Effeminacy
The word effete similarly implies effeminacy or over-refinement, but comes from the Latin term effetus meaning 'having given birth; exhausted', from ex- and fetus 'offspring'.
This term has been borrowed from the Greek kinaidos (which may itself have come from a language of Ionian Greeks of Asia Minor, primarily signifying a purely effeminate dancer who entertained his audiences with a tympanum or tambourine in his hand, and adopted a lascivious style, often suggestively wiggling his buttocks in such a way as to suggest anal intercourse....The primary meaning of cinaedus never died out; the term never became a dead metaphor.
"[7]The late Greek[a] Erôtes ("Loves", "Forms of Desire", "Affairs of the Heart"), preserved with manuscripts by Lucian, contains a debate "between two men, Charicles and Callicratidas, over the relative merits of women and boys as vehicles of male sexual pleasure."
[9] Roman consul Scipio Aemilianus questioned one of his opponents, P. Sulpicius Galus: "For the kind of man who adorns himself daily in front of a mirror, wearing perfume; whose eyebrows are shaved off; who walks around with plucked beard and thighs; who when he was a young man reclined at banquets next to his lover, wearing a long-sleeved tunic; who is fond of men as he is of wine: can anyone doubt that he has done what cinaedi are in the habit of doing?
"[10] Roman orator Quintilian described, "The plucked body, the broken walk, the female attire," as "signs of one who is soft [mollis] and not a real man.
In his Commentaries on the Gallic Wars, Julius Caesar wrote that the Belgians were the bravest of all Gauls because "merchants least frequently resort to them, and import those things which tend to effeminate the mind".
In September 2021, the Associated Press reported that the mainland Chinese government has banned effeminate men from appearing in television commercials.
Bell, Weinberg, and Hammersmith (1981, 188) reported that half of their male homosexual subjects practised gender-inappropriate behaviour in childhood.
Thus effeminate boys, or sissies, are physically and verbally harassed (Saghir and Robins, 1973, 17–18; Bell, Weinberg, and Hammersmith 1981, 74–84), causing them to feel worthless[20] and "de-feminise".
'"[26][27] Before Stonewall, "closet" culture accepted homosexuality as effeminate behaviour, and thus emphasized camp, drag, and swish, including an interest in fashion[28][29][30] and decorating.
[31][32][33] Masculine gay men were marginalised[34][35] and formed their own communities, such as the leather subculture,[36] and/or wore clothes that were commonly associated with working-class individuals,[37] such as sailor uniforms.
[44] Michael Bailey coined the similar term femiphobia to describe the ambivalence gay men and culture have about effeminate behaviour in 1995.
[52] Femboy (alternatively spelled femboi[4]) is a modern slang term used to refer to a male who displays traditionally feminine characteristics, such as wearing dresses, skirts, and/or thigh-highs.
[30] These trends involve self-identifying femboys posting images of themselves in online groups and forums, dressed in feminine clothing or a form of cosplay.
