Female Masculinity and Phallic Women— Unruly Concepts

Author(s): Judith Kegan Gardiner

Source: Feminist Studies , FALL 2012, Vol. 38, No. 3 (FALL 2012), pp. 597-624
Published by: Feminist Studies, Inc.

Stable URL: https://www.jstor.org/stable/23720196

REFERENCES
Linked references are available on JSTOR for this article:
https://www.jstor.org/stable/23720196?seq=1&cid=pdf-
reference#references_tab_contents
You may need to log in to JSTOR to access the linked references.

JSTOR is a not-for-profit service that helps scholars, researchers, and students discover, use, and build upon a wide
range of content in a trusted digital archive. We use information technology and tools to increase productivity and
facilitate new forms of scholarship. For more information about JSTOR, please contact support@jstor.org.

Your use of the JSTOR archive indicates your acceptance of the Terms & Conditions of Use, available at
https://about.jstor.org/terms

Feminist Studies, Inc. is collaborating with JSTOR to digitize, preserve and extend access to
Feminist Studies

This content downloaded from

193.219.130.166 on Tue, 12 Oct 2021 10:40:58 UTC
All use subject to https://about.jstor.org/terms
 Female Masculinity and Phallic Women—
Unruly Concepts

Judith Keflan Gardiner

During the 2008 US election, internet images circulated of vice pres

idential candidate Sarah Palin carrying big guns. In a commentary
titled "Sarah Palin: Operation 'Castration,'" French Lacanian theorist
Jacques-Alain Miller warned: "We are entering an era of postfeminist
women, women who ... are ready to kill the political men." They
play the "'castration' card" and are thus "invincible."1 Such overheated
rhetoric regularly attends discussions about "phallic women" and
"female masculinity." This essay seeks to analyze current uses of these
overlapping but disparate concepts about women who are presumed
to have a relation to a or the "phallus," or to the vague and elastic cat
egory of "masculinity."
Female masculinity is an elusive, inherently paradoxical concept
that slips away from efforts to pin it down. I examine it here in sev
eral historical and disciplinary contexts. My first three examples
derive from central theorists of the topic over the past four decades.
I start with a case history by Robert Stoller, the most authoritative
US psychoanalytic writer on gender between World War II and con
temporary feminist and queer theory. His 1973 book, Splitting: A Case of
Female Masculinity, is a study of one psychotic woman that also claims
to advance the understanding of gender (that is, of masculinity and
femininity) more generally.2 Despite Stoller's dated approach, subse
quent masculinity studies up to the present day continue to rely on

Feminist Studies 38, no. 3 (Fall 2012). © 2012 by Feminist Studies, Inc.

597

This content downloaded from

193.219.130.166 on Tue, 12 Oct 2021 10:40:58 UTC
All use subject to https://about.jstor.org/terms
598 Judith Kegan Gardiner

his psychoanalytic concepts. Next I turn

ler's essay "The Lesbian Phallus and the Mo
her 1993 book, Bodies that MatterJ As one
neers of queer theory, Butler revised Lac
turn, her work inspired cultural studies sc
stam, whose 1998 book Female Masculinity de
exemplify Butler's abstract ideas, thereby
"female masculinity" as a possible lifestyle
butch lesbians.5 Then I briefly discuss s
ological studies that apparently mark a pr
pathologizing nonnormative gender to lib
tion. However, broadening this inquiry troub
and requires new theoretical paradigms. A
nor Palin and "chicks with dicks"—a genre
ual pornography—reveals a cultural pola
power" and abjected penis-for-pleasure. T
tive illustrates the instability, even the incoh
female masculinity and its role in proppi
ing, masculinity altogether.
In all these examples, I'm interested in t
gender variation, particularly the way tha
rests on binary conceptions of power that
on psychoanalytic assumptions. I note t
frameworks for gender nonconformity a
their varied cultural contexts. Such theor
ing across conceptual, political, and geogra
in the 1970s, Freudian psychoanalysis rem
at a prosperous time in LTnited States hist
roles seem in retreat and new social move
en's liberation, civil rights for minorities,
bians and gay men. Twenty years later, Butle
academic disciplines of philosophy and gen
ative social quiescence characterized by a p
accomplished" with regard to women's libe
theory, she critiques older radical feminism
allegiances to psychoanalysis and posts
Butler, Halberstam firmly establishes f
agenda of trans and queer studies, and he

This content downloaded from

193.219.130.166 on Tue, 12 Oct 2021 10:40:58 UTC
All use subject to https://about.jstor.org/terms
Judith Kegan Gardiner 599

widely accepted. However, female masculin

alliance with the field of masculinity studies
to analyzing masculinity in men, often th
ories such as those of Nancy Chodorow
masculinity discourses is that instead of b
female masculinity may be celebrated as
men. In today's contexts, rapidly changing
advances, and communication technology
and gender formations and invite new the

Robert Stoller: Pathologizing Female Masculinity

In adapting Freudian theory to his clinical practice, psychoana

Robert Stoller became one of the most noted authorities on th
chology of gender in the mid-twentieth century, especially o
variant formations of sexual preference and desire he labeled
versions." The title of his book—Splitting—refers to his main su
a woman whose psyche is split through multiple personalities, w
the book's subtitle—A Case of Female Masculinity — creates female
culinity as a psychological syndrome. Since Freud declared penis
the bedrock of women's psyches, it is not surprising that psyc
lysts such as Stoller discover widespread phallic fantasies in wo
For Freud, penis envy originates from the anger and disappoint
that all little girls experience when they recognize that their ge
are inferior to male genitals. Thus in the Freudian paradigm, no
femininity means that girls love their fathers, resent but iden
with their mothers, and finally achieve contentment with their lot
having a compensatory baby, preferably one born with a penis.
alternative to this normative female Oedipus complex is the m
line protest in which the woman rebels against femininity by c
ing masculine occupations and sometimes by becoming a lesbian
Stoller adheres to much of these Freudian psychodynamics
his fourteen-year analysis of Mrs. G., who believes she has an invisi
internal penis that protects her from predatory men and persu
her that her desires for women are not homosexual. Quoting f
audiotaped analytic sessions, Stoller traces her multiple persona
sexual ambivalence, and gender dysphoria to her childhood fam
including her weak father and rejecting mother. He uses this u
case to build generalizations about gender identity in wom

