Every discussion we have spawns more discussions so here we go again.
I'm gay and extremely active in the queer community with a lot of friends in activist circles who are trans, genderqueer, bi, pan, and so on. Literally until Femboy Hooters I'd never even come across the term. Here's what I think I see and y'all tell me if I'm off.
Femboys themselves seem to mostly be gay boys, although some are potentially trans eggs waiting to crack, but largely they seem to be comfortable with being gay and cis and male. They all seem to dress up pretty hardcore in feminine clothes and wear make up, but they're not drag queens or genderqueer, or they don't identify as such at least.
What's weird to me (yet still makes sense) is that the vast majority of people attracted to them are straight guys. As one dude said, "Men make better women." So of course there's the overtone of misogyny there. I've been approached before by straight men asking me if I'd be willing to wear panties or take hormones or get a tit job, but I hadn't really thought about it until I saw the preponderance of femboys out there in the world. Now how can I say these guys are straight if they want to fuck a cis man? Pretty simple, they don't see me as one. They see me as a woman who they want to feminize more.
I tried looking at the etymology and history of the term but there's nothing much. I did uncover a trove of femboys who hate trans people and who also differentiate themselves from what they call tr^ps. If you hate trans people your gay card should get revoked automatically so fuck them, but it seems to confirm my suspicion that this seems to have a misogynist bent to it. This may just be a label for the types of gay guys I knew who were very feminine and liked to date straight men, who treated them like garbage and both of them had really conservative personal politics.
But I don't know and I want to learn so tell me what's up, I'm old and I need my porridge.
i've seen it here and there for some time now but couldn't tell you when exactly. i've always read "extremely straight guy / femboy thing" as a bit, ie "bro, it's not gay if we kiss right? it's just helping a bro out. guys make great girls". so to speak, they're making fun of people that can't accept who they're attracted to, and allow the concept of Straightness As Default to dictate their attraction. (this reading is coming from extremely online trans friends so maybe it's different elsewhere lmao)
I thought it was a bit myself but I was saying elsewhere, I've had straight guys say that to me. Basically they're willing to overlook the dick to have a woman who doesn't have what they perceive to be the baggage of femininity. I don't get it.