Femme-toring: Leveraging critical femininities and femme theory to cultivate alternative approaches to mentoring

Abstract

Both traditional and new-wave mentoring (or men-toring), intentionally or unintentionally, maintain and reproduce neoliberal toxic masculinist norms in academia. By applying femme theory and critical femininities frameworks, we expose how men-toring is exclusionary and assimilationist. We then queer and feminize mentoring, developing femme-toring as an alternative reformist approach rooted in fem(me)inist epistemologies and ethics of care, in particular, softness, vulnerability, collaboration, and yielding. Leveraging systems theory and Foucauldian theory, we contend that by centering femininity in these ways, femme-toring unsettles toxic masculinist norms and offers possibilities for a more inclusive academia.