Shemale
Encyclopedia
Shemale is a term used in sex work to describe trans women with male
genitalia
and augmented female
breasts from breast augmentation
and/or use of hormones. According to Professors Laura Castañeda and Shannon Campbell at the University of Southern California
's Annenberg School of Journalism, "Using the term she-male for a transsexual woman would be considered highly offensive, for it implies that she is working 'in the (sex) trade.'"
The term she-male has been used since the mid-19th century, when it was a humorous colloquialism
for female, especially an aggressive woman.
s have used she-male to refer to male non-human animals displaying female traits or behaviors, such as female pheromones being given off by male reptiles. Biologist Joan Roughgarden
has criticised the use of the term in the reptile literature, "which she says is degrading and has been borrowed from the porn industry." She writes that gynomorphic male and andromorphic female are preferred, adding, "I hope future work on these animals is carried out with more professionalism."
The term is also used by some psychologist
s to refer specifically to male-to-female transsexuals who have transitioned to female at least cosmetically, such as with breast augmentation, but have not undergone genital surgery.
as well as a number of rhyming terms (not to be confused with rhyming slang), including chicks with dicks, sluts with nuts, dolls with balls, & dudes with boobs.
Some mental health researchers consider attraction to transgender people to be a paraphilia
. John Money
and Margaret Lamacz proposed a series of terms along these lines. Gynemimetophilia denotes sexual attraction
to male-assigned people who look or act like women, including genetically male crossdressers. It can also refer to an attraction to trans women. A related term is gynemimesis which refers to a homosexual male who engages in female impersonation without sex reassignment or to describe the adoption of female characteristics by a male. The terms were used by Money for classification purposes in his gender-transposition
theory. He also proposed gynandromorph
and gynemimetomorph as technical terms for trans women. A gynandromorph is an organism that contains both male and female characteristics. Gynandromorphy is a term of Greek etymology which means to have some of the body morphology
and measurements of both an average woman and man.
Psychologist Ray Blanchard
and psychiatrist Peter Collins
coined the term gynandromorphophilia. Sociologist Richard Ekins writes that this attraction can include both identification and object choice in "fantasy femaling" masturbatory scripts. Blanchard has proposed that this is "partial autogynephilia." Psychiatrist Vernon Rosario
has called labels like these "scientifically reifying
" when applied to those attracted to trans women.
As an alternative to a paraphilic model, sexologists Martin S. Weinberg and Colin J. Williams have used the term Men Sexually Interested in Transwomen (MSTW). Slang terms for individuals with such preferences include transfan
s, tranny chasers and admirers.
lines", including effeminate men and lesbians. In the early 19th century, she-male was used as a colloquialism in American literature for female, often pejorative
ly. Davy Crockett
is quoted as using the term in regard to a shooting match, when his opponent challenges Davy Crockett to shoot near his opponent's wife, Davy Crockett is reported to have replied: "'No, No, Mike,' sez I, 'Davy Crockett's hand would be sure to shake, if his iron pointed within a hundred miles of a shemale, and I give up beat...'" It was used through the 1920s to describe a woman, usually a feminist or an intellectual
. Flora Finch
starred in The She-Male Sleuth The term came to have a more negative connotation over time and been used to describe a "hateful woman" or "bitch." Up through the mid-1970s, it was used to describe an assertive woman, "especially a disliked, distrusted woman; a bitch."
The term later took on a tone that inferred a sexual overtone. In her 1990 book, From Masculine To Feminine And All points In Between, Jennifer Anne Stevens defined she-male as "usually a gay
male who lives full time as a woman; a gay transgenderist." The Oxford English Dictionary defines she-male as "a passive male homosexual or transvestite." It has been used as gay slang for faggot.
employed the term as a derogatory descriptor for transsexual people in her controversial book, The Transsexual Empire: The Making of the She-Male. Raymond and other cultural feminists
like Mary Daly
argue that a "she-male" or "male-to-constructed female" is still male and constitutes a patriarchal
attack by males upon the female essence
. In some cultures it can also be used interchangeably with other terms referring to trans women.
