 2018) and LGBT+_communities more broadly (Blair & Hoskin, 2018).

6. While a traditional femme identity exists in terms of the history of femme, it should be noted that femme has never been traditional in the conventional sense and has always been radical.

7. Queer studies scholars, specifically those engaging in queer of colour critique, remind us that, as queer positionality subjugates through and across oppressive narratives, queer has come to describe non-normative positionalities (e.g. Alimahomed, 2010; Haritaworn, 2008 ; Lim, 2016; Muñoz, 1999).

8. ‘No fats, no femmes’ also elicits consideration of exclusionary norms of masculinity and embodiment in gay male cultures that marginalize fat and/or feminine subjects.

Additional information

Funding

This work was supported by the The Soroptimist Foundation of Canada; Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council of Canada.

Notes on contributors

Rhea Ashley Hoskin

Rhea Ashley Hoskin is a postdoctoral researcher at Queen’s University in the Departments of Gender Studies & Psychology. Rhea specialises in femininities, femme theory, femme identities, critical femininities, and femmephobia.

Allison Taylor

Allison Taylor is a PhD candidate in Gender, Feminist and Women’s Studies at York University. Taylor’s doctoral research focuses on queer fat femmes, and she works at the intersection of fat studies, queer theory, and critical femininity studies.