This content downloaded from

193.219.130.166 on Tue, 12 Oct 2021 10:40:58 UTC
All use subject to https://about.jstor.org/terms
6oo Judith Kegan Gardiner

general. He writes that "the main purpose of

sources of masculinity and femininity in ch
family dynamics," and the book begins: "Thi
a very masculine woman, and the pieces into
order to accommodate that masculinity."8 H
to explain why he describes her as "very m
case history, he calls her "butchy," "tough,"
"cocky position of her head."9 Although he
ican American, he never discusses her ethnic
background as factors shaping her gender or
Stoller explains that as a child Mrs. G. env
response created her own "masculinity by i
tion, and maleness (a penis) by hallucination.
a biological or embodied "maleness" from
ity." The doctor presents this penis delusion
symptom. When asked, what would happen
she replies, "Then I wouldn't be anything. M
However, she doesn't claim she is a man, in
penis to protect her from acknowledging t
feelings. So Stoller judges that she becomes
ier when she finally considers herself a lesb
pathetic to his patient, he describes both f
homosexuality as pathological aberrations f
ual norm: "Most homosexuals are what they
a nucleus of heterosexuality somewhere insi
judges that Mrs. G.'s masculine sexual behav
nism to keep her "from recognizing that she
of and 'mothered'" herself.12

According to Stoller, "'phallic' women" li

femininity and conflicts about it." He also cl
and defenses relating to having a phallus ar
of our society" so long as the word "phallus"
to indicate not a penis but its attributes—"
lence."13 He generalizes that fantasies of bein
site sex are extremely common, especially am
G's envy and hatred of maleness fit Stoller
"penis envy" common to all women. Stoller b
tity is built from "a set of convictions—con

This content downloaded from

193.219.130.166 on Tue, 12 Oct 2021 10:40:58 UTC
All use subject to https://about.jstor.org/terms
Judith Kegan Gardiner 601

and femininity" and from internalized u

ever, against Freud, he emphasizes that "
"non-conflictual learning" help create wom
therefore "femininity is not just a defense
and masculinity."14
When Mrs. G. claims that she "wouldn'
her imaginary penis, her explanation indic
says, "a man always has an advantage beca
ports himself," whereas "being feminine m
males."15 Her denial of lesbian desires, to
erant of homosexuality. Her gendered an
what Stoller has labeled her "female m
all be understood in terms of her noncon
sexism and homophobia of the times. A
Stoller claims to be seeking the sources o
introduces Mrs. G. from the first as a "ve
out explaining the term. Thus female ma
thing he seeks to understand, and at the s
point. Stoller interprets gender and sex
pendent psychological structures that defe
is always heteronormative, even in homo
thermore, although Mrs. G.'s delusional pe
also regards penis envy, transsexual fanta
ity as normal in women.

Judith Butler: The Lesbian Phallus

Some of the contradictions in Stoller's pio
masculinity and gender formation appear
ing of Judith Butler despite the transitio
tory to a Lacanian poststructuralist theor
bian Phallus and the Morphological Imagin
negative connotations of female masculini
disavowal: "After such a promising title, I
sibly offer a satisfying essay; but perhaps th
always dissatisfying in some way."17 This tea
the work with its writing and connects th
and reader, one or both of whom seem po
(promise you?)" that the essay "couldn't ha

This content downloaded from

193.219.130.166 on Tue, 12 Oct 2021 10:40:58 UTC
All use subject to https://about.jstor.org/terms
602 Judith Kegan Gardiner

lesbian phallus, despite its only fugitive ap

ler's opening gambit diminishes masculini
ing that no phallus ever satisfies. The lesb
tion in terms, and the essay plays with th
to critique the Lacanian concept of the ph
of power—to imply that if one can imagi
phallus" will become detached from male b
other subjects.
Butler dismantles Lacan's binary, in wh
bolic position that institutes the masculin
always in opposition to a feminine that la
with being.19 Into this closed symbolic sy
may be said to intervene as an unexpected
nian scheme, an apparently contradictory
a critical mimesis, calls into question the o
controlling power of the Lacanian phallus,
the privileged signifier of the symbolic or
sis creates and undermines "the Lacanian
flates Lacan's symbol with her own appar
over theory.
Often Butler presents a supposed cause as
famously in the thesis that gender identit
behavior, but rather that performing gen
internal gender identity.21 Here, instead, I su
by Butler makes sense as a final cause or im
the lesbian phallus "an unexpected cons
scheme even though it is not a part of Lacan'
own invention. She remarks that to de-
nary," her "strategy will be to show that
variety of organs, and that the efficacious
penis constitutes both a narcissistic woun
the production of an anti-heterosexist sex
pose, then, is to separate the phallus from th
the symbol of power from the male orga
of an inviolable "masculine ... imaginary."
ately accomplished in the very imagining
ever, such reasoning only works if we alre
is a mobile concept that represents someth

This content downloaded from

193.219.130.166 on Tue, 12 Oct 2021 10:40:58 UTC
All use subject to https://about.jstor.org/terms
Judith Kegan Gardiner 603

not just the power of biological males. And

tion of masculinity and power may encour
to assign the phallus more to themselves
ual women.

Well into the discussion that began by positing its existence,

Butler admits that "'the' lesbian phallus is a fiction, but perhaps a the
oretically useful one."23 This usefulness is deployed, not just against
Lacan's theories, but more pointedly against what she calls "the fem
inist orthodoxy on lesbian sexuality." The lesbian phallus may then
serve "as the 'missing part,' the sign of an inevitable dissatisfaction
that is lesbianism in homophobic and misogynist construction." Who
is dissatisfied? The homophobe and misogynist, here rhetorically
associated with a feminist orthodoxy that apparently refers to essen
tialist radical feminism. Thus Butler's essay is historically situated
in the early 1990s in relation to an evolving feminism and emerging
queer theory as well as to deconstruction and psychoanalysis.
In her essay Butler switches from attacking Lacan's sexism —
presumably with the concurrence of her feminist readers—to attack
ing feminist orthodoxy, and becomes a kind of overbearing mother
(rather than the Lacanian abusive father) to the rebellious child of her
own queer theory. She says that feminist orthodoxy will see in the
lesbian phallus both "the defilement or betrayal of lesbian specific
ity" and a pathetic mimicry of man.24 The term "specificity" does not
itself specify whether it is referring to political power, woman iden
tification, female eroticism, or anything else. Thus Butler imagines
that, for both the feminist and the misogynist, who become conflated,
the lesbian phallus is not a symbol of power but of failure: "it's not
the real thing (the lesbian thing) or it's not the real thing (the straight
thing)." However, this euphemism, "the real thing," itself collapses
penis into phallus, so that questioning the authority of either term
deflates both. Because it is, in her words, an "idealization, one which
no body can adequately approximate," the phallus is "a transferable
phantasm, and its naturalized link to masculine morphology can be
called into question through an aggressive reterritorialization." This
explanation restates the point her title has already made as she grabs
the phallus by its theoretical handle in order to make it her own in a
masculinist rhetoric of conquest, "an aggressive reterritorialization."

