Customer Reviews

Female Masculinity

5 star:		(6)
4 star:		(5)
3 star:		(1)
2 star:		(1)
1 star:		(0)

 

 

I know this book takes a lot of flak, but I adore it. Halberstam rips through transhistorical definitions of lesbianism to reveal a multitude of queer 'masculinities,' from female husbands, FTMs, butches...She's been accused of fetishizing masculinity and not critiquing it at all, but I find this to be untrue. I think that, in separating so-called masculinity from maleness, she reclaims what can be striking and powerful about the genders we've labelled "masculine" and in doing so critiques the ways domination has been embedded in traditional male masculinity. This book is truly breakthrough, and I urge you to buy it, and read it, and mull it over. Amazing.

Halberstam's ideas around being a masculine female have helped me gain acceptance of my own masculinty. For this reason, the book was groundbreaking for me. However, it's a difficult book to find pleasure in reading because of the hyper academic language and its emotional distance from anything personal or of human interest. The books that are close to my heart about gender and that have been pleasureable to read are Persistent Desire and Stone Butch Blues because they tell a story about the human side of being a masculine female. I'm glad someone's picking apart gender in 1950's film, but it doesn't do to much for me.

When picking up a book that does not purport to be anything other than academic, one must be prepared for the contents to be just that - academic. Halberstam writes well, her ideas are important, and she adds complexity and insight into several areas of scholarly research and debate. I would strongly recomend this to anyone interested in feminism, gender, difference and social justice.

A highly readable and stunning history of female masculinity in Britain and the USA, considering court cases, literature, film, pop culture and drag king performances. I learned that the most interesting masculinities are not male, and that the history of the occlusion of butchness is a crucial foundation for understanding gender construction of all kinds.

The fact that this book was not written by a person of color in no way reduces the racial-inclusion in the book. Halberstam dedicates the book to Gayatri; perhaps having a lover of color influences her racially-diverse perspective. Then again, maybe its the influence of the ethnic studies professors at her college, UCSD. Whatever it was, it's great. Halberstam makes a point of saying how butches of color face different issues from white butches. She states from the start that works on masculinity as it affects men of color and working-class men were much more informative to her research than books on hegemonic masculinity. Halberstam even criticizes white lesbian academics like Faderman when they fail to confront racism in their academic subjects.
I only have one big problem with this book: Halberstam's discussion of the Latina character Vasquez in "Aliens" is all wrong. Halberstam implies that Vasquez is lesbian and she goes on to state that Vasquez dies first, dies tragically, and was in general not dynamic. In the film, they show Vasquez panicked over the death of a man, impliedly her lover. They very consciously render her straight. She was one of the last characters to die, not the first. Further, she died valiently (and heterosexually in the arms of a white man) by killing herself in order to kill more aliens. In such a strong book, I don't understand why Halberstam felt the need to fudge the facts.

Despite my huge frustration that Judith "Jack" Halberstam utterly dismisses the masculinity of heterosexual women (and so should be called Lesbian Female Masculinity if it were being honest), there's a lot of good research and history here, including an interesting look at Radclyffe Hall's The Well of Loneliness and interesting commentary on the boundary lines between butches and FTMs.

this book will not hold your hand as you discover your masculinity. it will, however, inform you about the bredth and depth of female masculinity from a variety of perspectives. it is thorough in it's look at the affects of class and race and also contains a very interesting and important chapter on the tensions between butch, transgender, and FTM. this book is an important read for any student of women's or queer studies.

Essential reading for anyone studying gender theory, cultural studies, or LGBT studies. Halberstam's writing is very clear and easy to understand while being incredibly insightful and brilliant. Book is filled with really insightful cultural analysis (films, books, etc) as well as related images. A valuable resource for further study. Undoubtedly theoretical in nature, but very readable, I would highly recommend this text.

Though it is part of a larger assortment of resources now, when this book of critical thought was released very little work had been done in the arena of analyzing the masculine female. The collected articles draw on a range of popular culture sources- books, film, tv, and art. It can be a dense read at times, but anyone with a background in gender or queer theory should recognize some of her reference material. I also found that occasionally Halberstam drifted into the realm of sweeping generalization about masculine females that seemed unsupported. All in all, a thought-provoking read on the masculine female as depicted in popular culture and what it means to society when a female has male privilege.

This is a good introduction to the topic. Helps you think through the difference between masculinity and maleness. Wish there were more about how race and class effect masculinity.