On Femboys

What I Talk About When I Talk About Walking

“Hey, c’mover here, you.”

Wearing a sling bag over my shoulder, I turned around, a little surprised. Out of the corner of my eye, I saw a boy in a grey hooded shirt. He was gesturing to me with a suggestive grin, telling me to go to him, seemingly because he had something to show me. Squinting my eyes, I knew who it was. It was my classmate from one of my university classes. He was quite short, wearing a grey hooded shirt, rectangular-framed glasses, jeans, and sneakers. He held an energy drink in one hand, and his phone in another. He had his hood up, which repulsed me. What is he about to show me yet again? I gripped slightly harder at my sling bag's strap, and made my way to him.

"Yeah?" I offered a fist bump, which he immediately returned with the hand holding the energy drink. The classroom was crowded, with friends hanging out and chatting away. Before I'd gone to him, he was all alone, standing with his back on the wall, scrolling away on his phone.

“Ever heard of crossdressing programmers?”

Straightforward as ever.

“Nope, but I know that there are people who crossdress.”

His suggestive grin turns wider, seemingly glad that he’d be able to share the wonders of this little world he'd discovered. I was less nervous than I was curious, wondering about what lay beneath that cheshire grin.

“Look, there's this trend of teen and young adult programmers crossdressing. See, boys, coders, programmers. They buy a book, maybe, the C programming language by Kernighan and Ritchie. All good, nothing out of the ordinary. But then, surprise, surprise. The other thing in their shopping cart is a pair of striped thigh-highs. And you'd think, was this a mistake? A prank? Some dark UX tomfoolery? No. This is deliberate. This person, mouse in hand, decided to click and search for some good looking thigh-highs, adding it to his cart.”

He makes a knowing smile at me. I nod slowly, telling him to go on. He proceeds to show me an article about a bunch of crossdressing programmers in China, wearing cute outfits and cosplays, with Github accounts more active than my aunt in church. These people had formed a community, cultivating a niche of programmers who could express themselves freely in skirts, socks, and make-up. I was fascinated by the idea, to be honest, despite knowing that most people I’d known in my life would be repulsed. We talked a bit more, with him showing me more pictures, the both of us looking respectfully. Soon, we'd parted ways when class started, but since then, I began to think about the world of feminine boys, or femboys, and how their existence in our society shines like a beacon of light in the monotony of everyday life.

See, I was molded in a culture and environment where the concept of gender was binary, an either-or. There existed only two genders, male and female, Adam and Eve. Yin and yang. Day and night. Salt and pepper. Something and its complement. Men were hard workers: strong, mighty, logical, and brave. Women were caretakers of the household: soft, nurturing, emotional, and reserved. In marriage, women were taught to be subservient to men, submitting to their will. Wives, submit to your husbands, as they said. Men had to become strong and charismatic, while women had to be soft and sweet, modest and shy. Everyone around me seemed to agree with this design, with no one outright questioning its implications. I, however, could not easily digest it. I understood the principles handed down to me, and it’s not as if they were destructive and wrong. If it works, it works, I think. However, some of them didn’t fit quite well with what my mind was thinking. I began to ask myself questions: “Were marriage and reproduction the ultimate goals of being an adult?” “How are women protected from abusive husbands, especially if they have been mentally conditioned to serve them?” “Is there space for men to not embody traits perceived to be strong, opting to embrace softness and emotion?” “Is it wrong for women to stand up for and assert themselves?” Was this the ultimate design everybody must aspire for? The implicit answer then was yes, that this was the only correct way to do things, that every other design was wrong.

I thought about it, and as I'd transferred schools and met new people, I began to unravel a dimension of society I had not experienced in childhood. From prim and proper boys and girls, standing one meter away from each other in social dances and proms, this new society showed me a kind of openness absent from my past. I'd heard boys who talked with a certain softness and seen girls with a bit of a rowdy, unhinged demeanor, the complete opposite of what I’d known in the past. It wasn't as if I was suddenly in a zoo, mind you, but there was something loose about the way these people acted. I'd met people who'd proudly tell everyone, “I'm bisexual.” “I'm gay, and I love boys.” “I'm genderqueer, and I love wearing skirts.” I tried to process this new world, observing each person, fascinated by their confidence. They didn't worry about judgement, about being laughed at, about being ostracized. They just were, as free as butterflies. I eventually made friends with them through various school activities, and they were, unsurprisingly, human. Human, with struggles, fears, anxieties, hobbies, interests, strengths, weaknesses, attitudes, and quirks, you name them. In my past, people like them were treated with a certain exoticism, like an exhibit enclosed in glass. We’d only mostly observed them through screens and powerpoint slides in guidance class, and not without the thick filter of disdain. Associate yourself with them, and you will become them. Dirty, disgusting, unclean, as they’d said. We are above them, and we do not yoke with such scum.

I remember a time we were all sitting in Science class back in high school, and we were going over a lesson on hormones. At some point, we reached a point where we discussed sexual hormones. The teacher babbled away, with none of us listening to him. Suddenly, he flashed a slide showing an example of a boy who’d gone through hormone replacement therapy. The slide showed the progression from a masculine face to a more feminine face over time. What stuck with me was not so much the face of the boy than the faces and reactions of my classmates. Disgusted moans and groans filled the classroom air, with boys covering their eyes with their hands making exaggerated screams, girls looking away quietly, on the verge of crying, and the teacher just smiling like an idiot in front of the class. He didn’t say anything, but his smile told all: don’t follow in this person’s footsteps. I looked at the boy and felt something visceral stir in me. I didn’t understand what I’d seen, which was why I felt something similar to the people around me then. But now, I still remember that time when I saw the picture of that person, and I sincerely feel that everyone’s reactions were extremely exaggerated.