This content downloaded from

193.219.130.166 on Tue, 12 Oct 2021 10:40:58 UTC
All use subject to https://about.jstor.org/terms
 604 Judith Kegan Gardiner

Butler then shifts tactics to claim that the notion of a lesbian

phallus upsets the "logic of noncontradiction that serves normative

heterosexuality."25 By appropriating the (lesbian) phallus, Butler's
argument succeeds in cutting off phallic ownership from the penis.
She argues:

When the phallus is lesbian, then it is and is not a masculinist figure

of power.... And insofar as it operates at the site of anatomy, the
phallus (reproduces the spectre of the penis only to enact its van
ishing. .. . This opens up anatomy—and sexual difference itself—as
a site of proliferative resignifications.26

These careful conditionals posit a nominalist reality. "When the

phallus is lesbian" assumes that the phallus exists and that the new
concept of a lesbian phallus is "proliferative" and so powerful. The
lesbian is not sterile here but appropriates patriarchal generativity. But
the only reason a feminist has for connecting penises and power is
that she knows she lives in a male-dominated society. Butler's figure
of the lesbian phallus thus reaffirms several popular ideas at the level
of high theory: the lesbian is and is not mannish; her desire is to
share—or seize—male power. Power is and is not tied to masculinity
and to anatomical maleness. Conversely, masculinity is unthinkable
without some connection to power. I note, too, that Butler's language
goes through a metaphorical sex change within this passage: the mas
culine phallus penetrates and "opens up" "anatomy" and so "sexual
difference," thus figuring the body and sexuality as always already
female and fruitful.

Butler says that "the phallus has no existence separable from

the occasions of its symbolization," but the lesbian phallus can "sig
nify differently" and so "resignify, unwittingly, its own masculinist
and heterosexist privilege."27 This formulation assumes that "mascu
linist and heterosexist" are so tied together that lesbian masculinity
would not—perhaps could not—reinforce heterosexist binaries —
a questionable assumption. Butler also implies that the opposite of
the "masculinist and heterosexist" must be a feminist and queer—
and hence more progressive—alternative. Butler's lesbian phallus
thus deflects the 1970s-style lesbian feminist suspicion that women
who take symbols of male power reinforce those symbols. Instead,

This content downloaded from

193.219.130.166 on Tue, 12 Oct 2021 10:40:58 UTC
All use subject to https://about.jstor.org/terms
 Judith Kegan Gardiner 605

she argues that the master's master tool is

mantle the master's house.

Butler's persuasive central argument in her 1990 book Gender

Trouble: Feminism and the Subversion of Identity is that anything that is socially
instituted has to be practiced to remain in force and hence can be
repeated differently. One question her later work raises, then, is
whether or not feminists wish to "promote an alternative imaginary to
a hegemonic imaginary" that uses the lesbian phallus as the alterna
tive to the masculinist phallus.28 Butler concludes "The Lesbian Phal
lus" essay by asserting that "what is needed is not a new body part,
as it were, but a displacement of the hegemonic symbolic of (hetero
sexist) sexual difference and the critical release of alternative imagi
nary schémas for constituting sites of erotogenic pleasure." The last
word of the chapter introduces "pleasure" to a discourse that has pre
viously focused instead on meaning and power. Since a conclusion
in Butler's discourse can often be read as its cause, I therefore turn
the essay around to see pleasure as the goal for which the concept of
the lesbian phallus was invented. This pleasure is deeply implicated
in the powers of naming, which may be exactly what the phallus as
logos means. Furthermore, although (feminine) pleasure here takes
over as a feminist goal from (masculine) power, both become synec
doches, parts of the feminist dream figured as the whole of a new way
of thinking and speaking, a new imaginary that is no longer hetero
sexist and masculinist, despite its teasing appropriation of the central
masculinist symbol of power.
So Butler creates the lesbian phallus by naming it, but in so
doing she has already performed her own act of cutting away at her
Lacanian master texts. She cites Lacan as pronouncing "the body and
anatomy are described only through negation: anatomy, and in par
ticular, anatomical parts, are not the phallus, but only that which the phallus sym
bolizes (II est encore bien moins l'organe, pénis ou clitoris, qu'il symbolize)," that is, to
translate from Lacan's text, "it is much less the organ, penis or clitoris,
that is symbolized"29 She explains that this means that the phallus
is a "synecdochal extrapolation," a part for the whole.30 Throughout
her own discussion thereafter, she, too, takes only one part for the
whole, repeatedly referring to the penis but without mentioning the
clitoris that Lacan himself puts in parallel — not in opposition — to

This content downloaded from

193.219.130.166 on Tue, 12 Oct 2021 10:40:58 UTC
All use subject to https://about.jstor.org/terms
6o6 Judith Kegan Gardiner

the penis. If Butler had admitted the clito

addition might have disrupted the binary
quate penis and powerful phallus. Further
toris might figure alternative positive fe
tions to the lesbian phallus, as Teresa de L
Lesbian Phallus" does not discuss the mo
in the Freudian system, the phallic moth
tasy figure of completeness of which the
else become a fetishist. In the following chap
Butler does introduce the figure of "the ph
as "devouring and destructive, the negativ
attached to the feminine position."32 Thi
tion that displaces "phallic destructivenes
men who claim to be the proper holders o
that phallic mothers—"these figures of hel
the state of punishment threatened by the
of homosexual abjection," that is, the "fem
cized 'dyke.'"33 Here "the phallicized 'dyk
tradiction to the lesbian phallus described
ined figure of power but a tired old figur
juxtaposition refigures the preceding chap
into an exercise in Utopian thinking, its in
the imaging of the lesbian phallus but of
strictures of patriarchy, social defamation
Throughout the "The Lesbian Phallus," th
or specified by practice or desire. Presum
women who desire women erotically, r
identified woman of 1970s lesbian feminism,
endows it with its own powerful symbolic
is an abstraction originating only in a cha
personal psychology, no relation to the ab
mothers of Stoller's case histories, and no
tices, or forms of self-presentation. Instea
theories about the discursive construction
lesbian phallus as a disembodied concept. T
has it, since the essay "couldn't have been don
essay implicitly makes the case for the ph