The term has since become an unflattering term applied to male-to-female transsexuals. Psychologists Dana Finnegan and Emily Mcnally write that the term "tends to have demeaning connotations." French professor John Phillips writes that shemale is "a linguistic oxymoron
that simultaneously reflects but, by its very impossibility, challenges [gender] binary
thinking, collapsing the divide between the masculine
and the feminine
." Trans author Leslie Feinberg
writes, "'he-she' and 'she-male' describe the person's gender expression with the first pronoun and the birth sex with the second. The hyphenation signals a crisis of language and an apparent social contradiction, since sex and gender are 'supposed' to match." The Gay and Lesbian Alliance Against Defamation
has said the term is a "dehumanizing slur" and should not be used "except in a direct quote that reveals the bias of the person quoted."
Some have adopted the term as a self-descriptor but this is often in context of sex work. Transsexual author Kate Bornstein
wrote that a friend who self-identified as "she-male" described herself as "tits, big hair, lots of make-up, and a dick." Sex researchers Mildred Brown and Chloe Rounsley said, "She-males are men, often involved in prostitution
, pornography
, or the adult entertainment business, who have undergone breast augmentation but have maintained their genitalia." According to Professors Laura Castañeda and Shannon Campbell at the University of Southern California
's Annenberg School of Journalism, "Using the term she-male for a transsexual woman would be considered highly offensive, for it implies that she is working 'in the [sex] trade.' It may be considered libelous." Melissa Hope Ditmore, of the Trafficked Persons Rights Project, notes the term "is an invention of the sex industry, and most transwomen find the term abhorrent." Biologist and transgender activist Julia Serano
notes that it remains "derogatory or sensationalistic." According to sex columnist Regina Lynn
, "Porn marketers use 'she-male' for a very specific purpose — to sell porn to straight guys without triggering their homophobia — that has nothing to do with actual transgendered people (or helping men overcome their homophobia, either)." According to sex columnist Sasha
, "The term shemale is used in this setting to denote a fetishized sexual persona and is not typically used by transgendered women outside of sex work. Many transgendered women are offended by this categorization and call themselves T-girls or trans."
or for rhetorical effect. As part of the 42nd Street Art Project in 1994, designer Adelle Lutz
turned a former shop in Times Square
called American Male into "American She-Male", with brightly-colored mannequins and clothes made of condoms. The 2004 Arrested Development episode "Sad Sack
" had a gag where Maeby tricks Lindsay into wearing a shirt that says "Shémale", in order to convince a suitor Lindsay is transgender. Film critic Manohla Dargis
has written about the lack of "real women" in summer blockbusters, claiming Judd Apatow
comedies feature men who act more like leading ladies: "These aren't the she-males you find in the back pages of The Village Voice
, mind you. The Apatow men hit the screen anatomically intact: they’re emasculated but not castrated, as the repeated images of the flopping genitals in Forgetting Sarah Marshall
remind you."
Male
Male refers to the biological sex of an organism, or part of an organism, which produces small mobile gametes, called spermatozoa. Each spermatozoon can fuse with a larger female gamete or ovum, in the process of fertilization...
genitalia
Penis
The penis is a biological feature of male animals including both vertebrates and invertebrates...
and augmented female
Female
Female is the sex of an organism, or a part of an organism, which produces non-mobile ova .- Defining characteristics :The ova are defined as the larger gametes in a heterogamous reproduction system, while the smaller, usually motile gamete, the spermatozoon, is produced by the male...
breasts from breast augmentation
Breast augmentation
Breast augmentation denotes the breast implant and fat-graft mammoplasty procedures for correcting the defects, and for enhancing the size, form, and feel of a woman’s breasts...
and/or use of hormones. According to Professors Laura Castañeda and Shannon Campbell at the University of Southern California
University of Southern California
The University of Southern California is a private, not-for-profit, nonsectarian, research university located in Los Angeles, California, United States. USC was founded in 1880, making it California's oldest private research university...
's Annenberg School of Journalism, "Using the term she-male for a transsexual woman would be considered highly offensive, for it implies that she is working 'in the (sex) trade.'"
