Girlfags und Guydykes

Girlfag and guydyke are terms that developed in queer and pomosexual subcultures. Girlfag refers to a biologically female individual who feels a strong romantic or erotic attraction towards gay males or male bisexuals or their milieu. Guydyke refers to a biologically male person who feels a strong romantic or erotic attraction towards lesbians, female bisexuals, or the culture of women loving women.

Sexual and/or romantic expression is pursued, or idealized as occurring, within these 'fag' cultures. Girlfags and guydykes might be attracted to other types of people as well, thus self-identification varies, be it sexually: as gay, lesbian, straight, bi, or pansexual; or genderwise: as men, women, both, or neither.

A girlfag might partly or wholly feel "like a gay man trapped in a woman's body". As girlfags feel a strong attraction to gay men/msm and to male-GBQ culture for its own sake, they have no interest in “turning gay men straight”.

In a similar way to a girlfag's identification as a gay man, guydykes experience lesbian feelings and are commonly referred to as lesbian-identified men or lesbian men, even though not all share the gender identity ‘man’. A male that is lesbian-identified feels a strong romantic or erotic attraction towards lesbian/bisexual females and prefers to behave as, and be treated equally to, a female lesbian. Their self-conception of being partially or fully “a lesbian in a man’s body” is comparable to that of girlfags.

Usage and related terms

The concept of girlfags is known to queer subcultures since authors like Carol Queen and Jill Nagle came out as gay-male identified women in the late 1990s. The term girlfag had been coined for this phenomenon by Jill Nagle, before the GirlFags Discussion Group on YahooGroups was founded in 2000. Since then, the group has gained more than 3000 members and the concept of girlfags became more known. Today, there are resources and groups for girlfags internationally.

The term fag hag refers primarily to women who are platonically interested in gay men. It is also used in a derogatory way to describe women who experience romantic and sexual interest in gay men. However, this is usually characterised as a heterosexual woman's attempt to convince a homosexual man that he is in fact heterosexual himself or at least heterosexual enough to begin an intimate relationship with a heterosexual woman.

Girlfags, in contrast, don't deny gay men's sexual orientation. In fact, their homosexuality is the particular feature which is of interest to girlfags. They don't expect gay men to become heterosexual, but they rather expect to be seen, partly or wholly, as gay men themselves. The attitude of girlfags towards relationships is not comparable to that of male-female heterosexual relationships. Instead, they focus, for instance, on sexual activities which are associated with male homosexuality or prefer polyamorous situations with more than one gay/bisexual male partner.

As many girlfags identify “as a gay man trapped in a woman’s body”, the term is also connected to transfag, or to female-to-gay-male transsexual. However, most girlfags – by definition – neither feel completely male nor have a desire for sex reassignment therapy. They explain the phemonenon to be caused by partial transsexuality. Some individuals realize that they are in fact transmen only after they came out as girlfags.

It has also been suggested by the popular yaoi-style novelist Sakakibara Shihomi, that some fujoshi, or female fans of yaoi might be gay male identified: “In her book Yaoi genron (1998), Sakakibara Shihomi […] describes herself as a gay man in a woman's body (a "female-to-male gay" transsexual). S/he suggests that this condition may be quite common among fans of this genre and may in fact be the reason for its existence.” Bagemihl has shown that there are some similarities between fag hags, female-to-gay-male transsexuals and female fans of slash, another form of gay male erotica by women for women, that has been compared to yaoi: “There is nothing new about women identifying as gay men or eroticising and idealizing sexual relationships between men. In fact, striking parallels to the sentiments expressed by many female-to-gay male transsexuals can be found in two unlikely areas: 'fag-hagging' and K/S [Kirk/Spock] “slash” fanzines.” If that is the case, the terms fujoshi, slash fan, and girlfag might describe related phenomena.

Girlfag desire in literature and science

There have been several female authors who have specialized on gay male fiction, e.g. Mary Renault. Some, like Poppy Z. Brite, have remarked that they use literature as a means to express a gay male gender identification. Queer studies scholar Eve Kosofsky Sedgwick has written extensively about her gay male identification and relationships with gay men, and has stated it as an important motivation for her work: “Probably my own most formative influence from quite an early age has been a viscerally intense, highly speculative (not to say inventive) cross-identification with gay men and gay male cultures as I inferred, imagined, and later came to know them.”

Guydyke desire

The concept of lesbian men was explored by American psychologist Brian G. Gilmartin in the late 1980s.

It became known to a general audience when during season 1 of the American and Canadian co-production television drama series The L Word a lesbian-identified man called Lisa had a short relationship with the woman Alice, who identified as bisexual at that time.

Another example for a lesbian man in popular fiction is Stuart ("Stu") from the comic strip Dykes to Watch Out For by Alison Bechdel. Although Stu is biologically male, he is described as "more stereotypically lesbian than many lesbians" and is in a long-term intimate relationship with a female lesbian.

The British stand-up comedian and actor Eddie Izzard is a prominent guydyke. He stated in multiple interviews that he feels like "a lesbian woman trapped in a man's body", alternatively describing himself as a male lesbian.

In queer subcultures a lesbian-identified male is called guydyke. This term was coined in about 2001 as an equivalent to girlfag. Both subcultures show solidarity with each other, due to the similarities of both phenomena. While guydykes often participate in girlfag forums and groups, so far there is only one forum for guydykes (in German).

Literature

• Brite, Poppy Z. (1998) “Enough Rope” in: Tuttle, Lisa [Ed.] Crossing the Border: Tales of Erotic Ambiguity. USA: Indigo Books; http://www.poppyzbrite.com/rope.html
• Queen, Carol u. Schimel, Laurence [Ed.]: PoMosexuals. USA: Cleis Press (1997).
• Greaney, Markisha (1999) A Proposal for Doing Transgender Theory in the Academy. In: More, Whittle [ed.] Reclaiming Genders: Transsexual Grammars at the Fin de Siècle. London: Cassell
• Hardy, Janet W.: Girlfag: A life told in sex and musicals, 2008.
• Meyer, Uli: "ALMOST HOMOSEXUAL" – Schwule Frauen/ Schwule Transgender (GirlFags/Trans*Fags): http://www.liminalis.de/artikel/Liminalis2007_meyer.pdf
• Meyer, Uli: “Hidden in Straight Sight – Transgressing Gender and Sexuality via Boys Love” in: Levi, McHarry, Pagliasotti: Girls Doing Boys Doing Boys: Japanese Boys’ Love Anime and Manga in a Globalized World, McFarland & Company. (in print).
• Nagle, Jill: "MANLY, YES, BUT I LIKE IT TOO: A self-described 'girlfag' reveals the truth behind her yen for sex with gay men", BUST Magazine, Summer 2003
• Rampling, Clare T.: "Who's that girlfag?" BUST Magazine, Summer 2003, p. 65
• Sedgwick, Eve Kosofsky (1993): Tendencies. USA: Duke University Press.

See also

• Androgyny
• Boi
• Fag Hag
• Pomosexuality
• Queer
• Tomboy
• Transfag
• Yaoi

External links

• http://www.girlfags.com
• The GirlFags Community at LifeJournal.com
• Original GirlFag Discussion Group at Yahoo! Groups
• Appearance of three girlfags on The Tyra Banks Show
• http://girlfags.chapso.de: German website about GirlFags
• Interview with a GirlFag (German)
• German website about guydykes