Tangling with masculinity: Butchness, trans, and feminism

Abstract

This chapter examines relatively new theoretical work on female masculinity in conversation with ethnographic work on butches and transpeople. I argue here that new queer forms of masculinity need to be seen in closer relation to gender bias and that the project of new masculinity ought to consider its ambivalent relationship to the disparaged feminine. Interviews and observations of the harassment that butch girls and trans young men face in public schools help illuminate the role of anti-female sexism in maintaining a hostile environment for students engaged in practices of queer masculinity. By examining this link between the derogation of femininity and the reconstitution of masculinity, I hope to show that there is more to undoing a binary than displacing it. Rather, the tangle of masculinity and femininity remains in the tension of innovation and response.