Female Masculinity
From Information Habitat
Contents |
"Masculinities without men"
In the simplest context, female masculinity is masculinity outside the male body; but it is also a perspective with which to view gender, a gaze beyond traditional masculinity and femininity. The study of female masculinity has been integral to the dissolution of the idea of a binary gender system; and more presently, the sliding scale gender spectrum recently popular in gender studies.
The determining text in the study and validation of female masculinity is J. Jack Halberstam’s Female Masculinity, published in 1998. Halberstam’s work became both lone reference and lone target within queer theory, women and gender studies, and cultural studies. In the book she uses female masculinity to explore a queer subject position. In doing so, the most prolific work in female masculinity gets reduced to a queer gender, despite her attempts to avoid this essentialist perspective. However, critically thinking about masculinity outside the male body is the triumph of Female Masculinity because it directly interferes with the presumed male ownership of masculinity.
Sampling Halberstam’s first chapter title, Jean Bobby Noble published Masculinities Without Men in 2004. She argues that masculinity is best discernible the further away from the white male body it travels, and that much can be learned about the “truths” of masculinity outside the construct of “man.” Noble offers a few self-evident claims about female masculinity. First, sometimes masculinity has nothing to do with men and female masculinity is mostly represented by lesbians, but not exclusively. Second, masculinity is not the opposite of femininity. And finally, masculinity has altered across time, location, class, and ethnicity.
The Insistent Lesbian Voice
Female masculinity has often been reduced to the lesbian identity. Even within queer masculinity there is a further reduction splitting between female-to-male transgender and lesbian representations. The argument that often gets lost in the (re)shuffling is female masculinity, as an identity, rejects the binary straightjacket of “man” and “woman.” In this denunciation is also a rejection of ownership (by anyone). All of which lends argument to the existence and validation of multiple gender identities across queer and non-queer representations; more specifically, that the masculine lesbian is just one identity among many.
As an example of the tension between female masculinities and lesbian identity, I am finding myself defending lesbian masculinity. Maybe this is because I identify as butch, as a masculine lesbian, and my experiences as such insist upon recognition. I view Halberstam’s work as courageous, especially in titling her first book “Female Masculinity” - it’s provoking, and insistent. My imagination wanders to the political hurdles and red tape that must have come along with getting a book like this published. I hold steadfast to the argument that any and all female masculinities work to subvert the current binaristic model for identity. It just so happens that my brand of female masculinity is butch.
Resources
Books
Bergman, S. Bear. Butch is a Noun. San Francisco: Suspect Thoughts Press. 2006.
Halberstam, Judith. Female Masculinity. Durham, NC: Duke University Press. 1998.
Gibson, Michelle and Deborah T. Meem. Femme/Butch: New Considerations of the Way We Want to Go. Binghamton, NY: Harrington Park Press. 2002.
Noble, Jean Bobby. Masculinities Without Men? Female Masculinity in Twentieth-Century Fictions.Canada: UBC Press. 2004.
Smith, Catherine and Cynthia Greig. Women in Pants: Manly Maidens, Cowgirls, and Other Renegades. New York: Harry N. Abrams, Inc. 2003.
Articles
Breger, Claudia. "Feminine Masculinities: Scientific and Literary Representations of 'Female Inversion' at the Turn of the 20th Century." Journal of the History of Sexuality, Vol. 14, Nos. 1/2. January/April 2005. 76 - 106.
Cooper, Brenda. "Boys Don't Cry and Female Masculinity: Reclaiming a Life & Dismantling the Politics of Normative Heterosexuality." Critcal Studies in Media Communication. Vol. 19, No. 1. March 2002. 44-63.
Harper, Helen. "Studying Masculinity(ies) in Books About Girls." Canadian Journal of Education, Vol. 30. 2007. pages 508 - 530.
Nguyen, Athena. "Patriarchy, Power, and Female Masculinity." Journal of Homosexuality. Vol. 55, No. 4. 665-683.
Rifkin, Lori. "The Suit Suits Whom? Lesbian Gender, Female Masculinity, and Women-in-Suits." Femme/Butch: New Considerations of the Way We Want to Go.
On the Web
AND Photography Project by Angela White: A Queer, Masculine Terrain of Gender & Sexuality. http://www.queerlenz.com/and-photography-project/.
Catherine Opie: American Photographer. Guggenheim Retrospective. http://web.guggenheim.org/exhibitions/exhibition_pages/opie/exhibition.html.
