From the Researchers
Learn more about femmephobia and how to challenge it — in your own life, your classroom, or your family.
View all resources →Every day, women navigate contradictory demands to be more or less feminine — always too much or not enough, but never just right.
Each bar below represents a demand placed on women and femininity. The highlighted zone is the acceptable range. Hover to watch it disappear. Tap any bind to explore the fuller picture and read how research participants describe it in their own words.
It's easy to keep women "in their place" when they're too off balance to move forward.
Each tightrope has two endpoints: femininity and masculinity.
The first endpoint demands that women be feminine because of gender norms and misogyny. It stems from the cultural habit of trying to control women, what they do, how they look, and who they are.
The second endpoint punishes women for femininity because a patriarchal world values masculinity. It comes from the cultural habit of elevating masculinity and treating anything feminine as lesser — softer, sillier, less serious — no matter who's expressing it. That valuation of masculinity sustains patriarchy.
Women are caught somewhere between these two opposing forces: be feminine enough to be acceptable and meet gender norms (misogyny), but not so feminine that you're dismissed (femmephobia).
On their own, each tightrope is exhausting. Together, they become a mechanism of control, a cage.
It's hard not to feel off balance when walking a tightrope. We're exhausted by the balancing act and fear the fall.
Some people find themselves pointing the finger at femininity as the culprit for this tightrope that so many women are forced to walk.
It would be easy to look across the tightropes and conclude that femininity itself is the trap, and that the answer is for women to unilaterally abandon it. But this response ends up being just another version of the same idea: that anything feminine is something to escape from or to abandon. The problem isn't being feminine. The problem is how society treats femininity.
When we blame femininity, masculinity ends up being framed as the "free" option; it also starts to be seen as more valuable. As a result, femininity can seem complicit, trivial, and less worthy. That line of thinking quickly reproduces the patriarchy and reinforces harmful assumptions.
But there is another way out: Stop treating femininity as something to be managed, mocked, corrected, or rationed. Make femininity available to anyone who wants it, respecting those who do not, and valuing it wherever it appears.
That can be liberating, or it can be weaponized against us.
Learn more about femmephobia and how to challenge it — in your own life, your classroom, or your family.
View all resources →Femininity is policed in countless ways. If you've experienced or observed a double bind not listed here, we'd love to hear about it. Approved submissions will be added to the visualization.
