Effeminacy
Effeminacy is the manifestation of traits in a boy or man that are more often associated with feminine nature, behavior, mannerism, style, or gender roles rather than with masculine nature, behavior, mannerisms, style or roles. It is typically used implying criticism or ridicule of this behavior. The terms effeminate is most often used by people who subscribe to the widespread view that males should display traditionally masculine traits and behaviors. Certain groups, however, have reclaimed the term and its related words for self-identification.
History
Terminology
Effeminate comes from Latin , from the factitive prefix ex- and femina 'woman'; it means 'made feminine, emasculated, weakened'. Another Latin term is mollities, meaning 'softness'.In ancient Koine Greek, the word for effeminate is κίναιδος kinaidos, or μαλακοί malakoi: a man "whose most salient feature was a supposedly "feminine" love of being sexually penetrated by other men".
"A cinaedus is a man who cross-dresses or flirts like a girl. Indeed, the word's etymology suggests an indirect sexual act emanating a promiscuous woman. This term has been borrowed from the Greek kinaidos. Conversely, a masculine girl or woman would be called a tomboy, butch, or dyke. The word effete similarly means effeminacy or over-refinement, but comes from the Latin effetus 'having given birth; exhausted', from ex- and fetus 'offspring'. The term tomgirl, meaning a girlish boy, comes from an inversion of tomboy, meaning a boyish girl.
Ancient Greece and Rome
Greece
Greek historian Plutarch recounts that Periander, the tyrant of Ambracia, asked his "boy", "Aren't you pregnant yet?" in the presence of other people, causing the boy to kill him in revenge for being treated as if effeminate or a woman.As part of Greek politician's proof that a member of the prosecution against him, Timarchus, had prostituted himself to another man while young, he attributed fellow prosecutor Demosthenes' nickname Batalos to his "unmanliness and kinaidiā" and frequently commented on his "unmanly and womanish temper", even criticising his clothing: "If anyone took those dainty little coats and soft shirts off you... and took them round for the jurors to handle, I think they'd be quite unable to say, if they hadn't been told in advance, whether they had hold of a man's clothing or a woman's."
Demosthenes is also implicated in passive homosexuality and the prostitution of youth: "There is a certain Aristion, a Plataean..., who as a youth was outstandingly good-looking and lived for a long time in Demosthenes' house. Allegations about the part he was playing there vary, and it would be most unseemly for me to talk about it."
The late Greek Erôtes, preserved with manuscripts by Lucian, contains a debate "between two men, Charicles and Callicratidas, over the relative merits of women and boys as vehicles of male sexual pleasure." Callicratidas, "far from being effeminised by his sexual predilection for boys... Callicratidas's inclination renders him hypervirile... Callicratidas's sexual desire for boys, then, makes him more of a man; it does not weaken or subvert his male gender identity but rather consolidates it." In contrast, "Charicles' erotic preference for women seems to have had the corresponding effect of effeminising him: when the reader first encounters him, for example, Charicles is described as exhibiting 'a skillful use of cosmetics, so as to be attractive to women.'"
Rome
Over-refinement, fine clothes and other possessions, the company of women, certain trades, and too much fondness with women were all deemed effeminate traits in Roman society. Taking an inappropriate sexual position, passive or "bottom", in same-gender sex was considered effeminate and unnatural. Touching the head with a finger and wearing a goatee were also considered effeminate.Roman consul Scipio Aemilianus questioned one of his opponents, P. Sulpicius Galus: "For the kind of man who adorns himself daily in front of a mirror, wearing perfume; whose eyebrows are shaved off; who walks around with plucked beard and thighs; who when he was a young man reclined at banquets next to his lover, wearing a long-sleeved tunic; who is fond of men as he is of wine: can anyone doubt that he has done what cinaedi are in the habit of doing?"
Roman orator Quintilian described, "The plucked body, the broken walk, the female attire," as "signs of one who is soft and not a real man."
For Roman men masculinity also meant self-control, even in the face of painful emotions, illnesses, or death. Cicero says, "There exist certain precepts, even laws, that prohibit a man from being effeminate in pain," and Seneca adds, "If I must suffer illness, it will be my wish to do nothing out of control, nothing effeminately."
Emperor/philosopher Julian the Apostate, in his Against the Galileans, wrote:
In his Commentaries on the Gallic Wars, Julius Caesar wrote that the Belgians were the bravest of all Gauls because "merchants least frequently resort to them, and import those things which tend to effeminate the mind".
Emperor Marcus Aurelius evidently considered effeminacy an undesirable trait, but it is unclear as to what or who was being referred.
