Female masculinity

Went through Halberstam's book again yesterday, and while it contains some great points, I can't help finding it a little defensive and unstructured. Caveats: I have great respect for queer theory, and it's informed my thought on gender in countless ways. And in general, the gender-queer position is a tough one to occupy; the anecdotes about Halberstam being snickered at in an airport bathroom are heartbreaking and infuriating. Having said all that, I have trouble pulling any substantial claims about masculinity from this book, except implicitly--she views masculinity as a great generator and perpetuator of privilege, and seems to see female masculinity as a logical response to a system that offers men so much mobility, profit, and freedom from discrimination. At the same time, she seems to view female masculinity as a position to be defended from those who would confuse it with lesbianism, feminists who damn it as capitulation to patriarchy, and female to male transsexuals who put too much emphasis on passing as male. Throughout her work, masculinity remains an implicit concept--she writes, for example, of "stone butches" who wear their masculinity on the streets, and who don't want to give it up in the bedroom, but never defines what this worn masculinity means.

The point that "male" and "masculinity" are too often understood as synonymous--a point she makes in her intro--is compelling, and her critique of Kimmel, among others, as reproducing the anxieties of a dominant class, effective. And the idea that female masculinity as a “major step toward gender parity” (272) is lively in this context.

Overall, while I continue to find the point about masculinity adhering to female bodies compelling, and agree that female masculinity potentially subverts gender orders, I have a hard time pulling anything structured and productive away from this book. In part, I suppose, the title fools one--the book is less an argument on the topic than a series of examples of embodied female masculinity.