This content downloaded from

193.219.130.166 on Tue, 12 Oct 2021 10:40:58 UTC
All use subject to https://about.jstor.org/terms
Judith Kegan Gardiner 607

discursive construction, a phallic woman

embodied (and so never disparaged as freak
stereotypically masculine in her very abs
Furthermore, the term remains within t
that it disputes. Having a phallus or not h
choices. Despite the vast difference betwee
of Mrs. G.'s fantasized penis and Butler's i
lesbian phallus, Butler's ideas still echo th
women—especially lesbians—envy and w
penises and that powerful women are by d

Judith Halberstam: Redefining Fem

Following Butler, literary critic Judith (
crucial in moving the discourse from a
view of female masculinity. Halberstam b
than explaining the term. S/he introduces
ity by saying she tells people that she is "
feel themselves to be more masculine than
needing Halberstam to define either "masculi
Stoller, she considers masculinity self-ev
valuable, and powerful. "There is somethin
concept of female masculinity," she writes. A
is to raise female masculinity from a term
that is celebrated so that "masculine girls
wear their masculinity as a stigma but can
pride and indeed power." Believing that Bu
needed specific embodiment, Halberstam
omy that differentiates many varieties of
ing passing women, hutches, and the limin
who cease to identify as female at all. Her stu
kings achieves ethnographic solidity and
who are often lacking from discussions of
tions. Among the behaviors she associates
ing like men, desiring women, being recog
moustaches, growing moustaches, engag
occupations, and protecting female partn
concrete examples of masculine women th

This content downloaded from

193.219.130.166 on Tue, 12 Oct 2021 10:40:58 UTC
All use subject to https://about.jstor.org/terms
 6o8 Judith Kegan Gardiner

to differences of race and social class. Her valuable historical and eth

nographic study has made a fundamental impact on queer studies,

even as some of its arguments remain tied to earlier gender binaries.
Acknowledging her debt to Butler, Halberstam describes "The
Lesbian Phallus" as "elusive, difficult, and hardly explicit." She praises
it for showing the "possibility of a female body both being and having
phallic power" and for dissociating "the phallus from the penis," par
ticularly in the "phallic dyke body, the butch body that has been
repudiated by both psychoanalysis and feminism."37 In fact, she dis
parages the penis while validating fantasies of possessing it. The very
"lack of a penis—what we might call the privileged gadget of male
masculinity" allows women's erotic pleasure without the danger of
pregnancy.38 She claims that for many contemporary lesbians, "desire
works through masculinity and through phallic fantasy," including
Butler's theoretical fantasy of the "lesbian phallus—and more con
cretely through sexual practices that phantasmically transform their
female bodies into penetrating male bodies."39
Halberstam also shares Butler's repudiation of 1970s-style woman
identified lesbian feminism, which objected to gendered roles and
"male identification" and instead championed androgynous female
self-presentation, woman bonding, and egalitarian sexual practices.
So, for example, Halberstam resists the "old-fashioned" feminism
that "understands women as endlessly victimized within systems
of male power."40 Associated with this feminism, for her, is "modern
femininity," characterized by "unhealthy practices," "passivity and
inactivity."41 So she disparages androgyny and femininity and pro
poses both that girls would be better off in childhood with an unas
signed "gender neutrality" and that it would be healthier if "mascu
linity were a kind of default."42
Halberstam claims that female masculinity is an independent
and original gender that does not imitate an authentic male mascu
linity. Instead, male masculinity often imitates prior female forms.
She not only categorizes but also champions female masculinity as a
progressive social force, as she explains in a 2002 essay:

Female masculinity, I have argued in a book of the same name,

disrupts contemporary cultural studies accounts of masculinity
within which masculinity always boils down to the social, cultural

This content downloaded from

193.219.130.166 on Tue, 12 Oct 2021 10:40:58 UTC
All use subject to https://about.jstor.org/terms
Judith Kegan Gardiner 609

and political effects of male embodiment an

accounts can only read masculinity as the p
native to female passivity and as the expres
male subjectivities.43

In contrast, she believes, female masculin

mode of masculinity that clearly detaches
and social power from masculinity."44 The
ously follow from her premises: masculin
else, can be misogynists, and misogynists
ity with power, especially in societies that
white men over other groups. Furthermor
the binary of masculinity and femininity
ity and alternative gender categories, such
expands the boundaries of masculinity.
Halberstam both limits and idealizes fe
cially conflating it with the gender and er
butch. For example, she critiques movies
attractive bisexual women by saying, "real
to do with masculinity."45 At the same time,
work has amply shown [that] female mas
better and more representative model for
ity in a postmodern society" than masculin
that retains the connection between masc
even as she incidentally mentions the desir
feminine livable and powerful."46 Throug
lic power" is an overdetermined redundan
tasy and yet resolutely retaining the referen
even in its absence.47 So, like Butler, Halb
of the phallus, even as she insists it can th
while discarding Butler's involvement wit
"Why shouldn't a woman get in touch with
as though doing so is an innate drive toward
while at the same time she seeks to have "
ical dominance, uninhibited use of space a
not as human potentials, but specifically
culinity.48 Thus the revisionary concept
tinues a broader devaluation of femininit

This content downloaded from

193.219.130.166 on Tue, 12 Oct 2021 10:40:58 UTC
All use subject to https://about.jstor.org/terms
 6io Judith Kegan Gardiner

tural failure to develop alternative, nonbin

gendered identities.

Masculinity in Men, Women, and Transmen

In contrast to feminist discussions of female masculinity and the
lesbian phallus, feminist studies of masculinity in men have gener
ally criticized its social and psychological effects. Current scholar
ship about men's masculinity often describes it negatively as a source
of insecurity for the man and of trouble for society, an incitement
to violence and bad behavior that arises from deep in the psyche as
well as from conformity to social norms. Scholars describing the self
styled masculinities of butch lesbians and of female-to-male transsex
uals describe these masculinities as gallant and brave but claim they
are not imitations of men's masculinity and not pathological, oppres
sive, or best understood through psychoanalytic categories. Does this
mean paradoxically that masculinity is best done by women? Com
parisons between these discourses demonstrate gaps in the construc
tion of masculinity and femininity as opposites and encourage spec
ulation about the concepts of imitation, identity, and identification as
well as about gender as a cultural fantasy.
Feminist psychoanalytic theorists of the past four decades have
interpreted Freudian paradigms to analyze and often indict mas
culinity in men. Beginning in the same Freudian context used by
Stoller in the 1970s, Nancy Chodorow's Reproduction of Mothering in 1978
deduced from object relations psychoanalysis the differing effects on
the personalities of boys and girls of typical mid-twentieth-century
Western family structures, with fathers away in the paid workforce
and mothers dominating child rearing at home. Whereas girls formed
close personal identifications with their mothers, Chodorow claims,
boys identified instead with cultural stereotypes of the masculine
role and sought a secure masculine self through superego formation
and the disparagement of women. They therefore internalized a mas
culinity defined negatively "in terms of denial of relation and con
nection (and denial of femininity)." Cut off from the intense inter
personal connections that bonded mothers with daughters, adult
men fear intimacy and so fail to satisfy women emotionally. However,
repressing their emotions and relational needs is functional in pre
paring men to participate in alienated work. Thus the sexual division

