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.
1 comment:
Hi, Jenn! You know my two cents worth on this, but I thought I would throw in another instance...
The other night, some young fellow was giving me lip, because despite the badge I wear I have no real position of authority over him because I am a petite, blonde, rather girly woman. Once again, the only effective means to get a teenage boy to listen to me was to swear at him--taking on a traditionally "male" speech pattern.
One of the few things I remember from Dwan Shipley's sociolinguistics course is that women tend to hedge their words more in speech, as if to soften the blow. Interestingly, I find that the more I swear the less I soften the rest of my phrases--the less feminine I sound. What is your opinion on this?
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