The opposite of the femboy in it’s simplest form is the tomboy. The Tomboy is generally accepted in western culture as a common stereotype. While the femboy is not. This is because of a many things, but I will focus on two.
1
The femboy, the drag queen, the general feminization of the male persona is normally associated in our culture with sexual preference. Gay, bi, queer thus the individual’s sexual preference becomes a stereotype, that is projected on to them.
Sex is normally portrayed as a power play, dominant and submissive. Western stereotypes tend to connect masculine with dominant and feminine with submissive. However as our popular culture has grown, so has our acceptance. Thus our stereotypes have expanded to include submissive masculine, and dominant feminine. Now add sexual preference and gender to submissive, dominant, feminine, and masculine, and you will get, what I refer to as the generally accepted sexual economy. As long as you fall into one of those categories your genitals should be accepted by a decent chunk of the public. Whether or not that chunk is in the same town as you is a different problem. Now if you except the fact there there are people who’s gender isn’t quite so one-sided E.I androgynous, and genderqueer Then thing start to get interesting. You will find combinations that the majority of people find hard to accept. Even people who are normally very open and accepting. For an example, taken from a friend, he is a gay trans male who some times dresses in Drag. In other words he mostly dresses as a dandy, and on occasion he gose fem de la fem and dresses in as a drag queen. When attempting to become more involved with the gay male community of his home town he was treated with hostility. Among other things he was referred to as a fo-queen, instead of a the drag queen he truly is!
2
One of the tools the women’s revolution has used in their fight for equal rights has been, adorning the masculine persona as an act of reclaiming one’s power. That is to say, participating in acts or dressing in ways that where, and generally still are considered masculine. Images of the empowered seemingly masculinized women are common in our culture from Rosie The Riveter to Tank girl. This revolution differs from the specifically feminine, trans, or drag revolution for one reason among many. During WW2 women were put into the workforce for the first time, and for a time being they were the majority of workers. They stood in the place of what was till that time a man’s world. Thus the image of the strong women became known, common, and at least partly accepted.
This however is not to imply that these portraits are bad in any way, or that this revolution is over and has no more injustices to fight. What I am hoping to imply is that western culture has more of a basis for accepting “women” in both feminine and masculine roles detached from sexuality, then it does with men.
I find that society is much more restricting and less forgiving to the follies of the masculine. Although the feminine and masculine boxes are equal in size the masculine is more rigged. The world is well on it’s way to accepting feminine men, but it does so by turning them into a stereotype, putting them in a box, and associating their femininity with sexuality. It has a while to go before it can begin truly accepting the feminized masculine.
Nameless Night 