Girlfags and guydykes
Encyclopedia
Girlfag and guydyke are terms that developed in queer
and homosexual subcultures. Girlfag refers to a biologically female individual who feels a strong romantic or erotic attraction towards gay or bisexual men, or their social environment
. Guydyke refers to a biologically male person who feels a strong romantic or erotic attraction towards lesbians, bisexual women, or lesbian culture.
A girlfag might partly or wholly feel "like a gay man trapped in a woman's body". As girlfags feel a strong attraction to gay men/msm
and to male-GBQ
culture for its own sake, they may have no interest in “turning gay men straight”.
and Jill Nagle came out as gay-male identified women in the late 1990s. The term girlfag had been coined for this phenomenon by Jill Nagle, before the GirlFags Discussion Group on YahooGroups was founded in 2000.
The term fag hag
refers primarily to women who are platonically interested in gay men. It is also used in a derogatory way to describe women who experience romantic and sexual interest in gay men. However, this is usually characterised as a heterosexual
woman's attempt to convince a homosexual man that he is in fact heterosexual himself or at least heterosexual enough to begin an intimate relationship with a heterosexual woman.
It has also been suggested by the popular yaoi-style novelist Sakakibara Shihomi, that some fujoshi
, or female fans of yaoi
might be gay male identified: “In her book Yaoi genron (1998), Sakakibara Shihomi […] describes herself as a gay man in a woman's body (a "female-to-male gay" transsexual). S/he suggests that this condition may be quite common among fans of this genre and may in fact be the reason for its existence.”
Bruce Bagemihl
has shown that there are some similarities between fag hag
s, female-to-gay-male transsexuals and female fans of slash
, another form of gay male erotica, that has been compared to yaoi
: "There is nothing new about women identifying as gay men or eroticising and idealizing sexual relationships between men. In fact, striking parallels to the sentiments expressed by many female-to-gay male transsexuals can be found in two unlikely areas: 'fag-hagging' and K/S
[Kirk/Spock] slash fanzines." If that is the case, the terms fujoshi, slash fan, and girlfag might describe related phenomena.
. Some, like Poppy Z. Brite
, have remarked that they use literature as a means to express a gay male gender identification.
, a biological male who self-identifies as a lesbian.
Queer
Queer is an umbrella term for sexual minorities that are not heterosexual, heteronormative, or gender-binary. In the context of Western identity politics the term also acts as a label setting queer-identifying people apart from discourse, ideologies, and lifestyles that typify mainstream LGBT ...
and homosexual subcultures. Girlfag refers to a biologically female individual who feels a strong romantic or erotic attraction towards gay or bisexual men, or their social environment
Social environment
The social environment of an individual, also called social context or milieu, is the culture that s/he was educated or lives in, and the people and institutions with whom the person interacts....
. Guydyke refers to a biologically male person who feels a strong romantic or erotic attraction towards lesbians, bisexual women, or lesbian culture.
A girlfag might partly or wholly feel "like a gay man trapped in a woman's body". As girlfags feel a strong attraction to gay men/msm
Men who have sex with men
Men who have sex with men are male persons who engage in sexual activity with members of the same sex, regardless of how they identify themselves; many men choose not to accept sexual identities of homosexual or bisexual...
and to male-GBQ
LGBT
LGBT is an initialism that collectively refers to "lesbian, gay, bisexual, and transgender" people. In use since the 1990s, the term "LGBT" is an adaptation of the initialism "LGB", which itself started replacing the phrase "gay community" beginning in the mid-to-late 1980s, which many within the...
culture for its own sake, they may have no interest in “turning gay men straight”.
Usage and related terms
The concept of girlfags is known to queer subcultures since authors like Carol QueenCarol Queen
Carol Queen is an American author, editor, sociologist and sexologist active in the sex-positive feminism movement. Queen has written on human sexuality in books such as Real Live Nude Girl: Chronicles of Sex-Positive Culture...
and Jill Nagle came out as gay-male identified women in the late 1990s. The term girlfag had been coined for this phenomenon by Jill Nagle, before the GirlFags Discussion Group on YahooGroups was founded in 2000.