The term she-male has been used since the mid-19th century, when it was a humorous colloquialism
Colloquialism
A colloquialism is a word or phrase that is common in everyday, unconstrained conversation rather than in formal speech, academic writing, or paralinguistics. Dictionaries often display colloquial words and phrases with the abbreviation colloq. as an identifier...
for female, especially an aggressive woman.
Academic use
Some biologistBiologist
A biologist is a scientist devoted to and producing results in biology through the study of life. Typically biologists study organisms and their relationship to their environment. Biologists involved in basic research attempt to discover underlying mechanisms that govern how organisms work...
s have used she-male to refer to male non-human animals displaying female traits or behaviors, such as female pheromones being given off by male reptiles. Biologist Joan Roughgarden
Joan Roughgarden
Joan E. Roughgarden is an American evolutionary biologist.- Biography :...
has criticised the use of the term in the reptile literature, "which she says is degrading and has been borrowed from the porn industry." She writes that gynomorphic male and andromorphic female are preferred, adding, "I hope future work on these animals is carried out with more professionalism."
The term is also used by some psychologist
Psychologist
Psychologist is a professional or academic title used by individuals who are either:* Clinical professionals who work with patients in a variety of therapeutic contexts .* Scientists conducting psychological research or teaching psychology in a college...
s to refer specifically to male-to-female transsexuals who have transitioned to female at least cosmetically, such as with breast augmentation, but have not undergone genital surgery.
Related terms
Other slang terms for she-male that emerged from sex work include tranny and ladyboyKathoey
Kathoey or katoey is a male-to-female transgender person or an effeminate gay male in Thailand. Related phrases include sao praphet song , or phet thi sam . The word kathoey is thought to be of Khmer origin...
as well as a number of rhyming terms (not to be confused with rhyming slang), including chicks with dicks, sluts with nuts, dolls with balls, & dudes with boobs.
Some mental health researchers consider attraction to transgender people to be a paraphilia
Paraphilia
Paraphilia is a biomedical term used to describe sexual arousal to objects, situations, or individuals that are not part of normative stimulation and that may cause distress or serious problems for the paraphiliac or persons associated with him or her...
. John Money
John Money
John William Money was a psychologist, sexologist and author, specializing in research into sexual identity and biology of gender...
and Margaret Lamacz proposed a series of terms along these lines. Gynemimetophilia denotes sexual attraction
Sexual attraction
Sexual attractiveness or sex appeal refers to an individual's ability to attract the sexual or erotic interest of another person, and is a factor in sexual selection or mate choice. The attraction can be to the physical or other qualities or traits of a person, or to such qualities in the context...
to male-assigned people who look or act like women, including genetically male crossdressers. It can also refer to an attraction to trans women. A related term is gynemimesis which refers to a homosexual male who engages in female impersonation without sex reassignment or to describe the adoption of female characteristics by a male. The terms were used by Money for classification purposes in his gender-transposition
Transgender
Transgender is a general term applied to a variety of individuals, behaviors, and groups involving tendencies to vary from culturally conventional gender roles....
theory. He also proposed gynandromorph
Gynandromorph
A gynandromorph is an organism that contains both male and female characteristics. The term gynandromorph, from Greek "gyne" female and "andro" male, is mainly used in the field of Lepidopterology or entomology...
and gynemimetomorph as technical terms for trans women. A gynandromorph is an organism that contains both male and female characteristics. Gynandromorphy is a term of Greek etymology which means to have some of the body morphology
Morphology (biology)
In biology, morphology is a branch of bioscience dealing with the study of the form and structure of organisms and their specific structural features....
and measurements of both an average woman and man.
Psychologist Ray Blanchard
Ray Blanchard
Ray Milton Blanchard is an American-Canadian sexologist, best known for his research studies on pedophilia, gender dysphoria, and sexual orientation. He has also published research studies on phallometry and several paraphilias, including transvestism and autoerotic asphyxia.-Education and...
and psychiatrist Peter Collins
Peter Collins (psychiatrist)
Peter Ian Collins is a Canadian forensic psychiatrist. He is an expert on violent crime and has worked with criminal justice agencies in Canada and throughout the world, including INTERPOL, the FBI and U.S. Department of Homeland Security, the Australian Federal Police and Europol...
