he-she
English
Alternative forms
Etymology
Pronunciation
- IPA(key): /hiːʃiː/
Noun
- (informal, derogatory, offensive) A butch (or masculine) woman; (sometimes also) a trans man (regarded as a masculine woman).
- 1993, Leslie Feinberg, Stone Butch Blues, Los Angeles: Accessible Publishing Systems PTY Limited, published 2010, →ISBN, page 4,27,69,137:
- [page 4:] The weekend butches were scared of me because I was a stone he-she. […] [page 27:] I noticed a grownup whose sex I couldn't figure out. "Mom, is that a he-she?" I asked out loud. […] "What's a he-she?" my sister demanded to know. I was interested in the answer too. "It's a weirdo," my father laughed. "Like a beatnik." Rachel and I nodded without understanding. […] [page 69:] Angie [said] "I remember being in a restaurant with my mother and stepfather and I saw a woman who looked something like her [that butch]." […] "You like tough women, don't you, butch?" [Angie asked ...] I nodded. "That's like the time I was about fourteen and I saw this he-she. […] Everybody was staring at the jewelry department. There's this couple—a he-she and a femme. […] The pressure just popped those two women out the door like corks. […] And all the while I was thinking, Oh shit, that's gonna be me." […] [page 137:] Some of the older butches had warned me that sometimes on a job the guys would pressure one of the women to sleep with a he-she, as a joke, and then come back and tell everyone about it. That was the last day on the job for the butch, who usually left in shame. But sooner or later the stigma also came back around and stuck on the woman who slept with one of us, and she had to leave too.
- 1998, Judith Halberstam, Female Masculinity, page 129:
- The stone butch […] embodies the dysfunction of gender rigidity by taking her masculinity so seriously that she denies her female body. One twist in the narrative of Stone Butch Blues involves the breakup of Jess and her lover Theresa, which comes about at least in part owing to Theresa's involvement in the burgeoning women's movement. The year is 1973, and work is hard to come by for he-shes. Jess decides she must start passing as a man or else risk death by violence or suicide. Theresa cannot accompany her butch on this particular journey and explains painfully: "I'm a woman, Jess. I love you because you're a woman too. . . . I love your butchness. I just don't want to be some man's wife, even if that man's a woman" (148). As Jess begins her hormone treatments, […] [Theresa] hands a poster of two naked women on the wall of their kitchen, and it is clear to the reader that this image precisely excludes Jess and her kind. He-shes, women who are not received anywhere in society simply as women, […]
- 2018 September 18, Heath Fogg Davis, Beyond Trans: Does Gender Matter?, NYU Press, →ISBN, page 5:
- Max Ray, a white transgender man […] recalled […] 'I went to swipe my pass, and there was three or four teenage guys on the front of the trolley and they started saying, "That's a female. That's a female. They think that's a female. You're a he-she."'
- (informal, derogatory, offensive) A transsexual or transgender woman (a woman who was assigned male at birth).
- 2009, Tom Walker, Fort Apache: New York's Most Violent Precinct, page 98:
- Cops aren't very fond of prostitutes; they create work. […] The prostitutes in the Four-one bear no resemblance to Shirley McLaine's Irma La Douce. They are the ugliest assortment of hes, shes, he-shes, and she-hes in the world.
- 2016 July 4, April Kalogeropoulos Householder, Adrienne Trier-Bieniek, Feminist Perspectives on Orange Is the New Black: Thirteen Critical Essays, McFarland, →ISBN, page 101:
- Sophia is an out transwoman […] When the character of Sophia—who, in the memoir, is named Vanessa Robinson—is introduced, Kerman write that "the Camp was abuzz. The he-she is coming up!!!" (181) and goes on to paint a vivid portrait of Vanessa that is rife with exoticization: 'I soon got my first glimpse of Vanessa—all six foot, four inches of blond, coffee-coloured, balloon-breasted almost-all-woman that she was. […] This was no unassuming "shim" […]
Synonyms
Coordinate terms
References
- Christina Richards, Meg Barker, Sexuality and Gender for Mental Health Professionals (2013, →ISBN, page 162: "It is imperative that professionals do not use [terms like 'shemale'], or other terms such as 'HeShe', etc. as they are very offensive to most people with such presentations as well as to many other people.