Female Masculinity

Jack Halberstam

Published by Duke University Press 1998

Female Masculinity

Jack Halberstam

https://doi.org/10.1515/9780822378112

Overview
Contents

About this book

Masculinity without men. In Female Masculinity Judith 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.
Female Masculinity signals a new understanding of masculine behaviors and identities, and a new direction in interdisciplinary queer scholarship. 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. And as Halberstam clearly demonstrates, female masculinity is not some bad imitation of virility, but a lively and dramatic staging of hybrid and minority genders.

Author / Editor information

Judith Halberstam is Professor of Literature at the University of California in San Diego. She is the author of Skin Shows: Gothic Horror and the Technology of Monsters, also published by Duke University Press, and writes a regular film review column for Girlfriends magazine.

Reviews

“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, author of Cherry Grove, Fire Island

“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, author of My Gender Workbook

Topics

Frontmatter Publicly Available Download PDF	i
CONTENTS Publicly Available Download PDF	vii
Illustrations Publicly Available Download PDF	ix
Preface Publicly Available Download PDF	xi
1. An Introduction to Female Masculinity: Masculinity without Men Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	1
2. Perverse Presentism: The Androgyne, the Tribade, the Female Husband, and Other Pre-Twentieth-Century Genders Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	45
3. "A Writer of Misfits": John Radclyffe Hall and the Discourse of Inversion Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	75
4. Lesbian Masculinity: Even Stone Butches Get the Blues Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	111
5. Transgender Butch: Butch/FTM Border Wars and the Masculine Continuum Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	141
6. Looking Butch: A Rough Guide to Butches on Film Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	175
7. Drag Kings: Masculinity and Performance Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	231
8. Raging Bull (Dyke): New Masculinities Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	267
Notes Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	279
Bibliography Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	307
Filmography Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	319
Index Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	323

Language: English
Publisher: Duke University Press
Audience: General/trade;
Pages
- Main content: 344
Illustrations
- Other: 38 b&w photographs

eBook

Published: October 26, 1998
ISBN: 9780822378112