coined the term gynandromorphophilia. Sociologist Richard Ekins writes that this attraction can include both identification and object choice in "fantasy femaling" masturbatory scripts. Blanchard has proposed that this is "partial autogynephilia." Psychiatrist Vernon Rosario
Vernon Rosario
Vernon A. Rosario II is an American psychiatrist and medical historian who studies human sexuality. His recent work has focused on transgender and intersex youth, and he has served as chair of the medical advisory board for Intersex Society of North America.-Life and career:Rosario earned...
has called labels like these "scientifically reifying
Reification (fallacy)
Reification is a fallacy of ambiguity, when an abstraction is treated as if it were a concrete, real event, or physical entity. In other words, it is the error of treating as a "real thing" something which is not a real thing, but merely an idea...
" when applied to those attracted to trans women.
As an alternative to a paraphilic model, sexologists Martin S. Weinberg and Colin J. Williams have used the term Men Sexually Interested in Transwomen (MSTW). Slang terms for individuals with such preferences include transfan
Transfan
Transfans are people who are sexually attracted to transgender people. Other terms include tranny chaser, trans catcher, transsensual and tranny hawk...
s, tranny chasers and admirers.
Other usage
Since the mid-19th century, the term she-male has been applied to "almost anyone who appears to have bridged genderGender
Gender is a range of characteristics used to distinguish between males and females, particularly in the cases of men and women and the masculine and feminine attributes assigned to them. Depending on the context, the discriminating characteristics vary from sex to social role to gender identity...
lines", including effeminate men and lesbians. In the early 19th century, she-male was used as a colloquialism in American literature for female, often pejorative
Pejorative
Pejoratives , including name slurs, are words or grammatical forms that connote negativity and express contempt or distaste. A term can be regarded as pejorative in some social groups but not in others, e.g., hacker is a term used for computer criminals as well as quick and clever computer experts...
ly. Davy Crockett
Davy Crockett
David "Davy" Crockett was a celebrated 19th century American folk hero, frontiersman, soldier and politician. He is commonly referred to in popular culture by the epithet "King of the Wild Frontier". He represented Tennessee in the U.S...
is quoted as using the term in regard to a shooting match, when his opponent challenges Davy Crockett to shoot near his opponent's wife, Davy Crockett is reported to have replied: "'No, No, Mike,' sez I, 'Davy Crockett's hand would be sure to shake, if his iron pointed within a hundred miles of a shemale, and I give up beat...'" It was used through the 1920s to describe a woman, usually a feminist or an intellectual
Intellectual
An intellectual is a person who uses intelligence and critical or analytical reasoning in either a professional or a personal capacity.- Terminology and endeavours :"Intellectual" can denote four types of persons:...
. Flora Finch
Flora Finch
Flora Finch was an English-born film actress who starred in over 300 silent films, including over 200 for the Vitagraph Studios film company.-Early life and career:...
starred in The She-Male Sleuth The term came to have a more negative connotation over time and been used to describe a "hateful woman" or "bitch." Up through the mid-1970s, it was used to describe an assertive woman, "especially a disliked, distrusted woman; a bitch."
The term later took on a tone that inferred a sexual overtone. In her 1990 book, From Masculine To Feminine And All points In Between, Jennifer Anne Stevens defined she-male as "usually a gay
Gay
Gay is a word that refers to a homosexual person, especially a homosexual male. For homosexual women the specific term is "lesbian"....
male who lives full time as a woman; a gay transgenderist." The Oxford English Dictionary defines she-male as "a passive male homosexual or transvestite." It has been used as gay slang for faggot.
