Girlfag and guydyke

Girlfag and guydyke are terms that developed in queer and homosexual subcultures. Girlfag refers to a biologically female individual who feels a strong romantic or erotic attraction towards gay or bisexual men, or their social environment. Guydyke refers to a biologically male person who feels a strong romantic or erotic attraction towards lesbians, bisexual women, or lesbian culture.

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 may have no interest in “turning gay men straight”.

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.^{[citation needed]}

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.

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.”

Bruce 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, 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

There have been several female authors who have specialized in 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.

Guydyke desire

In queer subcultures a lesbian-identified male is called guydyke. This term was coined in about 2001 as an equivalent to girlfag. In popular culture, an example of a guydyke can be found in the character Lisa on the TV show The L Word, a biological male who self-identifies as a lesbian.

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: “Hidden in Straight Sight – Trans*gressing Gender and Sexuality via BL” in: Levi, Antonia and Mark McHarry and Dru Pagliassotti: Boys’ Love Manga: Essays on the Sexual Ambiguity and Cross-Cultural Fandom of the Genre. Jefferson, NC: McFarland & Company, 2010 (in press).
• 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
• Autoandrophilia, a woman's tendency to be sexually aroused by the thought of herself as a man
• Andromimetophilia, an attraction to female-assigned people who look, act like, or are men, including butch women, or trans men
• Boi (gender)
• Fag hag
• Pomosexuality
• Queer
• Tomboy
• Transgender sexuality
• Yaoi