The Bible
Malakos is listed among other vices in the New Testament book of I Corinthians 6:9. Translations use different terms to express this. The online Greek Interlinear Bible uses Strongs concordance translates Malakoi as "Catamites", and Arsenokoitia as "sodomites". The word malakos, #3120 in the Greek Dictionary of The New Testament of James Strong's Exhaustive Concordance to The Bible states: "of uncertain affinity".Possible biological causes of effeminacy in men
The effects of chemicals
One of the more demonstrable causes of effeminacy in men is the effect of endocrine-disrupting chemicals especially during the gestation period and early childhood. EDCs interfere with or disrupt the proper functioning of human hormones.One of the major classes of chemicals that are cited as contributing to male feminisation consists of certain plasticisers, notably phthalates. In 2009, Shanna Swan and her colleagues published a study on the effect of the phthalates DEHP and DBP on expectant mothers and their unborn children. It shows that the boys born from mothers with the highest concentration of these two chemicals were five times less likely to show behaviour typically associated with young males of similar age: 'If the mother's MEHHP concentration was high, in the upper quartile, the odds that her boy had a score that was less masculine was five times greater than mothers whose MEHHP was in the lowest quartile." A possible link to sexual orientation is yet to be established.
In addition, certain plants can produce chemical compounds that have a similar effect as human oestrogens, hence the term "phytoestrogen ", thanks to their structural similarity with estradiol. Vegetable foods with the highest relative phytoestrogen content are nuts and oilseeds, followed by soy products, cereals and breads, legumes. It has often been assumed that the frequent ingestion of such phyoestrogens contributes to male feminisation or the disruption of male reproductivity. It is unclear however under which conditions this may occur, i.e. whether it depends on the daily dose, the age or even genetic disposition. A 2010 meta-analysis of fifteen placebo-controlled studies said that "neither soy foods nor isoflavone supplements alter measures of bioavailable testosterone concentrations in men."
Gay men
In the United States, boys are often homosocial, and gender role performance determines social rank. While gay boys receive the same enculturation, they are less compliant. Martin Levine summarizes: "Harry, for example, found that 42 percent of his gay respondents were 'sissies' during childhood. Only 11 percent of his heterosexual samples were gender-role nonconformists. Bell, Weinberg, and Hammersmith reported that half of their male homosexual subjects practised gender-inappropriate behaviour in childhood. Among their heterosexual men, the rate of noncompliance was 25 percent. Saghir and Robins found that one-third of their gay man respondents conformed to gender role dictates. Only 3 percent of their heterosexual men deviated from the norm." Thus effeminate boys, or sissies, are physically and verbally harassed, causing them to feel worthless and "de-feminise".Prior to the Stonewall riots, inconsistent gender role performance had been noticed among gay men: "They have a different face for different occasions. In conversations with each other, they often undergo a subtle change. I have seen men who appeared to be normal suddenly smile roguishly, soften their voices, and simper as they greeted homosexual friends Many times I saw these changes occur after I had gained a homosexual's confidence and he could safely risk my disapproval. Once as I watched a luncheon companion become an effeminate caricature of himself, he apologised, 'It is hard to always remember that one is a man.'"
Pre-Stonewall "closet" culture accepted homosexuality as effeminate behaviour, and thus emphasized camp, drag, and swish including an interest in fashion and decorating. Masculine gay men were marginalised and formed their own communities, such as the leather subculture and Western, and/or wore clothes that were commonly associated with working-class individuals, such as sailor uniforms.
Post-Stonewall, "clone culture" became dominant and effeminacy is now marginalised. One indicator of this is a definite preference shown in personal ads for masculine-behaving men.
The avoidance of effeminacy by men, including gay ones, has been linked to possible impedance of personal and public health. Regarding HIV/AIDS, masculine behaviour was stereotyped as being unconcerned about safe sex practices while engaging in promiscuous sexual behaviour. Early reports from New York City indicated that more women had themselves tested for HIV/AIDS than men.
David Halperin compares "universalising" and "minoritising" notions of gender deviance: "'Softness' either may represent the specter of potential gender failure that haunts all normative masculinity, an ever-present threat to the masculinity of every man, or it may represent the disfiguring peculiarity of a small class of deviant individuals."
The term effeminiphobia was coined by Will Fellows to describe strong anti-effeminacy. Michael Bailey coined the similar term femiphobia to describe the ambivalence gay men and culture have about effeminate behaviour in 1995. Gay author Tim Bergling popularized the term sissyphobia in , although it was used before. Transsexual writer and biologist Julia Serano has coined the similar term effemimania. Feminist Sociologist Rhea Ashley Hoskin suggests that these terms can be understood as relating to a larger construct of femmephobia, or "prejudice, discrimination, or antagonism directed against someone who is perceived to identify, embody, or express femininely and toward people and objects gendered femininely."
Since the 2000s, Peter Hennen's cultural analysis of gay masculinities has found effeminacy to be a “historically varying concept deployed primarily as a means of stabilising a given society’s concept of masculinity and controlling the conduct of its men based upon the repudiation of the feminine”.