If Butler is arguing against the use of categories, taxonomies and terms, of which "lesbian" is one, is she not arguing against the use of "butch," a term Halberstam favors to describe her own desires and beliefs, as well? By offering "butch" as a new category of same-sex desire, Halberstam stereotypes (literally, fixes) a fluid, complex set of beliefs and practices. Indeed, how long will it be before "butch," like "sex," is "taken charge of, tracked down, as it were, by a discourse that aim[s] to allow it no obscurity, no respite?" (Note 2.) By attributing a label to a lifestyle, by making butchness "visible," Halberstam creates a new target for gender oppression and subjugation.

This discussion brings to mind a point raised earlier, which is, why must we discuss female masculinity in the first place? And for that matter, why must it be limited to only those with homosexual desire? Why are "masculine heterosexual women" (Halberstam's term) "not within the scope of this book" (57)? Would not the cover of her book, with its fiercely beautiful "Raging Bull," be more compelling and less "obvious" if the title next read simply, Masculinity? Indeed, by limiting her discussion of masculinity to only those (women) who desire women, it is difficult for this reader to conceive of a female masculinity that is anything but "an imitation of maleness."

Likewise, Halberstam's second claim, that female masculinity is not "a pathological sign of misidentification and maladjustment" (9), receives little support in Chapter Four (Lesbian Masculinity: Even Stone Butches Get the Blues), where she describes the sexual relationships and practices of stone butches—those who gain sexual pleasure from giving, not receiving:

Because we tend to type nonconformist genders as pathology, it is easy to understand how the stone butch can be read simply as a sign of sexual dysfunction and gender dysphoria; indeed, stone butch does signify both dysfunction and dysphoria, but as I have claimed here, dysfunction and dysphoria actually become part and parcel of this complicated and fully actualized sexual identify (139).

Who says that stone butchness is dysfunctional and dysphoric? By making this comment, Halberstam falls prey to existing comparisons between the sexual practices of stone butches and the normative practices between males and females, and between non-stone butch females, when in fact no comparison should be made at all. What is normal and healthy is purely relative between groups.

Halberstam calls repeatedly for new definitions of gender, and yet one might ask why such definitions are necessary in the first place. Although the examples she offers do evidence that there are many types of (female) masculinity, many other examples of (female) masculinity, which would have contributed an even greater understanding to the concept and its acceptance in Euro-American culture, were omitted. For example, at one point Halberstam suggests that gender identification should be a rite of passage, that "people could come out as a gender in the way they come out as a sexuality" (27). What she fails to mention, however, is that this is precisely the case in many societies. Indeed, as Butler herself has noted, sociological texts are filled with accounts of third and fourth genders, and the social initiation processes required to achieve them.  (Note 3.)  And while I agree with Halberstam's criticism of social science's inability (among other things) "to squeeze truth from raw data" (10), I believe nonetheless that a judicious mention (or at least an acknowledgment in the footnotes) of some of the existing research on gender practices among, for example, some Native Americans (Lang 1998, Roscoe 1991, Williams 1986), East Europeans (Young, 2000), Melanesians (Lutkehaus and Roscoe, 1995) and Africans (Babatunde 1998), would have been not only enlightening but also useful for an acceptance of gender multiplicity in Euro-American society.

Next >>>