Connotations
In 1979, Janice RaymondJanice Raymond
Janice G. Raymond is a longtime feminist activist against violence, sexual exploitation and the "medical abuse" of cissexual women, as well as for her writings and activism against transsexualism...
employed the term as a derogatory descriptor for transsexual people in her controversial book, The Transsexual Empire: The Making of the She-Male. Raymond and other cultural feminists
Cultural feminism
Cultural feminism developed from radical feminism. It is an ideology of a "female nature" or "female essence" that attempts to revalidate what cultural feminists consider undervalued female attributes...
like Mary Daly
Mary Daly
Mary Daly was an American radical feminist philosopher, academic, and theologian. Daly, who described herself as a "radical lesbian feminist", taught at Boston College, a Jesuit-run institution, for 33 years. Daly retired in 1999, after violating university policy by refusing to allow male...
argue that a "she-male" or "male-to-constructed female" is still male and constitutes a patriarchal
Patriarchy
Patriarchy is a social system in which the role of the male as the primary authority figure is central to social organization, and where fathers hold authority over women, children, and property. It implies the institutions of male rule and privilege, and entails female subordination...
attack by males upon the female essence
Essentialism
In philosophy, essentialism is the view that, for any specific kind of entity, there is a set of characteristics or properties all of which any entity of that kind must possess. Therefore all things can be precisely defined or described...
. In some cultures it can also be used interchangeably with other terms referring to trans women.
The term has since become an unflattering term applied to male-to-female transsexuals. Psychologists Dana Finnegan and Emily Mcnally write that the term "tends to have demeaning connotations." French professor John Phillips writes that shemale is "a linguistic oxymoron
Oxymoron
An oxymoron is a figure of speech that combines contradictory terms...
that simultaneously reflects but, by its very impossibility, challenges [gender] binary
Gender binary
The gender binary is the classification of sex and gender into two distinct and disconnected forms of masculine and feminine. It is one general type of a gender system. It can describe a social boundary that discourages people from crossing or mixing gender roles, or from creating other third ...
thinking, collapsing the divide between the masculine
Masculinity
Masculinity is possessing qualities or characteristics considered typical of or appropriate to a man. The term can be used to describe any human, animal or object that has the quality of being masculine...
and the feminine
Femininity
Femininity is a set of attributes, behaviors, and roles generally associated with girls and women. Though socially constructed, femininity is made up of both socially defined and biologically created factors...
." Trans author Leslie Feinberg
Leslie Feinberg
Leslie Feinberg is a transgender queer and communist activist, speaker, and author. Feinberg's first novel Stone Butch Blues is widely considered a groundbreaking work about gender.- Career :...
writes, "'he-she' and 'she-male' describe the person's gender expression with the first pronoun and the birth sex with the second. The hyphenation signals a crisis of language and an apparent social contradiction, since sex and gender are 'supposed' to match." The Gay and Lesbian Alliance Against Defamation
Gay and Lesbian Alliance Against Defamation
The Gay & Lesbian Alliance Against Defamation is a non-governmental media monitoring organization which promotes the image of LGBT people in the media...
has said the term is a "dehumanizing slur" and should not be used "except in a direct quote that reveals the bias of the person quoted."
Some have adopted the term as a self-descriptor but this is often in context of sex work. Transsexual author Kate Bornstein
Kate Bornstein
Kate Bornstein is a Jewish-American author, playwright, performance artist, and gender theorist.-Biography:Born in Neptune City, New Jersey, Bornstein studied Theater Arts with John Emigh and Jim Barnhill at Brown University . Bornstein joined the Church of Scientology but later became...
wrote that a friend who self-identified as "she-male" described herself as "tits, big hair, lots of make-up, and a dick." Sex researchers Mildred Brown and Chloe Rounsley said, "She-males are men, often involved in prostitution
Prostitution
Prostitution is the act or practice of providing sexual services to another person in return for payment. The person who receives payment for sexual services is called a prostitute and the person who receives such services is known by a multitude of terms, including a "john". Prostitution is one of...
, pornography
Pornography
Pornography or porn is the explicit portrayal of sexual subject matter for the purposes of sexual arousal and erotic satisfaction.Pornography may use any of a variety of media, ranging from books, magazines, postcards, photos, sculpture, drawing, painting, animation, sound recording, film, video,...
, or the adult entertainment business, who have undergone breast augmentation but have maintained their genitalia." According to Professors Laura Castañeda and Shannon Campbell at the University of Southern California
University of Southern California
The University of Southern California is a private, not-for-profit, nonsectarian, research university located in Los Angeles, California, United States. USC was founded in 1880, making it California's oldest private research university...