This may be stretching the situation a bit, but my view was that a deep and hidden part of our minds was shaken when we saw that boy. In an environment where the notion of binary gender was hammered into our skulls, our gendered selves were starved, suppressed, and fit into a mold that aligned with what the higher-ups and eventually our fellow students approved of. When we saw that boy, a deeply-rooted part of us may have found him attractive, or even wanted to be like him, expressing ourselves in a way people would not normally approve of. Yet this feeling was quickly suppressed by the conscious notion that this was wrong, that there was nothing good to gain from being like that, that we’d be hurt in the process. Hence, our instinct was to put our feelings in a box, to keep them locked away, suppressing any natural urge to explore and express.

Expressing oneself as the opposite gender was an offense, and such offenses would be treated with shame and scorn over support and love. As a boy, something as simple as growing out one’s hair was considered offensive, and the offending student would end up talking to two or so teachers, listening to a lecture about why boys had to make sure their hair was not covering their ears. The same was true with girls, where getting a barber’s cut would warrant some kind of faux exorcism of sorts.

That was why moving schools and making new friends who were more expressive of themselves allowed me to see and understand gender in a more spectral than binary manner. What I’d learned over the years talking to queers, femboys, mascgirls, bisexuals, gays, lesbians, and even straight people was the fact that human gender is too complex to constrain into a binary structure. What society imposes as principles and standards on the base biological genders turn out to be foundations for exploration and experimentation. We, as human beings, are naturally curious, willing to play with fire to gain a deeper understanding of ourselves. To suppress that curiosity is an injustice to the self.

Femboys are one such example. I talk about femboys now because I am a boy, or at least mostly, based on the discussion. Femboys, or feminine boys. Boys who don’t conform to the expectations of their gender imposed upon them by society. Where society would expect them to be strong and assertive, there they would be soft and caring. Where society would expect them to build muscles and lift weights, there they would slim down their bellies, shaving their legs and lotioning them up, wearing skirts, thigh-highs, and chokers. Where society would expect them to chisel their faces, there they would put make-up. Where society would expect them to stand strong, stoically carrying their burdens, there they would freely cry, letting their emotions out in the open. These are some of the characteristics femboys embody, and I’m not saying that all femboys adhere to every single trait. Some are closeted, meaning, while they may look masculine on the outside, deep inside them lies a feminine view only visible to themselves. In some cases, they come out only at night in dark and quiet rooms, dressing up for themselves, where no one else can see. Others, however, are open and free, with all the love and support they could ever receive from their family and friends. Wearing their hearts on their sleeves, they are not afraid of being laughed at.

One thing I asked myself in my musings, however, was whether gender was fully an external expression, whether it was the sum of one’s perceptions rather than something innate and premeditated, even by the self. Could it ever be possible that gender is an internal thing, that one needs not manifest their gender externally in any way and still keep in tune with their supposed gender? If one says, “I am a femboy,” are they so much stating something that already exists to them rather than saying something in advance they would have to eventually prove? Even if someone believes that they are already a femboy without the physical appearances to back it up, would they be able to sustain that idea for long? Well, at least to me, to meet halfway, I believe that one first declares themselves a femboy, and reinforces that concept through sense experience from the self or the environment. Maybe a little controversial, but the idea of being someone or something can slip away quickly when there is little external reinforcement. I can say in the mirror that I am a femboy, but insofar as I regularly maintain masculine forms, instincts, and behaviors defined by self and society, there will be a dissonance between my declaration and expression. But is this dissonance really a problem? I wouldn’t think so, because we can all have internal views of ourselves without the need to express ourselves outwardly. So, I guess being a femboy is really more of a mindset with a potential to be expressed.

Ultimately, we are all born with a gender. I believe that while we are born either male or female, our biological genders are … just that. Sex. Psychologically, socially, we are more than our genitals. We are thinking and feeling creatures with the ability to connect deeply with ourselves and society. As human beings, we are adventurers and explorers of the terrain of our selves, and our gender is, arguably, our compass. We are our own canvasses for pretty much the greatest works of art known to humanity: our selves. The way we present ourselves to the self and the world around us, the way we dress up, the way we laugh, the way we craft derivatives of languages to identify ourselves, the way we think and feel in a certain way, and the way we hold each other up amidst the scorn and hatred of people who cannot accept the fact that they have locked themselves in a binary box, are just some of the things we do to shine. In the black and white world of binary gender, femboys, mascgirls, queers, and all sorts of different nonbinary people bloom like technicolor flowers in a grayscale image. Out-of-place they seem, but they stand tall and proud, an affront to all the challenges they’d gone through to become their own greatest achievement.

But till then, maybe for now, at least for me, I’d be satisfied enough wearing a grey hoodie, energy drink in hand, phone in another, standing in the corner of a room full of people, looking ahead at someone I know, saying,

“Hey, c’mover here. I’ve got something to show you.”