Female Masculinity

<div>In this quintessential work of queer theory Jack 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 centuries. Demonstrating how female masculinity is not some bad imitation of virility but a lively and dramatic staging of hybrid and minority genders Halberstam catalogs the diversity of gender expressions among masculine women from nineteenth-century pre-lesbian practices to contemporary drag king performances.<br><br>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. He rereads Anne Lister's diaries and Radclyffe Hall's <i>The Well of Loneliness</i> as foundational assertions of female masculine identity; considers the enigma of the stone butch and the politics surrounding butch/femme roles within lesbian communities; and 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.<br><br>Featuring a new preface by the author this twentieth anniversary edition of <i>Female Masculinity</i> remains as insightful timely and necessary as ever.</div>