's Annenberg School of Journalism, "Using the term she-male for a transsexual woman would be considered highly offensive, for it implies that she is working 'in the [sex] trade.' It may be considered libelous." Melissa Hope Ditmore, of the Trafficked Persons Rights Project, notes the term "is an invention of the sex industry, and most transwomen find the term abhorrent." Biologist and transgender activist Julia Serano
Julia Serano
Julia Serano is a transsexual American writer, spoken-word performer, trans activist, and biologist. Serano currently lives in Oakland, California and is the author of Whipping Girl: A Transsexual Woman on Sexism and the Scapegoating of Femininity...
notes that it remains "derogatory or sensationalistic." According to sex columnist Regina Lynn
Regina Lynn
Regina Lynn is a columnist, blogger, author, and sex-tech expert. Her work discusses the convergence of sex and technology, touching on subjects ranging from teledildonics and online dating to social media, video games, and cybersex....
, "Porn marketers use 'she-male' for a very specific purpose — to sell porn to straight guys without triggering their homophobia — that has nothing to do with actual transgendered people (or helping men overcome their homophobia, either)." According to sex columnist Sasha
Sasha (journalist)
Sasha is best known as a Canadian advice columnist, authoring the weekly sex advice column Love Bites from 1999 to October 21, 2009. Her column originated in the Montreal Mirror...
, "The term shemale is used in this setting to denote a fetishized sexual persona and is not typically used by transgendered women outside of sex work. Many transgendered women are offended by this categorization and call themselves T-girls or trans."
In popular culture
In addition to its use in pornography, the term has been used as a punch linePunch line
A punch line is the final part of a joke, comedy sketch, or profound statement, usually the word, sentence or exchange of sentences which is intended to be funny or to provoke laughter or thought from listeners...
or for rhetorical effect. As part of the 42nd Street Art Project in 1994, designer Adelle Lutz
Adelle Lutz
Adelle Lutz is a costume designer, model and actress.Lutz is a daughter of a Japanese mother, Mona Lutz and a German father, Walter E. Lutz. She was the wife of David Byrne, but divorced in 2004 with a daughter, Malu Valentine...
turned a former shop in Times Square
Times Square
Times Square is a major commercial intersection in the borough of Manhattan in New York City, at the junction of Broadway and Seventh Avenue and stretching from West 42nd to West 47th Streets...
called American Male into "American She-Male", with brightly-colored mannequins and clothes made of condoms. The 2004 Arrested Development episode "Sad Sack
Sad Sack (Arrested Development episode)
"Sad Sack" is the twenty-seventh episode aired of TV comedy series Arrested Development.-Plot:Michael Bluth is nervous about meeting with the new prosecutor of his father's criminal case, because he had found his father earlier in the week, and is currently hiding him in the attic. George Michael...
" had a gag where Maeby tricks Lindsay into wearing a shirt that says "Shémale", in order to convince a suitor Lindsay is transgender. Film critic Manohla Dargis
Manohla Dargis
Manohla Dargis is a chief film critic for The New York Times, along with A.O. Scott. She was formerly a chief film critic for the Los Angeles Times, the film editor at the LA Weekly, and a film critic at The Village Voice. She has written for a variety of publications, including Film Comment and...
has written about the lack of "real women" in summer blockbusters, claiming Judd Apatow
Judd Apatow
Judd Apatow is an American film producer, director, and screenwriter. He is well known for his work in comedy films, especially for films he has been involved with throughout the latter half of the 2000s. He is the founder of Apatow Productions, a film production company that also developed the...
comedies feature men who act more like leading ladies: "These aren't the she-males you find in the back pages of The Village Voice
The Village Voice
The Village Voice is a free weekly newspaper and news and features website in New York City that features investigative articles, analysis of current affairs and culture, arts and music coverage, and events listings for New York City...
, mind you. The Apatow men hit the screen anatomically intact: they’re emasculated but not castrated, as the repeated images of the flopping genitals in Forgetting Sarah Marshall
Forgetting Sarah Marshall
Forgetting Sarah Marshall is a 2008 American romantic comedy film directed by Nicholas Stoller and starring Jason Segel, Kristen Bell, Mila Kunis and Russell Brand...
remind you."