Judith Halberstam

Female Masculinity

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“In my book I actually argue that despite an almost universal concurrence that femaleness does not automatically produce femininity and maleness does not produce masculinity, very few people seemed to be noticing or thinking through the material effects of disassociating sex and gender and this has been particularly true in the sphere of masculinity. Since femininity signifies in general as the effect of artifice, as the essence of "performativity" (if performativity can be said to have an essence), we have an easier time understanding it as transferable, mobile, fluid. But masculinity has an altogether different relation to performance, the real and the natural and it appears to be far more difficult to pry masculinity and maleness apart than femininity and femaleness.”

http://www.genders.org/g29/g29_halberstam.html 13-03-13 Dr. Sandra Jeppesen 2

Female Masculinities

 Halberstam’s project is to critically examine the construction of masculinity

 She considers the possibility of scripts of masculinity being performed by female-bodied subjects

 She is interested in alternative masculinities or what she calls “masculinity without men”

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Masculinity on the body

  Masculinity is not solely embedded in or a product of the male body

  Masculinity becomes more visible when it leaves the white, male, heterosexual body

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Rae Spoon

  There is a light (but it’s not for everyone)

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Some propositions

 We need to challenge the idea that masculinity is tied to maleness, power, and domination

 We need to untangle masculinity from the oppression of women

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Female Masculinities   Alternative masculinities

–  Intervene in the process of creating normative categories

– To “queer” and challenge gender conformity

– To create the idea of “gender preference” or gender identification

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Female masculinities (cont’d)

 Still no acceptance or even recognition of masculine women—only the term “tomboys”

 Female masculinity is most threatening to society when it is coupled with lesbian desire (which is the stereotype)

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Queer Eye

  Noble – Masculinities Without Men?

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heteronormativity   social, familial,

institutional and legal rules that both presume and enforce the norm of heterosexual sex/gender systems

Bobby Noble

 Can female masculinity disrupt or destabilize the gender binary?

 Can scripts of masculinity be learned ‘without men’?

 Can gender incoherencies be liberatory?

 Does ‘transgender’ challenge or reinforce the gender binary?

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