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Negotiating relationships with powerfulness: using femme theory to resist masculinist pressures on feminist femininities

ABSTRACT Finding power within femininity, typically through masculinised dimensions of femininity, has long been a mechanism through which to recuperate feminised identities, experiences, and aesthetics within feminism. However, privileging powerfulness to the exclusion of dimensions of powerlessness, such as vulnerability, pathologizes femininity and maintains masculinism within feminism. Using queer femme autoethnography alongside intersectional feminist, femme, queer, and critical race theories, I demonstrate this tension surrounding how feminist feminine-of-centre folx negotiate masculinist pressures related to powerfulness and powerlessness in order to be considered properly feminist. I argue that continuing to prioritise powerfulness exclusively within feminism leaves little space for valuing femininized experiences, affects, and qualities, which are concomitant components of femininity. Ultimately, I conclude that the one-dimensional assertion that femininity is powerful, and only acceptable or potentially feminist when powerful, serves as a re-instantiation of a masculinist recuperation framework within feminism’s relationship to femininity. I assert that moving forward critical femininity studies should advocate for moving towards an acceptance framework regarding feminism and femininity in order to move beyond individualistic debates surrounding acceptable feminist femininities.