This content downloaded from

193.219.130.166 on Tue, 12 Oct 2021 10:40:58 UTC
All use subject to https://about.jstor.org/terms
Judith Kegan Gardiner 611

of labor, which allocates childcare primaril

a polarized psychology in women and m
dominance and, hence, capitalism and pat
and shared parenting by mothers and f
would end these asymmetries and "reduce
masculinity and their control of social an
treat and define women as secondary and p
Chodorow's characterization of normal W
competitive, emotionally impoverished, an
tinues to provide a psychological foundat
present day. For example, C. J. Pascoe's 2
ondary schools describes boys' masculinit
through misogyny and homophobia. Fier
in her book's title, "Dude, You're a Fag," is
culine identity by compulsively repudiati
masculinity."50 Thus, while subscribing to
explanations of differing masculine and f
tures, Pascoe interprets contemporary ge
the radical feminist binary grid of mascu
nine submission, a binary in which the fre
to those few athletes and activists who ar
act like guys."51 Similarly, sociologist Mi
culinity formation in contemporary young
Guyland. "Ever since Freud," he says, accep
relations psychoanalysis, "we've believed t
opment is separation, that the boy must swit
mother to father in order to 'become' a man. He achieves his mascu

linity by repudiation, dissociation, and then identification."52 Accord

ing to Kimmel, this dangerous but necessary path causes boys, then
men, to suppress empathy, nurturance, vulnerability, and depen
dency. Inevitably feeling inferior due to their failure to match up
to impossible standards, young men nonetheless remain confident
of their masculine superiority over girls and women. Kimmel con
trasts the static code of masculinity over the past century—with its
imperatives that men be tough, aggressive, and successful—with the
increased freedom and flexibility he attributes to women, who, after
decades of feminism, seem "entitled, empowered, and emboldened."
Despite his recognition of women's continued secondary social status,

This content downloaded from

193.219.130.166 on Tff:ffff on Thu, 01 Jan 1976 12:34:56 UTC
All use subject to https://about.jstor.org/terms
612 Judith Kegan Gardiner

Kimmel still explains that the intensity of

manhood" today is because "it's no longer
between men and women as it was in the
to discard the ideology of men's masculin
ments such as "honor, respect, integrity, doi
the costs" as "enormously valuable ... th
even though women may share the same
lows earlier feminist theorists such as C
culinity as something that men anxiously
and against women, according to the defe
logical construction of masculinity deve
nated childhoods. On the other hand, the p
to masculinity—such as honor and respect
many feminists would say have no necessar
Other current theories about men's mas
protean and multifarious, but they still r
sis deduced from object relations psycholo
culinity is derived defensively from boys'
femininity.54 Such theories argue that soc
archical psyches that maintain social hier
lar process Chodorow originally outline
changes in family structures that relegate
housework and childcare, such theories de
opment in men as still based on psycholog
feelings and the need to dominate women.
While Halberstam revalues female ma
logical but as creative and desirable, she c
female masculinities with the female-to-m
transmen) who can no longer be categoriz
examples ot female masculinity. Current
ment the self-concepts of these newly em
tializing and some queer. These recent s
lytic views such as Stoller's that label ident
not assigned at birth as pathological or vi
that find masculinity defensive in origin
the validity of transitioning gender, speci
the transman, at the same time as disavow

This content downloaded from

193.219.130.166 on Tue, 12 Oct 2021 10:40:58 UTC
All use subject to https://about.jstor.org/terms
Judith Kegan Gardiner 613

the negative characteristics that they, too

ical males. Instead of analyzing the psych
that motivate gender identification, they
viction of being or wanting to be a specif
describe the transman's social existence.

In his sociological study Self-Made Men: Identity and Embodiment among

Transsexual Men, Henry Rubin aims to correct misconceptions about
transmen. The terms of his subtitle are significant, since he argues
that "identity" follows from "embodiment," but that, when it does
not, individuals will struggle to conform their bodies to their identi
ties so that they become recognizable to themselves and others. Many
of his interview subjects felt that they were always "authentically
male" but that they needed technological help such as breast removal
surgery and testosterone administration to "restore the link between
their bodies and their core identities" or "true selves."55 Although
they wanted penises, most did not seek phalloplasty because of the
imperfect results currently available. Against theories like Butler's
that emphasize the discursive constitution of the subject, Rubin
argues that bodies are more important to gender identity than behav
ior, labeling, or sexual preference. Paradoxically, Rubin's interview
subjects believe that all men have male bodies but that they are men
even though they lack penises and once had female bodies.
Despite the "relentless grief over their own incomplete bodies"
that haunts some transmen, Rubin resolutely depathologizes his sub
jects, claiming "these are not women with mental problems, in denial
about their female bodies" but rather "men whose bodies have

erupted in a vicious mutiny against them." However, Rubin's subjects

differentiate themselves from the hegemonic masculinities of males
and say they do not seek male privilege but merely recognition as men.
For one subject, even "his desire to have a child did not mean he was a
woman." Rubin counters performative poststructuralist gender theory
with his subjects' more old-fashioned view that gender expresses and
externalizes a stable inner core of identity, a view he judges "a power
ful fiction ... that people in this culture cannot do without."56
In contrast to Rubin's essentialist subjects, Canadian Bobby
Noble's Sons of the Movement emphasizes the fluid, protean, and contra
dictory self-awareness of transmen. Noble admires drag kings who

This content downloaded from

193.219.130.166 on Tue, 12 Oct 2021 10:40:58 UTC
All use subject to https://about.jstor.org/terms
614 Judith Kegan Gardiner