The term fag hag
Fag hag
Fag hag is a gay slang phrase referring to a woman who either associates mostly or exclusively with gay and bisexual men, or has gay and bisexual men as close friends. The phrase originated in gay male culture in the United States and was historically an insult. Some women who associate with gay...
refers primarily to women who are platonically interested in gay men. It is also used in a derogatory way to describe women who experience romantic and sexual interest in gay men. However, this is usually characterised as a heterosexual
Heteronormativity
Heteronormativity is a term invented in 1991 to describe any of a set of lifestyle norms that hold that people fall into distinct and complementary genders with natural roles in life. It also holds that heterosexuality is the normal sexual orientation, and states that sexual and marital relations...
woman's attempt to convince a homosexual man that he is in fact heterosexual himself or at least heterosexual enough to begin an intimate relationship with a heterosexual woman.
It has also been suggested by the popular yaoi-style novelist Sakakibara Shihomi, that some fujoshi
Fujoshi
Yaoi fandom refers to readers of yaoi , a genre of male-male romance narratives aimed at a female audience, and more specifically those who participate in communal activities organized around yaoi, such as attending conventions, maintaining or posting to fansites, creating fanfiction or fanart,...
, or female fans of yaoi
Yaoi
In careful Japanese enunciation, all three vowels are pronounced separately, for a three-mora word, . The English equivalent is . also known as Boys' Love, is a Japanese popular term for female-oriented fictional media that focus on homoerotic or homoromantic male relationships, usually created by...
might be gay male identified: “In her book Yaoi genron (1998), Sakakibara Shihomi […] describes herself as a gay man in a woman's body (a "female-to-male gay" transsexual). S/he suggests that this condition may be quite common among fans of this genre and may in fact be the reason for its existence.”
Bruce Bagemihl
Bruce Bagemihl
Bruce Bagemihl is a Canadian biologist, linguist, and author of the book Biological Exuberance: Animal Homosexuality and Natural Diversity.-Life and career:He served on the faculty of University of British Columbia, and he earned a Ph.D...
has shown that there are some similarities between fag hag
Fag hag
Fag hag is a gay slang phrase referring to a woman who either associates mostly or exclusively with gay and bisexual men, or has gay and bisexual men as close friends. The phrase originated in gay male culture in the United States and was historically an insult. Some women who associate with gay...
s, female-to-gay-male transsexuals and female fans of slash
Slash fiction
Slash fiction is a genre of fan fiction that focuses on the depiction of romantic or sexual relationships between fictional characters of the same sex...
, another form of gay male erotica, that has been compared to yaoi
Yaoi
In careful Japanese enunciation, all three vowels are pronounced separately, for a three-mora word, . The English equivalent is . also known as Boys' Love, is a Japanese popular term for female-oriented fictional media that focus on homoerotic or homoromantic male relationships, usually created by...
: "There is nothing new about women identifying as gay men or eroticising and idealizing sexual relationships between men. In fact, striking parallels to the sentiments expressed by many female-to-gay male transsexuals can be found in two unlikely areas: 'fag-hagging' and K/S
Kirk/Spock
Kirk/Spock, also commonly referred to as "K/S" and referring to James T. Kirk and Spock from Star Trek, is a pairing popular in slash fiction, possibly the first slash pairing according to Henry Jenkins. Early on, a few fan writers started speculating about the possibility of a sexual relationship...
[Kirk/Spock] slash fanzines." If that is the case, the terms fujoshi, slash fan, and girlfag might describe related phenomena.
Girlfag desire in literature
There have been several female authors who have specialized on gay male fiction, e.g. Mary RenaultMary Renault
Mary Renault born Eileen Mary Challans, was an English writer best known for her historical novels set in Ancient Greece...
. Some, like Poppy Z. Brite
Poppy Z. Brite
Poppy Z. Brite is an American author. Brite initially achieved notoriety in the gothic horror genre of literature in the early 1990s after publishing a string of successful novels and short story collections...
, have remarked that they use literature as a means to express a gay male gender identification.
Guydyke desire
In queer subcultures a lesbian-identified male is called guydyke. This term was coined in about 2001 as an equivalent to girlfag. In popular culture, an example of a guydyke can be found in the character Lisa on the TV show The L WordThe L Word
The L Word is an American co-production television drama series originally shown on Showtime portraying the lives of a group of lesbian, bisexual, and transgender people and their friends, family and lovers in the trendy Greater Los Angeles, California city of West Hollywood...
