Feminine Boys are BACK in the Male Gaze
Like they never left . . .
During the month leading up to the 2024 election, a weeks-long, seething orgy of uninterrupted transmisogyny took place over US air waves. It’s a running joke in swing states (at least the one I’m from) that you can’t avoid election messaging during a presidential race, especially the shit they put on TV. In mid-October, some forty percent of all television ads coming from the right side of the aisle targeted trans people specifically. By the time victory was declared, the Republican Party had pushed $215 million dollars worth of transmisogynist propaganda on network television viewers. In an election cycle that shattered records for ad spending, transfemininity was right up there with immigration as a political scapegoat of the day. And I’ll tell you, as a trans woman watching this play out from the wings, you could really feel it.
It was at this time that a Navy SEAL published a tweet that hit me like a bus:
Man what the fuck.
It starts off so normal: A chud is mad at liberals. He sits on his superior age, superior stature, superior military record. (I later learned this is the guy who claims to have shot Osama bin Laden.) He plays the soy-boy card. Fair enough so far. But then, a hard turn: he might have called them pussies, he might have called them faggots, but instead he pivots to… a threat of sex enslavement?
The interesting thing here is not the audacity of Robert O’Neill’s comments, nor the rape-y power fantasy around holding concubines—those are par for the course for this genre of guy—rather, it’s the fact that a straight man has just posted his gay thoughts proudly on main, and racked up fifty thousand likes for it. Confidence is the novelty here. This kind of declaration simply wouldn't fly when I was growing up. Something has shifted. Could it be that in 2024 heterosexual male culture, fucking boys is no longer gay?
In this post series, I will argue that the answer to that question is yes, sometimes, and only with a specific kind of boy. Crucially, that kind of boy is often not a boy at all, but rather a trans woman or nonbinary person caught in the straight male gaze. Sometimes, the bearer of that gaze owns and proudly embodies their perceived femininity. Sometimes, they strongly reject the idea that they should be perceived at all as feminine, or as masculine, or as any particular combination of the two. Their identities are beside the point. This conversation demands a departure from the categorical understandings of male and female, cis and trans, gay and straight that have emerged in the last hundred years or so. This is not so much a conversation around identity as it is power and perception. And in the dominant US male’s perception, feminine masculinity may be approaching sexual acceptance in a way we haven't seen since sexual categories started to solidify in the western world early last century.
OP Robert O’Neill is a hardcore rightwinger who has spoken out in the past about his hatred of drag queens; there’s little doubt that he considers himself straight, and we know that he looks down on anybody who isn’t. But we should take him at his word when he posts about fantasizing sex with young, beardless men. To O’Neill, as to many men before him, there is no contradiction here, because the boys in question are not men. By maintaining a highly selective, discriminatory ideology of what constitutes a man, men like O’Neill create an oppositional outgroup which, like women, is subject to their ownership and domination. This is the same kind of guy who would call a trans woman a failed man, or a nonbinary person a confused pervert. But as certain as he is of these claims, he is equally certain—perhaps even more certain—that the objects of his ridicule are not like him, not powerful, not male.
Women, too, fit those same descriptors. A guy like O’Neill believes he is entitled to claim and consume the femininity of cis women. So is it such a surprise that he should do the same for people of other genders he considers feminine, or at least un-masculine? It shouldn’t be. Because even as they’ve been marginalized, assaulted, and killed, those outside cis-womanhood who express (or are perceived to express) femininity have been persistent targets of sexism and misogyny throughout modern western history. I’m talking of course about faggots, sissies, trannies, and queers. If the sexual dimensions of that social relation are becoming clear now, it’s not because they’re new. It’s because men are feeling empowered to say the quiet part out loud.
The image that immediately popped to mind after seeing O’Neill’s tweet is this screenshot of a 4chan post, often cited to me by certain male-attracted dolls in my life when we talk about guy hookups, that features heterosexual icon Johnny Bravo next to a short, punchy thesis: “I’m straight so whatever makes my dick hard is a woman faggot.” This explains my point better than I could hope to in 7,000 words and I won't even try.
In general, I want to take a “less is more” approach to this conversation. The recent development of feminine masculinity in western visual culture and society is a really, really big phenomenon. I don’t plan to address every facet of feminine masculinity because I don’t have the time and I’m not an academic. But even if I’m not an expert and haven’t read all the literature, I at least have authority to speak on this topic as a clocky bitch in New York. Because the thing about getting clocked in public as a trans woman is that, even if they don’t see you as a woman, and in fact even if they see you as a boy, they sure as fuck still see you as a target.
I’m thinking of this question—is it gay if the boy is pretty?—as an opportunity to read a bit more into queer and feminist criticism, and to revisit feminist texts I read a long time ago but forget. Mostly I’m trying to have fun with it. If you know a lot about the subject, hit me up and let’s talk! If you’re relatively new like myself, then join me and together we can explore the Femboy Hooters of the American psyche.
If you got any good femboy memes, or reading recs, send them to eviewrites@duck.com. You can subscribe to the mailing list by sending your email to the same address (automated sub feature coming soon to the homepage). I promote this blog on IG at @everzines. Until the next installment.
your fourth wife,
evergreen <3