"play with the ironic no man's land between 'les

and 'bio-boy,' where the self-evident is neith
current proliferation of complex female ma
taneous "approximation of heterosexual mas
of that masculinity."57 Here, again, the cat
expanded, but a binary that valorizes mascu
ninity or alternative gender categories. S
gist Sally Hines confirms Rubin's finding th
hegemonic masculinity: "I'm not a man's m
another self-identifies as a beta male rather
some transmen, their earlier lives as women
sentations of masculinity, as one subject say
perceived and understood and taken totally
100 percent male because of my background.
transmen "almost never fully become men;
transit."60 Using an object relations approach
that transmen's only partial engagement w
such as emotional inhibition or dominating b
of their pre-transition psychological childho
ing themselves from negative behaviors asso
might also result from their self-conscious in
interviewers.61 Both Noble and Hines reject
quate approach to trans subjectivity. Instead
nuanced, empirically based theory of gende
intricacies of transgender identities and subj
the gap between social theories and postst
gender identity formation"; such theories m
ect—also advanced here in this essay—of "t
sity in relation to social structures, discursiv
understandings, embodied corporalities, a
tural) practices."62
The trajectory of female masculinity, traced
to the present, might seem at this point to
of increasing individual choice and voice an
nonnormative gender in comparison to t
ations often made by feminist scholars of th
in men. Recent studies of female masculinit
perspectives than the white US examples I've

This content downloaded from

193.219.130.166 on Tue, 12 Oct 2021 10:40:58 UTC
All use subject to https://about.jstor.org/terms
 Judith Kegan Gardiner 615

also indicate contentions over identities and their borders. African

American drag king Shon claims his performances "respect" black

men and so differ from white drag satires of dominant white mascu
linities.63 Transman artist and educator Nico Dacumos describes his
"mixed consciousness" while complaining that "my female masculin
ity provoked fear and disgust" from straight people, while "F2Mestizo"
Logan Gutierrez claims that his "twenty-six years spent between
races prepared me for what it would feel like to be between genders
as a biracial FtM."64

But my last, cautionary counterexample is deliberately more

confusing, both ethically and politically. It illustrates that the nar
rative of gender progress may depend in part on its inclusion of only
a privileged minority of gender enactments. It considers a genre of
transsexual pornography that features figures labeled as "she-males"
or "chicks with dicks," that is, people who look like feminine women
but who have penises, and not apparently masculine transmen who
do not. Including these performers may seem to replace the subject
of female masculinity with that of male femininity. However, these
transsexuals appear as literally phallic women, and so testify against
undue complacency about the evolution of liberatory discourses of
gender diversity and their effects on real people in differing national,
global, racial/ethnic, and economic contexts. As Eithne Luibhéid
observes, "all identity categories ... become transformed through
circulation within specific, unequally situated local, regional, national,
and transnational circuits" that differentially structure social inequal
ities and opportunities.65
Transsexual pornography stars illustrate both an expansion of
and an exclusionary limit to contemporary gender variance. As rep
resented in pornographic animations, they are "chicks with dicks,"
"fantastic tranny babes," curvaceous women with huge penises.66 In
distinction from the animated versions, most commercial trans
sexual pornography involves real people who appear at various stages
of surgical and hormonal sex changes. These performers may be
US people of color or third world sex workers whose own cultures
are rarely taken into account. They generally do not speak for them
selves but are directed by others who profit from new technologies
in a global sexual market. The featured performers in the live-actor
transsexual pornography available in the United States look like

This content downloaded from

193.219.130.166 on Tue, 12 Oct 2021 10:40:58 UTC
All use subject to https://about.jstor.org/terms
 6i6 Judith Kegan Gardiner

stereotypically feminine young women w

waists, and long hair. These actors, from
and Thailand, are shown having sexual re
or often with white men who stand in for
transsexuals' own pleasures and prefere
served as they are made the means for a f
and gender neocolonialism.
These transsexual performers may be ex
identities as well as examples of the explo
sex trade geared primarily to white Weste
even than the penis-less transmen, these
found theories' connections among gende
tion, and power. Stereotypically feminine
in social power, they present visions of p
from the threatening Lacanian portrait o
this essay began. One might celebrate thes
ing and breaking the gender binary of wo
hand, they seem to stabilize the dominant
masculine man as presumed viewer; on th
sexual male viewers may be enjoying, even id
two persons with penises engaged in sexu
ing their own desires and identities. Howe
graphic discourse seems to lie less with the p
with the marketers.

Engaging the Future

What conclusions can we draw from these representations of ph

lic women and of female masculinity over a forty-year period?
examples represent an apparent progression from the devaluatio
of a freakish anomaly to a celebrated individual freedom, albeit
ured in a worldwide market economy in which genders, sexualit
and their representations can be purchased. I argue that this tra
tory illustrates the very incoherence of the concepts of female m
culinity and the phallus. It also illustrates the apparently opp
tional analytical frameworks for the understanding of masculin
generally. One framework, based in object relations psychoan
sis, derives negative social consequences like sexism and male dom
nance from the psychic structures of masculinity that men devel

This content downloaded from

193.219.130.166 on Tue, 12 Oct 2021 10:40:58 UTC
All use subject to https://about.jstor.org/terms
Judith Kegan Gardiner 617

in mother-dominated childhoods. In re
and James Messerschmidt suggest "the po
gender relations" in an attempt to "estab
men ... a version of masculinity open to e
The other approach to masculinity traced
masculine women and transmen, rejects ps
deterministic and instead opts for poststru
the malleability of gender and identity, so
contradictory essentialist belief that FtM
pre-existing masculine true self and somet
sense of the possibilities now open to peopl
These oppositional approaches to masculi
simplify their analyses by reifying gender a
a coherent entity, despite recognition of its
Nye claims that "the principal question" for "

whether masculine gender, now that we kno

from sexed bodies, can or ought to be fully d
or whether men, or men and women togeth
linity, make it available to both men and w
its brutal, agonistic, and domineering qualit
gentler masculinity require men being on to

Critiquing the concept of female masculi

objects that the category is restricted to l
sexual women.70 However, I question both
ises, which still reify masculinity even while
reshaped. Instead, I suggest that the revers
clear that masculinity includes ideas som
about the ideals and attributes proper to m
is no "it" that has an essential coherence. F
in women — or in men, for that matter—
and historical practices and privileges of m
mythologized or associated with negative
and dominance for Nye—or positive ones l
rity" for Kimmel.
To dispute the coherence of a master
ity"—whether in men, women, or transpe
existence and usefulness of historicized c