, a biological male who self-identifies as a lesbian.
Literature
- Brite, Poppy Z. (1998) “Enough Rope” in: Tuttle, Lisa [Ed.] Crossing the Border: Tales of Erotic Ambiguity. USA: Indigo Books; http://www.poppyzbrite.com/rope.html
- Queen, CarolCarol QueenCarol Queen is an American author, editor, sociologist and sexologist active in the sex-positive feminism movement. Queen has written on human sexuality in books such as Real Live Nude Girl: Chronicles of Sex-Positive Culture...
u. Schimel, Laurence [Ed.]: PoMosexuals. USA: Cleis Press (1997). - Greaney, Markisha (1999) A Proposal for Doing Transgender Theory in the Academy. In: More, Whittle [ed.] Reclaiming Genders: Transsexual Grammars at the Fin de Siècle. London: Cassell
- Hardy, Janet W.Janet HardyJanet W. Hardy is a writer and sex educator, and founder of Greenery Press. She has also been published as Catherine A. Liszt and Lady Green. She is the author or co-author of ten books, and frequently collaborates with Dossie Easton....
: Girlfag: A life told in sex and musicals, 2008. - Meyer, Uli: “Hidden in Straight Sight – Trans*gressing Gender and Sexuality via BL” in: Levi, Antonia and Mark McHarry and Dru Pagliassotti: Boys’ Love Manga: Essays on the Sexual Ambiguity and Cross-Cultural Fandom of the Genre. Jefferson, NC: McFarland & Company, 2010 (in press).
- Nagle, Jill: "MANLY, YES, BUT I LIKE IT TOO: A self-described 'girlfag' reveals the truth behind her yen for sex with gay men", BUST Magazine, Summer 2003
- Rampling, Clare T.: "Who's that girlfag?" BUST Magazine, Summer 2003, p. 65
- Sedgwick, Eve KosofskyEve Kosofsky SedgwickEve Kosofsky Sedgwick was an American academic scholar in the fields of gender studies, queer theory , and critical theory. Her critical writings helped create the field of queer studies...
(1993): Tendencies. USA: Duke University Press.
See also
- AndrogynyAndrogynyAndrogyny is a term derived from the Greek words ανήρ, stem ανδρ- and γυνή , referring to the combination of masculine and feminine characteristics...
- Autoandrophilia, a woman's tendency to be sexually aroused by the thought of herself as a man
- Andromimetophilia, an attraction to female-assigned people who look, act like, or are men, including butch women, or trans men
- Boi (gender)Boi (gender)__notoc__Boi is a term used within LGBT and butch and femme communities to refer to a person's sexual and gender identity. In lesbian communities, there is an increasing acceptance of variant gender expression, as well as allowing people to self-identify with labels such as boi...
- Fag hagFag hagFag hag is a gay slang phrase referring to a woman who either associates mostly or exclusively with gay and bisexual men, or has gay and bisexual men as close friends. The phrase originated in gay male culture in the United States and was historically an insult. Some women who associate with gay...
- Pomosexuality
- QueerQueerQueer is an umbrella term for sexual minorities that are not heterosexual, heteronormative, or gender-binary. In the context of Western identity politics the term also acts as a label setting queer-identifying people apart from discourse, ideologies, and lifestyles that typify mainstream LGBT ...
- TomboyTomboyA tomboy is a girl who exhibits characteristics or behaviors considered typical of the gender role of a boy, including the wearing of typically masculine-oriented clothes and engaging in games and activities that are often physical in nature, and which are considered in many cultures to be the...
- Transgender sexualityTransgender sexualityTransgender sexuality is the sexuality of transgender people.Transgender people exhibit the full range of possible sexual orientations and interests, including the potential for a lack of interest in sex.-Sexual orientation labels:...
- YaoiYaoiIn careful Japanese enunciation, all three vowels are pronounced separately, for a three-mora word, . The English equivalent is . also known as Boys' Love, is a Japanese popular term for female-oriented fictional media that focus on homoerotic or homoromantic male relationships, usually created by...