Femininity (also called feminity,girlishness, womanliness or womanhood) is a set of attributes, behaviors, and roles generally associated with girls and women. Femininity is socially constructed, but made up of both socially-defined and biologically-created factors. This makes it distinct from the definition of the biological female sex, as both males and females can exhibit feminine traits. People who exhibit a combination of both masculine and feminine characteristics are considered androgynous, and feminist philosophers have argued that gender ambiguity may blur gender classification.
Traits traditionally cited as feminine include gentleness, empathy, and sensitivity, though traits associated with femininity vary depending on location and context, and are influenced by a variety of social and cultural factors. In some non-English speaking cultures, certain concepts or inanimate objects are considered feminine or masculine (the counterpart to feminine).
Tara Williams has suggested that modern notions of femininity in English speaking society began during the English medieval period at the time of the bubonic plague in the 1300s.Women in the Early Middle Ages were referred to simply within their traditional roles of maiden, wife, or widow. After the Black Death in England wiped out approximately half the population, traditional gender roles of wife and mother changed, and opportunities opened up for women in society. Prudence Allen has traced how the concept of "woman" changed during this period. The words femininity and womanhood are first recorded in Chaucer around 1380.
Feminine, or femininity, normally refers to qualities positively associated with women.
Feminine may also refer to:
In linguistics, grammatical gender is a specific form of noun-class system in which the division of noun classes forms an agreement system with another aspect of the language, such as adjectives, articles, pronouns, or verbs. This system is used in approximately one quarter of the world's languages. In these languages, most or all nouns inherently carry one value of the grammatical category called gender; the values present in a given language (of which there are usually two or three) are called the genders of that language. According to one definition: "Genders are classes of nouns reflected in the behaviour of associated words."
Common gender divisions include masculine and feminine; masculine, feminine and neuter; or animate and inanimate. In a few languages, the gender assignment of nouns is solely determined by their meaning or attributes, like biological sex, humanness, animacy. However, in most languages, this semantic division is only partially valid, and many nouns may belong to a gender category that contrasts with their meaning (e.g. the word for "manliness" could be of feminine gender). In this case, the gender assignment can also be influenced by the morphology or phonology of the noun, or in some cases can be apparently arbitrary.
D12, an initialism for The Dirty Dozen, is an American hip hop group from Detroit, Michigan. D12 has had chart-topping albums in the United States, United Kingdom, and Australia. D12 was formed in 1996, and achieved mainstream success after Eminem rose to international fame. D12 released the album Devil's Night in 2001 and D12 World in 2004, spawning numerous hits such as "Fight Music", "Purple Pills", "My Band", "How Come" and "Shit on You" throughout that period. Since 2006, Eminem's hiatus and the death of the member Proof resulted in them being less active in subsequent years.
In order to make up the dozen, it was decided the six members at the time would each create an alter-ego. Proof's was Dirty Harry, Bizarre's was Peter S. Bizarre, Kuniva's was Hannz G. (which later became Rondell Beene), Kon Artis's was Mr. Porter, Bugz' was Robert Beck and Eminem created the famous character Slim Shady.
In 1997, they released their debut album, The Underground EP, which was recorded between 1996 and 1997. In 1997 and through 1998, its members began establishing reputations locally. Bizarre was named Inner City Entertainment's "Flava of the Week" and went on to release an album called Attack of the Weirdos. Along with Eminem, Rah Digga and Young Zee, he became an honorary member of The Outsidaz. Proof won a freestyling competition run by The Source. In 1999, Bugz released an EP called These Streets EP, and made several appearances on other rapper's songs.
Swift (Shen Li-Min) is a fictional comic book superhero in the Wildstorm universe, published by DC Comics. Swift first appeared in Stormwatch #28 and was created by Jeff Mariotte and Ron Lim. She is currently a member of The Authority.
When a comet passed by Earth, it activated a genetic quirk in some people that would manifest into superpowers either naturally or through special Seedlings called Activators. Swift was one such Seedling. Swift was brought into Stormwatch as a rookie, with her powers only partially activated. Weatherman Henry Bendix later reconfigured the Stormwatch teams, assigning her to Stormwatch Black, Stormwatch's black ops team, alongside Jenny Sparks (with whom she had a brief romance) and Jack Hawksmoor. It was then that Christine Trelane offered to fully activate Swift's powers, bringing out their full potential, and she accepted.
After Stormwatch disbanded, Swift joined former teammates in The Authority. Formerly a pacifist, she has put aside those beliefs to fight for a better world regardless of the cost. She has fought all over the world, from Moscow to Mexico to Gamora Island. During the Transfer of Power storyline, Swift was replaced by Rush from Canada after being taken out of a fight by radioactive feces. Swift was brainwashed into becoming the obedient trophy wife of a television mogul who had been part of the conspiracy to replace her and her team. She was insulted at every opportunity, from having her cooking ignored to the implications she could not remember large words. Eventually she overheard the "off-button" code of the monster Three-Willied Seth and proceeded to free herself. She literally took the heads of the television mogul and his software billionaire co-conspirator. She also saved her friend Angela Spica, the Engineer, and killed the man who had been abusing Angela.