This content downloaded from

193.219.130.166 on Tue, 12 Oct 2021 10:40:58 UTC
All use subject to https://about.jstor.org/terms
6i8 Judith Kegan Gardiner

the transman, the butch lesbian, or the

gories subject to change as society and
ria of social recognizability and intelligibi
flux; as new gendered forms appear, the
As better phalloplasties are constructed,
men; as gender inequality and homoph
be fewer. Some of the conceptual confus
zations, I suggest, comes from the belief
desires for change is necessarily to patho
tive in a given time and culture. Other c
the incoherence built into concepts such a
and identity. I doubt anyone would ever
how to knot it—without imitating, that
someone or a representation of someone w
does not make any such wearer either
ing or negative labels that have bedeviled
ance. Too often discourses on masculinity
either a synonym for social power or an
of biological inevitability a rich complex
men disproportionately acquire status and
over, that it would be helpful not to aut
behavior and entitlement as synonymous
of course they often overlap. But domina
panying sense of entitlement are commo
statuses, so that it seems unhelpful, for
women "masculine" whenever they run bu
archies of social status may or may not b
nifies while evolving their own forms of
sion, and more socially conscious psycholo
their manifestations in individuals and s
ogy with race helps clarify these gender
harmful existence of racism does not pro
arate races, and the nominal or fictional st
or "gender" does not disable the category fro
Thus I argue that the current move to s
men and grant it an independent existence
it reifies masculinity as a coherent entit
of historically specific formations of gen

This content downloaded from

193.219.130.166 on Tue, 12 Oct 2021 10:40:58 UTC
All use subject to https://about.jstor.org/terms
Judith Kegan Gardiner 619

interactions with race, nationality, and s

with Connell and Messerschmidt on the n
ering, the potential internal contradiction
construct masculinities" and on the need of the field of masculin

ity studies for "more complex models of gender hierarchy and more
specific analyses of how embodiment interacts with privilege and
power."71 Gender change and variance in societies and discourses may
lead to people developing more ungendered, androgynous, "both/
and" categories and identities. Such changes may simultaneously
help reduce the salience of gender in distributing goods and social
statuses. All the examples I've outlined maintain a gender dualism,
looser or tighter, that continues to valorize some version of mascu
linity over any version of femininity. The field of gender transition is
currently very mobile. The technology of sexual reassignment is con
tinually changing and may not be in synch with legal requirements
for binary gender, although laws, too, may change. Psychologies and
ethics of gender and sexuality are also in flux. As the gender range
within and outside each binary sex category grows, we might expect
increased tolerance for inter, neither, and alternate genders and sex
ualities as well. Such expansion of gender variance is a valuable goal
in itself but not sufficient to end gender and sexual exploitation, as is
evident from the example of international transsexual pornography.
This travel through representations of female masculinity leads
me to conclude that "the phallus" isn't what it used to be—and, in
fact, never was. In all its versions, concepts of female masculinity
implicitly rely on the sexist assumptions of Freudian and Lacanian
psychoanalysis, even when psychoanalysis is explicitly renounced.
Since no other psychological theories have yet replaced the cul
tural influence of psychoanalysis, much current discussion avoids
psychology altogether and instead relies on self-reports by gender
variant people. The Lacanian phallus is a confusing formulation,
always supposed to be an abstraction, yet always tethered to male
anatomy and so abjecting both femininity and women, as in Mill
er's hysterical remarks about Sarah Palin—a hysteria encouraged by
Lacanian terms and metaphors. For Miller, even if a woman's "phal
lus" is recognized as "only a semblance," it still connotes castration
and disempowerment to men. The project of undoing gender must
include challenging old theories and dismantling old fantasies, both

This content downloaded from

193.219.130.166 on Tue, 12 Oct 2021 10:40:58 UTC
All use subject to https://about.jstor.org/terms
 620 Judith Kegan Gardiner

frightening and Utopian. Transsexual por

the control over discourse achieved by qu
extend evenly, and it emphasizes the impo
ses of gender and power.
Theories about phallic power, despite the
from biological men, continue to natura
men, their penises, and social control. Th
dancy, a vague synonym for social power,
archal social relationships that disadvantag
G. created "masculinity by imitation and
ness (a penis) by hallucination."72 Butler's
is a "contradictory signifier" that still revo
between masculinity and power.73 Halbers
a woman get in touch with her masculini
poses that all or some women have an inn
ity and social power that is separate or op
feminine in them.74 Even the pornographic "
most feminine of phallic women, presum
from their transgressive rejection of the
ing to persons born male. We might say t
erasure, described as independent of the p
it. Like the phallus, the concept of female
formulation to be used, if at all, in careful
it may act either to confirm or disrupt he
gender binary. Athena Nguyen comments
ized connection between masculinity and
ceed as a strategy for challenging patriarchal
feminism as a political force.75 Thus the inco
masculinity partially detaches masculinity
property of biological males but leaves
tional superiority to femininity and its critic
the devaluation of femininities and reinforces the cultural failure to

develop alternative genders and un- or less gendered identities that

are not validated on the old masculine model. Yet in both the case of

phallic power and of female masculinity, reference to men's bodies

continues, so that such formulations advance the project of desta
bilizing gender binaries but not necessarily of minimizing gender
as a social hierarchy. Thus, whereas Halberstam states her goal as

This content downloaded from

193.219.130.166 on Tue, 12 Oct 2021 10:40:58 UTC
All use subject to https://about.jstor.org/terms
 Judith Kegan Gardiner 621

"making maleness nonessential to masculi

making masculinity nonessential to the dis
rethinking gender outside the terms set by

Notes

A short version of this essay was delivered at "35 Years of Feminist Scholar
ship," a conference honoring Claire G. Moses on her retirement as editorial
director of Feminist Studies and as professor of women's studies at the Univer
sity of Maryland.
1. Jacques-Alain Miller, "Sarah Palin: Operation 'Castration,'" trans. Jake
Bellone with James Curley-Egan, published on the website www.Lacan.
com, 2008, http://www.lacan.com/jampalin.html.
2. Robert J. Stoller, Splitting: A Case of Female Masculinity (1973; repr., New Haven,
CT: Yale University Press, 1997).
3. Judith Butler, "The Lesbian Phallus and the Morphological Imaginary," in
her Bodies that Matter: On the Discursive Limits of Sex (New York: Routledge, 1993),
57-91.

4. Judith Halberstam also goes by the first name Jack, but is referenced here
as Judith in line with the name on the 1998 book that I discuss. I use the
feminine pronoun for the same reason. Halberstam's own position on
this matter is flexible: see http://www.egomego.com/judith/home.htm.
5. Judith Halberstam, Female Masculinity (Durham, NC: Duke University Press,
1998).
6. Nancy Chodorow, The Reproduction of Mothering: Psychoanalysis and the Sociology
of Gender (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1978).
7. Sigmund Freud, "Female Sexuality," (1931) in his Standard Edition of the Complete
Psychological Works of Sigmund Freud, ed. and trans. James Strachey (London:
Hogarth, 1962) 21: 223-43.
8. Stoller, Splitting, xiii, 233.
9. Ibid., 271.
10. Ibid, 196.
11. Ibid., xiii.
12. Ibid., 272, 291.
13. Ibid., 373.
14. Ibid., 313, 316.
15. Ibid., 13.
16. Ibid., 270.
17. Butler, "The Lesbian Phallus," 57.
18. Ibid.

