Female Masculinity

by J. Jack Halberstam

The image of the black or Latina butch may all too easily resonate with racial stereotyping in which white forms of femininity occupy a cultural norm and nonwhite femininities are measured as excessive or inadequate in relation to that norm; however, the butch of color may also be an image with the power to defamiliarize white masculinity and make visible a potent fusion of alternative masculinity and alternative sexuality. Because black female sexuality, in particular, has historically been measured through and against a fantasy of white womanhood, this history should warn us to be careful in discussions of black female masculinities; conversely, because white manhood has been identified as an unmarked location of power and privilege, black or Latina female masculinity may be a site within which dominant modes of power can be resignified with subversive and even potentially revolutionary results.15