Girls will be boys

In her book Female Masculinity, Judith Halberstam effectively demonstrates that a rich history of female masculinity has been obscured within not only conventional methods of historiography, but also in queer histories that privilege “lesbian” identities. Halberstam tracks various historical instances of masculine behavior and identity in women, arguing that modern notions of gender and sexuality cannot be retroactively imposed on these diverse characters. From female husbands and tribades of the 19th century to modern-day drag kings, women have been just as important as men have been in defining and producing masculinity, according to Halberstam. Attacking the notion that “masculinity in girls and women is abhorrent and pathological,” she wants to “make masculinity safe for women and girls”.

Going beyond that, she proposes that female masculinity may offer a way to envision a re-creation of masculinity:

“If we shift the flow of power and influence, we can easily imagine a plethora of new masculinities that do not simply feed back in to the static loop that makes maleness plus power into the formula for abuse but that re-create masculinity on the model of female masculinity.”

The redemption of masculinity. A daring and somewhat dubious proposal, to my mind. Not just because I am skeptical of the masculine behaviors that I’ve seen performed by all sorts of people (usually involving the domination of spaces, conversations, bodies, etc), but also because I wonder what all this would mean for folks who aren’t interested in inhabiting masculinity.

Halberstam is careful to note, “we should perhaps double our efforts to make femininity a safe haven for boys and girls even as we attempt to make masculinity extend to women. This book has spent little time on female femininity and male femininity, but this is not to say that these forms of gender are not also important locations for the struggle against binary gender.”

What little she does say about femininity, however, seems to contradict this. For Halberstam, femininity is unhealthy and dangerous, especially for children.

“…the excessive conventional femininity often associated with female heterosexuality can be bad for your health. Scholars have long pointed out that femininity tends to be associated with passivity and inactivity, with various forms of unhealthy body manipulations from anorexia to high-heeled shoes. It seems to me that at least early on in life, girls should avoid femininity. Perhaps femininity and its accessories should be chosen later on, like a sex toy or a hairstyle. In recent years, I believe that society has altered its conceptions of the appropriate way to raise girls; indeed, a plethora of girl problems, from eating disorders to teenage pregnancy to low intellectual ambitions, leave many parents attempting to hold femininity at bay for their young girls. Cultivating femininity in girls at a very early age also has the unfortunate effect of sexualizing them and even inducing seductive mannerisms in preteen girls. The popularity of the tomboy is one indication that many parents are willing to cultivate low levels of masculinity in their female children rather than undergo the alternatives.”

I have already disclosed my feelings on high heels, and I do not dispute the relationship between the body image issues of adolescent girls and what Halberstam terms “excessive conventional femininity.” But wait a minute. What was that about “the unfortunate effect of sexualizing them and even inducing seductive mannerisms in preteen girls”? Excuse me? Since when did Judith Halberstam join Focus on the Family? I didn’t know that anti-sex moralizing was part and parcel of queer theory these days.

Excessive conventional femininity has a number of undesirable characteristics, but I would not count “inducing seductive mannerisms in preteen girls” as one of them. Not only do I disagree that preteen sexuality is undesirable, I also don’t believe it to be characteristic of conventional femininity. If anything, the history of conventional femininity (and by conventional femininity I mean a normative bourgeois white femininity) has associated sexuality with restraint and passivity, rather than sexual subjectivity. And today, we’re still vilifying women who don’t ascribe to the cult of true womanhood. The coverage of the Duke rape case is just one example of society’s intolerance for women who dare to assert their sexuality. In attempting to answer the question of “whether the woman was in fact raped” her entire history of sexual behavior is put on trial. And when it comes to the word of a black dancer/escort against the word of three white lacrosse players, we can all guess how this will play out. Because within the confines of conventional femininity, the virtue of a woman who sells her sexuality (especially one who is poor and black) is always already compromised.

Excessive conventional femininity is indeed dangerous – to those who violate its norms as well as those who follow them. But I would not count sexuality, preteen or otherwise, among things to be avoided. If anything is unfortunate about the sexualization of adolescent girls, it is that girls are rarely invited to develop assertive, desiring sexualities. It seems to me that the hype about preteen sexuality is generally led by parents who are concerned about their daughters’ failure to adhere to the rules of conventional femininity. Last time I checked, girls were still expected to resist boys’ sexual advances. Despite the rhetoric, the panic about teen sex isn’t a panic about the objectification of girls – it’s a panic about girls asserting their sexual desire.

And while we’re on the topic of unfortunate sexualization, what disturbs me is the culture of sexual aggression and rape (lacrosse at Duke, for instance…) that one could attribute to something called “excessive conventional masculinity.” I think Judith and I could agree that both conventional femininity and conventional masculinity could be considered hazardous to one’s health, and a more interesting project would be to consider, as she does, alternative expressions of gender and sexuality.