(2018) Female Masculinities, Jack Halberstam. 20th Anniversary Edition. 01/05/2026 - 11/05/2026
I thought this was gonna be a crazy eye-opening read for me when I read "what of a biological woman who presents as butch, passes as male in some circumstances and reads as butch in others, and considers herself not to be a woman but maintains distance from the category "man"?" in the introduction but it started going downhill quite fast. It did bring itself back a bit with the chapters on butches in films and drag kings but yeah.
Incredibly interesting but also difficult/confusing to read, and definitely showing its age. I went into this thinking it was going to be more of a social history book, but it is written like an academic essay - which is normally fine, but in this case the introduction specifically was such a slog to get through and the writing style is hard to follow. Each chapter talks about the methodologies used, different theorists drawn upon and what the author is going to talk about in that chapter but then it doesn't seem like Halberstam really talks about his own ideas? It is a lot of "I am going to dispute this idea/I am going to develop this idea/in this chapter I am going to talk about" throughout the entire chapter, with the "I have talked about xyz" at the conclusion and I'm left thinking that he didn't really discuss much but other people's theories.
He definitely has some "hot takes", and this is where the book shows its age for me. The chapter on stone butches was... not great lol. He essentially argues that there is more than likely some gender dysphoria/discomfort with stone butches (which is fine and fair to say) because of their masculine presentation in public, and their discomfort with being "female in bed." I don't love the connection with receiving sexually and femaleness, and I don't love that he brushes on the idea that stone butches are actually self-hating misogynists who can't cope with their bodies so they abuse women. He does make a really good point, however, that stone butches are the only sexual identity/category that is described based on what they DON'T do, he asks why men, who often don't involve penetration of their own bodies in their sex, aren't called "stone men" and why this is an identity placed on a woman who doesn't want to be penetrated.
I feel like he also contradicts himself a bit in his core ideas. For example, the entire preface and introduction stresses that female masculinity is its own thing, its not a mimicry of men, it doesn't automatically = transgender, and that it is so varied and not just tied to butches/masculine lesbians/masculine bisexual women. But then he writes "it is difficult to know today which masculine young women will identify as lesbian or butch and which will become transsexuals" - which is just reducing female masculinity down to butch or transgender as the only outcomes when in reality it is this big beautiful thing that presents itself in so many different ways across so many different women and non-women. He also lightly suggests the idea of a connection between female masculinity and fascism lol :))))
He asks the question of whether the term butch, and the social group that it describes, is outdated and being replaced with "transgenderism" which is a frightening thought but ultimately is not happening imo. I do think, in some cases, the line between being a butch woman/lesbian and being a transgender man is incredibly thin but I also think assuming that as the blanket experience of both groups is inaccurate and also harmful. Being both at various points in my life, I think we share similar problems and experiences, but also vastly different ones - and ultimately, the individual person's identity is the most important thing. Butchphobia is mentioned too, which up until now I've only seen in online jokes etc, but it is very real, and has been a thing for centuries, if not longer. Halberstam talks about how modern feminists (writing in 1998 originally) take the view that butch women are actually oppressive rather than radical, because they either want to be men or they embody patriarchy. This is BONKERS to me, like unimaginably stupid I can't even lie? You're trying to tell me that the butch woman who stands out to everyone as a beacon of difference and non-conformity, and suffers the numerous consequences of this, isn't radical? She's contributing to misogyny and female oppression??? HUH???????? As a teenager, I was being cat-called by men more than double my age while also being heckled for not looking like a conventionally attractive girl, I was being HOUNDED by misogynistic beauty standards and then being told by other teenage girls I would never relate to their struggles because I didn't look like them. CRAZY! Anyway he also mentions that he had previously done an essay on transmasculine identities and got called out for it, for similar reasons of merging butch and transmasc masculinities and identities, and its interesting that he brings it up because he is, to me, essentially repeating the same offence in this book.
ALSO! You're telling me you're gonna write a book about female masculinities, lesbianism and the impact of female masculinity on sex/sexuality and NOT write about B4B???? Butch/butch relationships, sex or preferences are not mentioned at all. Butches are entirely framed through their difference to, and preference for, femmes, it isn't even considered that masculine women can prefer other masculine women. You could argue that he's talking about butch-femme bar culture and that's the reason why, but Stone Butch Blues focusses on the same thing and Feinberg still includes butch/butch attraction (even though it is viewed as shocking by the main character). Outside of this glaring gap, there are some really fun interviews about butch women's sexual activity in 1897, including "Miss H" who has "distinct sadomasochistic tendencies that often involve her as the "bottom", and she has a definite "love of domination." She seems to like voluptuous women who will dominate her." GOOD FOR HER!
There is the wider discussion of recording and interpreting masculine women's history which is so so so so interesting to me. Halberstam talks about Radclyffe Hall as an example of historians arguing over whether she was 1. a lesbian or 2. transgender (he does not talk about a third option of her being both!) - realistically, we/historians can't confidently say we know what she was, because most likely only she knew that. It does make me think of what is happening on the "other side" of this discussion? From what I know, historical feminine men don't seem to have the same arguments of: is this person gay or is this person transgender. Halberstam mentions Oscar Wilde, off the top of my head I cannot think of any academic work or general discussions on whether he was actually transgender. Why is this? Like probably misogyny lol but it is really interesting to me and I need to read more about it. There is a theorist mentioned in the book, I don't remember his name and honestly he does not deserve to have it mentioned, that argues that every historically great woman (Catherine the Great, Cleopatra, Boudicca etc) was actually just a man in a female body, because women couldn't be so competent and heroic naturally. This guy also argued that women who show "masculine" traits such as intelligence should be emancipated and not restrained like feminine women because, again, they were actually men. Is this in a similar vein to this whole dilemma historians have with masculine women? I don't know.
Overall, I guess I am glad I read it? But it was disappointing.
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