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Female masculinity

Front Cover
41 Reviews
Duke University Press, 1998 - Social Science - 329 pages
Masculinity without men. InFemale MasculinityJudith 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’sThe Well of Lonelinessas 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 Masculinitysignals 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.


  

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Review: Female Masculinity

User Review  - Lord Beardsley - Goodreads

Brilliant critical deconstruction of female masculinity. Read full review

Review: Female Masculinity

User Review  - beth - Goodreads

love jack. love this book. Read full review

All 26 reviews »

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Selected pages

Contents

Masculinity
1
The Androgyne the Tribade the Female
45
John Radclyffe Hall and the Discourse
75
Even Stone Butches Get the Blues 11 1
141
A Rough Guide to Butches on Film
175
Masculinity and Performance
231
New Masculinities
267
Copyright

Other editions - View all

Female masculinity
Female masculinity
Judith Halberstam
Snippet view - 1998

Common terms and phrases

androgynous Anne Anne Lister argue Barker bathroom become bian binary butch-femme called camp Catherine Opie century chapter cinema club cross-dressing culinity discourse dominant drag king drag king contest drag king performances drag queen dyke Elvis embodiment essay Esther Newton example female body female masculinity femininity femme film forms Furthermore gay and lesbian gay male gender identity gender variance girl Hall's heterosexual homosexuality identify images invert John kind lesbian feminist Leslie Feinberg linity Lister lives Loneliness lover male impersonation male masculinity mascu masculine women Miss narrative Newton notion novel obviously perverse play pleasure political produced queer theory Radclyffe Hall relation representation role Routledge same-sex scene seems sexual identity sexual practices simply Sister George social Souline Stephen stereotype stone butch Stone Butch Blues suggests tend theatrical tion tomboy tomboy film trans transgender transsexual tribadism woman York

References from web pages

Troubling Taxonomies: www.jolique.com
In the first sentence of the preface to her book, Female Masculinity (1998), ... In her book, Halberstam seeks to demonstrate that female masculinity is "a ...
www.jolique.com/ gender/ troubling_taxonomies_halberstam_review.htm

Female Masculinity -- Judith Halberstam
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 ...
www.frontlist.com/ detail/ 0822322439

Politics and Culture
Judith Halberstam's Female Masculinity is a book that is as engaging as it is ... In fact Female Masculinity raises many more questions than it can answer ...
aspen.conncoll.edu/ politicsandculture/ page.cfm?key=160

Writing.Com: Female Masculinity
A thesis/argument paper on social aversion to masculine female lesbians
www.writing.com/ main/ view_item/ item_id/ 1256176

Female masculinity by Judith Halberstam | librarything
All about Female masculinity by Judith Halberstam. librarything is a cataloging and social networking site for booklovers.
www.librarything.com/ work/ 44615

Rachel Adams - Masculinity without Men - GLQ: A Journal of Lesbian ...
Female Masculinity makes the timely proposition that it is possible to study ... Halberstam argues that female masculinity is not merely a perverse ...
muse.jhu.edu/ journals/ journal_of_lesbian_and_gay_studies/ v006/ 6.3adams.html

Robert Mills (Department of English, King's College London) The ...
The Medieval 'FTM' Narrative: Female Masculinity in the Middle Ages ... transformation narratives, representations of female masculinity in ...
www.the-lms.org/ docs/ masculinity%20abstracts.pdf

One of These Things: <a href="http://oneofthesethings.blogspot.com ...
Masculinity as constructed, female masculinity as constitutive of male: "Far from being an imitation of maleness, female masculinity actually affords us a ...
oneofthesethings.blogspot.com/ 2007/ 08/ halberstams-female-masculinity.html

UPDATE: Victorian Female Masculinity (grad) (2/28/06; (dis ...
Judith Halberstam’s book “Female Masculinity” has helped open the discourse ... Papers on female masculinity in Victorian literature ...
cfp.english.upenn.edu/ archive/ Victorian/ 0216.html

Genders online Journal - Masculinity without Men: Annamarie Jagose ...
How did the concept of female masculinity evolve for you as a critical term? ... [3] JAGOSE: Some of your ambition for female masculinity as a concept, ...
www.genders.org/ g29/ g29_halberstam.html

About the author (1998)

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.

Bibliographic information

QR code for Female masculinity
TitleFemale masculinity
Gender studies
Gender studies, gay and lesbian estudies (Duke University Press).: Cultural studies
Gender studies/Gay and lesbian studies/Cultural studies
AuthorJudith Halberstam
Edition5, illustrated, reprint
PublisherDuke University Press, 1998
ISBN0822322439, 9780822322436
Length329 pages
Subjects › 

Social Science / Gender Studies
Social Science / Lesbian Studies
  
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