1984, Common Lives, Lesbian Lives, Issues 11-14, page 18:
The other is that we make no assumptions about what butchness or femmeness means to each of us. Many wimmin have stereotyped me when they learned that I call myself a femme.
1989, Sheila Jeffreys, "Butch and Femme: Now and then", in Not a Passing Phase: Reclaiming Lesbians in History 1840-1985, page 180:
What is the appeal of femmeness since it doesn't have the obvious attractions of maleness, i.e. power and privilege, associated with it?
1993, Judith Butler, Bodies That Matter: On the Discursive Limits of "Sex", page 115:
And if butchness requires a strict opposition to femmeness, is this a refusal of an identification or is this an identification with femmeness that has already been made, made and disavowed, a disavowed identification that sustains the butch, without which the butch qua butch cannot exist.
Some femmes share heterosexual pasts, some pass through butchness before they arrive at femmeness, some move back and forth between boy identities and woman identities.
2003, Alexander Doty, "'My Beautiful Wickedness': The Wizard of Oz as Lesbian Fantasy", in Hop on PopThe Politics and Pleasures of Popular Culture (eds. Henry Jenkins III, Jane Shattuc, & Tara McPherson), page 148:
Or, perhaps, the tomboy-in-gingham trying femmeness on for size in front of a potential mentor and a dangerous, yet exciting, butch spectator.
2012, Gina de Vries, "Girls", in Why Are Faggots So Afraid of Faggots?: Flaming Challenges to Masculinity, Objectification, and the Desire to Conform (ed. Mattilda Bernstein Sycamore), page 79:
My femmeness is about acting sweet and playful, glittery and queeny; it's not about being perfectly-coiffed and deliberately cool.
2019, Morgan Lev Edward Holleb, The A-Z of Gender and Sexuality: From Ace to Ze, page 113:
I suggest that anyone who is queer and feels an affinity toward femmeness has a legitimate claim to it.
2021, Kaila Story, "Not Feminine as in Straight, but Femme as in Queer #AF: The Queer & Black Roots of My Femme Expression/Experience", in Mouths of Rain: An Anthology of Black Lesbian Thought (ed. Briona Simone Jones), page 74:
This meditation on femmeness provides the reader with more clarity and nuance when it comes to thinking about and discussing femme identity.