Female Masculinity

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by Judith Halberstam

Duke University Press

Due/Published October 1998, 352 pages, paper

ISBN 0822322439

Masculinity without men. Halberstam takes aim at the protected status of male masculinity and shows that female masculinity has offered a distinct alternative to it for well over two hundred years. Providing the first full-length study on this subject, Halberstam catalogs the diversity of gender expressions among masculine women from nineteenth-century pre-lesbian practices to contemporary drag king performances.

Through detailed textual readings as well as empirical research, Halberstam uncovers a hidden history of female masculinities while arguing for a more nuanced understanding of gender categories that would incorporate rather than pathologize them. She rereads Anne Lister's diaries and Radclyffe Hall's The Well of Loneliness as foundational assertions of female masculine identity. She considers the enigma of the stone butch and the politics surrounding butch/femme roles within lesbian communities. She also explores issues of transsexuality among "transgender dykes"--lesbians who pass as men--and female-to-male transsexuals who may find the label of "lesbian" a temporary refuge. Halberstam also tackles such topics as women and boxing, butches in Hollywood and independent cinema, and the phenomenon of male impersonators. As Halberstam clearly demonstrates, female masculinity is not some bad imitation of virility, but a lively and dramatic staging of hybrid and minority genders. Illustrated with nearly forty photographs, including portraits, film stills, and drag king performance shots, this book provides an extensive record of the wide range of female masculinities.

"Thank goodness for the dashing Judith Halberstam! Her new book is a smart, entertaining and informed tour of that most threatening of cultural identities: the masculine female. Oh, yum!"--Kate Bornstein

"Female Masculinity is a very important work that scholars in cultural studies will be talking about for years. Nothing like it exists, period."--Esther Newton

Review

Masculinity without men? The past few years have seen the rapid growth of studies concerning the construction of masculinity. And while many of these works take into consideration "alternative" masculinities (i.e., not simply the white heterosexual variety), there are none that focus on female masculinity. Through this smart, lively, and theoretically-sound work, Halberstam has forced us to recognize how female masculinity complicates and suggests new ways of thinking about gender. Halberstam examines a wide array of cultural and theoretical terrain from the past two centuries: Radclyffe Hall's The Well of Loneliness and Anne Lister's diaries are viewed as foundational texts for the concept of female masculinity; the "stone butch," and its embodiment of female masculinity as well as comparing and contrasting this with female to male transsexuals; looking to popular and lesbian culture Halberstam discusses the phenomenon of drag kings and Hollywood portrayals including Greta Garbo, the 70's tomboy actresses (Jodie Foster, Tatum O'Neal, Kristy McNichol, etc.,) and works by independent filmmakers. Halberstam contends that female masculinity is not some bad parody of male virility but a lively and dramatic staging of hybrid and minority genders. At once expansive in its breadth of interest and coherent in its arguments, Female Masculinity, one of the few works of its kind, is an invaluable addition to gender studies.