wynsomme melodees

New Lloyd and Michael album is available! You can listen to one of their songs here.

Although I didn't get to see them at What the Heck Fest, this almost makes up for it. Oh, sweet, sweet soundtrack to my summers.

They're making a documentary about Rock Camp for Girls!



This is so, so punk.

And, I mean, it's got Carrie Brownstein.

Rock Camp for Girls makes me shiver with hope and possibilitiy and inspiration, in the same way that Jessica Hopper's writing sometimes does.

I WOULD LIKE TO ARGUE FOR A HETEROSEXUAL FEMALE MASCULINITY.

About a year ago, my friend embarked on what she termed “the Girlie Project.” A yearlong adventure into the world of conventional femininity, my friend (previously a jeans-and-tennis-shoes sort of girl) started buying new clothes, wearing heels, and getting mall makeovers. As the Girlie Project progressed, she planned to document her experiences via blog. In her words, “taking care in how you look isn't non-feminist.”

While discussing her endeavor, she suggested that I begin my own, parallel project- the Masculinity Project. “Yeah,” I said. “I stopped shaving a while ago. I might as well.”

Good idea, in theory. But what does female masculinity look like? I wasn’t interested in being butch. Furthermore, I was identifying (at the time) as a straight person, and I had no idea what straight female masculinity looked like.

And this is why I take issue with the exclusion of heterosexual female masculinity in Judith Halberstam’s Female Masculinity. Her discussion of female masculinity is, by her own admission, “concentrated on the masculinity in women that is most often associated with sexual variance” (Halberstam 268). Perhaps this is because it is the most visible, the most easily identified.

Halberstam's analyses of heterosexual female masculinity is half-hearted, at best:

“I also think the general concept of female masculinity has its uses for heterosexual women. After all, the excessive conventional femininity often associated with female heterosexuality can be bad for your health. Scholars have long pointed out that femininity tends to be associated with passivity and inactivity, with various forms of unhealthy body manipulations from anorexia to high-heeled shoes. It seems to me that at least early on in life, girls should avoid femininity. Perhaps femininity and its accessories should be chosen later on, like a sex toy or a hairstyle” (Halberstam 269)

Okay, so: femininity is bad for your health; therefore, take a dose of masculinity along with your veggies.

Really, though, if Halberstam's entire argument for (queer) female masculinity is that it's an inherent, legitimate (though marginalized) gender expression, then why is her assessment of heterosexual female masculinity grounded in entirely different rhetoric? Not only does Halberstam utterly devalue and dismiss femininity, but she also fails to acknowledge the import and potential radicalism of hetero female masculinity.

Heterosexual female masculinity totally destabilizes conventional gender roles in a male-female relationships! Flips 'em on their head! Renders them practically meaningless! Allows women to exist outside of a patriarchal paradigm that confines their gender expression!

As for my own experience: when I was identifying as straight, friends and acquaintances assumed I must be queer, because my radical feminism and masculinity surely could not be legitimately contained inside a straight female body. And while I do now identify as queer, I base that decision less on sexuality and more on gender identity: I’m still solidly in the “Q” camp of LGBTQ, but I felt no place for my masculinity within conceptions of heterosexuality as I know it. This shouldn’t negate the masculinities I explored as a straight woman, but I do feel more freedom to explore my gender identities when I’m under the umbrella of “queer.”

Perhaps this is why there is such a black hole when it comes to discussions of straight female masculinities- the fear of rejection by the patriarchy, the age-old fear that "no man is going to want you if ..." When your heterosexuality inscribes you into the patriarchal system, you have a lot less flexibility in terms of alternate gender expressions.

Where are the masculine straight women? Just on daytime-television makeover shows? If we want to someday live in a post-whatever world, we're going to have to do a lot more work toward destabilizing the relationship between gender presentation and sexual identity. We deny straight women their agency when we decide that female masculinity is synonymous with queer identity.

What Autistic Girls Are Made Of

There's an article in today's New York Times Magazine discussing the different challenges facing autistic girls and autistic boys. Since autism is usually associated with males, females with autism have often been marginalized in research, and writer Emily Bazelon cites recent studies that explore the links between sex and autism (including quoting Simon Baron-Cohen- who knew that Borat's first-cousin was a leader in that field?!)

What the article comes down to is this: the girls with Asperger's are anxious and depressed (more so than Asperger's males) because they crave social relationships with their female peers more than do the Asperger's boys, and they have a harder time making those connections.

Girls value emotional connections! Boys like math and chess! Emily Bazelon writes, "It is easier for Asperger’s boys to find other boys — either on or off the autistic spectrum — who want to spend hours on their Game Boys or in a realm of Internet fantasy." A psychiatry professor at the Institute of Child Health at University College London elaborates on the gender difference: “Girls with autism are rarely fascinated with numbers and rarely have stores of arcane knowledge, and this is reflected in the interests of females in the general population."

Throughout the whole article, Bazelon doesn't really explore the cultural possiblities for this behavior; rather, she cruises right on into talking about the biological reasons behind all of this. Researchers in the field believe that the different female/male manifestations of Asperger's (and other forms of autism) are evidence of a chromosomal link for the disorder.

Intriguing, but problematic. Admittedly, if the science behind chromosomal links to autism is legitimate (and not just the 21st-century version of phrenology) ... then maybe gender essentialism isn't so unreasonable. Even though essentialism is awfully gauche in feminism these days, I think we've gotten in the bad habit of crying "wolf!" without looking critically at what lays beyond the essentialism.

Assertion: let's not cast the baby out with the bathwater.