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Introduction : direct response to the ask

rather than any individual femboy, i take issue with the general community. i wouldn't go up to someone who identifies as a femboy and tell them "you personally, by existing, are hurting me", it would be along the lines of "by engaging in femboy culture you are participating in something that ultimately hurts every transfem"

i also want to point out that "it's just another form of crossdressing" isn't a point in favor of femboys. firstly because what is transgressive in the eye of society isn't automatically progressive, secondly because many people find issue with the very concept of crossdressing, which i find fair ("crossdresser" often times being the modern equivalent of what "transvestite" was, drag queens talking over or being utilized to talk over transfems, crossdressing being based on outdated binary views of gender and presentation, and more i can't think of right now) and thirdly because by their own standards it isn't actually really crossdressing. the entire basis of the femboy identity is being on the edge, not a man but not a woman. this is rarely ever about actual gender or anything of the sort, i've only ever heard of one (1) femboy who considered themself nonbinary (genderfluid)

now, a lot of transfem have a simple gut reaction to femboys, a lot because of bad history with that. it's icky, uncomfortable, weird. i kinda do too. but finding something disgusting is no basis to actually critique it, that alone cannot lead to any coherent opinion on the topic beyond purity politics. which is why i'm going to try and dissect the idea of "the femboy" to show precisely why it would be better for everyone involved if we just did away with it from now on

1. Transfem culture as a costume and sexual catering to men

as i've stated prior, the basis of the archetypal femboy, what most people think when they hear the term, is someone who is neither a man nor a woman. if they were a man, then it would be gay, and if they were a woman, it would be trans. the average "femboy enjoyer" is a cis straight man because the idea of the femboy has been built around sexual gratification for these men who are attracted to transfeminity but wouldn't be caught dead having any positive inclination towards a trans woman and would rather not be gay. as such the femboy always has the appearance of the transfem with a "not a girl" sticker slapped on top. why do you think femboys have adopted the same signifiers used by transfem culture instead of having their own ? skirt, striped thigh highs, blahaj, computer science, monster energy drink, all various clichés trans woman have mostly grown out of but femboys seem to still cling onto, because it still echoes transfemininity even if it doesn't accurately represent it. they even try and appropriate fictionnal characters, the most famous examples being bridget, a canon trans woman, or astolfo, a gnc man whose public perception is now unsalvageable because of the femboy community being incapable of anything but hypersexualisation of itself and what it identifies with. this constant self-sexualisation isn't untargeted. the average "femboy enjoyer" is a straight man, and so the femboy always must be gay or at least sexually available to men. rape kink isn't uncommon in femboy spaces

4. The appearance of cognitive dissonance

2. A woman you can abuse

from the ground up, the femboy has been constructed as a transfeminine sex object. the difference is only made thinner by the fact transfems constantly get third-gendered, while femboys are constantly feminised as much as possible with terms like "boypussy" or common tropes like "i'll make you a real girl/i'll show you what it means to be a girl". like the transfem, it only has value as long as it can provide sexual service, except this one doesn't complain. it might even sexualise itself before you even have to do anything. if the role of the transfem is a woman society allows you to abuse then, the role of the femboy is a woman who will let you abuse her, will abuse herself before you even ask, won't even consider herself a woman. it's no wonder a lot of trans women, before finding the courage (or desperation) to start transitionning, have a femboy phase. because asking to be treated as a woman feels like asking for too much, because trans people are so despised, because maybe just being feminine will be enough to stop the disphoria, because receiving sexual attention from men makes you almost a woman. or that's what they promise at least

3. Racism

the archetypal femboy is transfem but not a woman, it is sexually available to men, but it is also white. part of the femboy identity is being sexually submissive, which makes sense because it is meant to be a fuck toy for men and the dominant side of transfem fetishisation is already covered by futas. but that intersects in the femboy community with racism. the femboy is feminine and small and frail and white, and he is being fucked by a tall muscular dominant non-white man. sometimes it is more blatant, like the instances that sexualise indigenous cultures with the "tribe of muscular uncivilsed men capture a white girl to make her clan wife" trope or the occasional "black-owned femboy", but most of the time it sits at an unconscious level, which make it slightly less evil but no less harmful and way more normalised. the only times i have seen non-white femboys, it was because their non-whiteness was sexualised. a simple coat of paint that makes them more novel, more exotic, more fuckable

another reason the femboy community is so unliked is because it contains a ton of despicable people. white aryan nazi femboys, pedophiles who think it's ok if it's shotacon and not lolicon, misogynists who think sexualisation is the only way to be feminine and transphobes who'd rather die a thousand deaths than respect a trans woman. people who still cling to the idea that femboys are progressive might think of it as cognitive dissonance, when it is actually perfectly in line with what the community stands for behind the curtain. it is an identity predicated on being an always sexually available white promise-i'm-not-trans quasi-woman who must be feminine, which requires looking like you're 16 years old. or, well, literally being 16, like was and is the case for a lot of femboys. these things are not by any means unique to the femboy community : misogyny, transphobia, racism, sexualisation of youth and femininity ; but they participate in them, reinforce them, normalise them. transfem culture isn't perfect on these fronts either, mainly the internalized misogyny and sexualisation of youth, thinness and whiteness, which is precisely why we must stop normalising these things and fight them everywhere they are

5. To the femboy reading this