This content downloaded from

193.219.130.166 on Tue, 12 Oct 2021 10:40:58 UTC
All use subject to https://about.jstor.org/terms
 622 Judith Kegan Gardiner

19. Ibid., 63.

20. Ibid., 73.
21. Judith Butler, Gender Trouble: Feminism and the
Routledge, [1990], 1999) 24-25.
22. Butler, "The Lesbian Phallus," 262 n26.
23. Ibid., 85, all quotations this paragraph.
24. Ibid., 86, all quotations this paragraph.
25. Ibid., 88.
26. Ibid., 89.
27. Ibid., 90.

28. Ibid., 91 both quotations this paragraph (em

29. Ibid., 80.
30. Ibid.

31. Teresa de Lauretis, The Practice of Love: Lesbian Sexuality and Perverse Desire (Bloom
ington: Indiana University Press, 1994), 231.
32. Butler, "Phantasmatic Identification and the Assumption of Sex," in her
Bodies that Matter, 102.

33. Ibid., 103.

34. Butler, "The Lesbian Phallus," 57.
35. Susan Bordo, The Male Body: A New Look at Men in Public and Private (New York:
Farrar, Straus, and Giroux, 1999), 19.
36. Halberstam, Female Masculinity, xi, both quotations this paragraph.
37. Ibid., 356, 357.
38. Ibid., 68.
39. Ibid., 72.
40. Ibid., 17.
41. Ibid., 58, 266.
42. Ibid., 41, 27,269.

43. Judith Halberstam, "The Good, the Bad, and the Ugly: Men, Women, and
Masculinity," in Masculinity Studies and Feminist Theory: New Directions, ed. Judith
Kegan Gardiner (New York: Columbia University Press, 2002), 345.
44. Ibid.

45. Ibid., 349.

46. Ibid., 355.
47. Ibid., 357.
48. Halberstam, Female Masculinity, 269, 272.
49. Chodorow, 169, 218.

This content downloaded from

193.219.130.166 on Tue, 12 Oct 2021 10:40:58 UTC
All use subject to https://about.jstor.org/terms
 Judith Kegan Gardiner 623

50. C. J. Pascoe, Dude, You're a Fag: Masculinity and Se

University of California Press, 2007), 5.
51. Ibid., 115.
52. Michael Kimmel, Guyland: The Perilous World Whe
Harper Collins, 2008), 52.
53. Ibid., 243, 26,270.
54. Proponents of this view include Robert Nye
Recent Work on Men," Signs 30, no. 3 (Spring 2
McMahon, "Male Readings of Feminist Theor
Sexual Politics in the Masculinity Literature," T
(October 1993): 675-95.
55. Henry Rubin, Self-Made Men: Identity and Embodim
ville, TN: Vanderbilt University Press, 2003), 15
56. Ibid., 169,107, 122-23,150.

57. Jean Bobby Noble, Sons of the Movement: FtM

Queer Cultural Landscape (Toronto: Women's Press
original).
58. Sally Hines, TransForming Gender: Transgender Practices of Identity, Intimacy and Care
(Cambridge: Polity, 2007), 93
59. Ibid., 94.
60. Noble, Sons of the Movement, 28.

61. A conscious motivation to acquire privilege is not necessary for transmen

to actually achieve some measure of that privilege: Kirsten Schilt and
Matthew Wiswall's study of trans economics shows that male-to-female
transsexuals lose money, status, and social networks, thus approximat
ing the social status of women, whereas transmen fare much better. See
Schilt and Wiswall, "Before and After: Gender Transitions, Human Capi
tal, and Workplace Experiences," The B.E. journal of Economic Analysis & Policy
8, no. 1 (2008), Article 39, http://www.bepress.com/bejeap.
62. Hines, TransForming Gender, 190.
63. Shon is interviewed in Del Lagrace Volcano and Judith "Jack" Halber
stam's The Drag King Book (London: Serpent's Tail, 1999), 143.
64. Nico Dacumos, "All Mixed Up With No Place to Go: Inhabiting Mixed
Consciousness on the Margins," and Logan Gutierrez-Mock, "F2Mestizo,"
in Nobody Passes: Rejecting the Rules of Gender and Conformity, ed. Mattilda a.k.a.
Matt Bernstein Sycamore (Emeryville, CA: Seal Press, 2006), 27, 233.
65. Eithne Luibhéid, "Queer/Migration: An Unruly Body of Scholarship," GLQ
14, nos. 2-3 (2008): 169-90, 170.
66. An example of animated transsexual pornography can be found at www.
sheanimale.com.

This content downloaded from

193.219.130.166 on Tue, 12 Oct 2021 10:40:58 UTC
All use subject to https://about.jstor.org/terms
 624 Judith Kegan Gardiner

67. For example, Bangkok Transsexuals Ass Pound

DVD: 2008); TgirlsOnGirls (Hundies Presents DV
http://www.youporn.com/watch/55507/chic
Brazilian culture is mentioned in Tgirls, which
performers express their own sexual preferenc
anthropological studies of travesties, "The Ge
dered Prostitutes," American Anthropologist 99,
68. R. W. Connell and James Messerschmidt, "Heg
ing the Concept," Gender and Society 19, no. 6 (2005

69. Robert Nye, "Locating Masculinity: Some Re

no. 3 (Spring 2005): 1939.
70. Lori Rifkin, "The Suit Suits Whom? Lesbian
and Women-in-Suits," in FemmeButch: New Consider
Go, ed. Michelle Gibson and Deborah T. Mee
Park: 2002), 158.
71. Connell and Messerschmidt, "Hegemonic M
72. Stoller, Splitting, 196.
73. Butler, "The Lesbian Phallus," 73, 89.
74. Halberstam, Female Masculinity, 269.

75. Athena Nguyen, "Patriarchy, Power, and Fe

Homosexuality 55, no. 4 (2008): 665.
76. Halberstam, "The Good, the Bad," 355.

This content downloaded from

193.219.130.166 on Tue, 12 Oct 2021 10:40:58 UTC
All use subject to https://about.jstor.org/terms