It became apparent that my brand of gender-nonconformity was somehow more attractive to men than Alok and Jacob’s, and as the night wore on, I found myself sincerely befuddled. The looks I gave in my pictures were just as funky as theirs, with my partly-shaved head and my geometric bodysuit plus oversize platform heels, or a close-up of me sans makeup that showed off my strong brow and flat chin in all their androgynous glory. I wondered aloud why Alok and Jacob weren’t getting matches, if there was some algorithmic mystery at play—whether guys were racist against Indians, in Alok’s case, or if they found Jacob’s bright makeup too intimidating.
“Meredith,” Alok finally blurted out, interrupting me in a tone replete with tolerance. “You look cis.”
With those words, Alok exposed the key difference between me and them. Though I’ve come into my own gender-nonbinary identity, to many, my body reads as cisgender because I’m short and don’t have body hair. I’ve also taken hormones and had reassignment surgery, because I went through a period when I thought I was a binary trans woman, before figuring out I wasn’t comfortable with that identity either.
What I didn’t quite grasp until Alok pointed it out was that now, regardless of how GNC I tried to present, cis people still predominantly read me as a cis woman. If I told a stranger I was trans, it’s likely they might think I’m an early-transitioning trans guy more than anything else. So on Tinder, I can still get dates, since there are plenty of guys who like the androgynous female look. On the other hand, Alok and Jacob’s features haven’t been softened by hormones, and they have visible body hair that marks them as more obviously trans, so they have a much harder time. Nonbinary femmes like them are too masc for the straights, too femme for the gays, and too out for nearly everyone else.
from "Why Can’t My Famous Gender Nonconforming Friends Get Laid?" by Meredith Talusan (she/they)
for reference, here's photos of Meredith, Jacob, and Alok:
I would argue what is depicted here as "femme" androgyny is (one example of) what I would describe as maximalist/genderful androgyny; it is read as "femme" as opposed to "masc" because minimalist/genderless androgyny focuses on minimizing gendered characteristics to be neutral (non-masculine non-feminine), and neutrality in patriarchal society is read as diet-masculine by default — and perhaps cis by default, because both of those things are more comfortable for people in a patriarchal society to assume of a person who minimizes intensely gendered traits.
But the treatment Alok and Jacob experience, in my opinion, while shaped by femmephobia, is not reducible to femmephobia alone. It is the combination of explicitly masculine traits (like body and facial hair) and feminine traits (makeup, feminine clothing), their failure to pursue and perform a non-masculine femininity, that leads them to be seen as undesirable. This is misandrogyny.
Although, I should also note that "guys who like the androgynous female look" are, not always, but not infrequently chasers, and they do not always treat people they see as "androgynous females" with genuine respect even if they sexually desire them. See, for example, Lou Sullivan's experience being fetishized and manipulated by his chauvinist cis boyfriend, who desired him as an "androgynous female" and so pressured him to not transition and tried to convince him that his desire to be a gay man was unhealthy and unattainable & as mentioned in the og post, being seen as more palatable in certain context does not mean that androgyny like Meredith's is not punished, even violently, in many others. The point being, this kind of androgyny is not straightforwardly "privileged" and this article is more focused on hoping that Meredith's friends can find genuine love and good sex, rather than interrogating how different forms of androgyny are perceived and treated under patriarchy.
