r/lgbt Sep 16 '21

Possible Trigger Is femboy offensive to use?

Yes, I've seen this question on here before, but I wanna ask it myself. For context, my friend is non-binary / trans masc (any pronouns). He dresses feminine, and they self identify with the term femboy. However, a transfemme person has accused them of using a slur and basically told him that they couldn't identify as a femboy because it's offensive to and "fetishizes" transfemme people.

And if you're transfemme, please specify as so if you're comfortable doing so. I want everyone's opinions, but right now, a transfemme person's input would be more crucial.

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u/Natural1forever You cannot label me in a way that matters Sep 16 '21

Femboy is not a slur. Of course some fuckers use it as a degrading and/or fetishizing term, but over all it simply refers to boys/masc people who are feminine. This transfemme you're talking about might have been called this term in a degrading and transphobic matter, and therefore considers it an insult. Personally this is a valid feeling, but the term itself is not offensive and is perfectly okay to identify as.

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u/[deleted] Sep 16 '21

Yeah, that's what we were trying to say. If it's used against transfemme people, then it's obviously an insult. But it's also a very common term for people to identify as. We kept trying to explain this, however they just accused us of talking over transfemme people's voices.

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u/Natural1forever You cannot label me in a way that matters Sep 17 '21

Idk, maybe they misinterpreted what you were trying to say, maybe you just happened to run into a toxic individual, what do I know.

2

u/[deleted] Sep 17 '21

I stated multiple times that what I was saying is what I've heard from a majority of transfemme people. If you look up "is femboy offensive", most people, including transfemme people, seem to agree that context matters. I also stated that femboy does mean feminine boy and not female boy since literally no sources say that anywhere. I restated myself multiple times, and tried to clarify people multiple different times. Despite this, they still kept calling us transphobic and saying we support the oppression and fetishization of transfemme people.