Female Masculinity and Phallic Women— Unruly Concepts

Abstract

Female Masculinity and Phallic Women— UnrulyConcepts JudithKeflanGardiner 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 FeministStudies38, no. 3 (Fall 2012). © 2012 by Feminist Studies, Inc. 597 598 JudithKegan Gardiner his psychoanalytic concepts. Next I turn to philosopher Judith But ler's essay "The Lesbian Phallus and the Morphological Imaginary" in her 1993 book, Bodies thatMatterJAs one of the most influential pio neers of queer theory, Butler revised Lacanian psychoanalysis; in turn, her work inspired cultural studies scholar Judith (Jack)4 Halber stam, whose 1998 book FemaleMasculinitydepicts types of women who exemplify Butler's abstract ideas, thereby popularizing the concept of "female masculinity" as a possible lifestyle for women and especially butch lesbians.5 Then I briefly discuss several postmillennial soci ological studies that apparently mark a progressive trajectory from pathologizing nonnormative gender to liberatory gender self-defini tion. However, broadening this inquiry troubles narratives of progress and requires new theoretical paradigms. A contrast between Gover nor Palin and "chicks with dicks"—a genre of transnational transsex ual pornography—reveals a cultural polarization between "phallic power" and abjected penis-for-pleasure. Taken as a whole, this narra tive illustrates the instability, even the incoherence, of the concept of female masculinity and its role in propping, rather than undermin ing, masculinity altogether. In all these examples, I'm interested in the theories that address gender variation, particularly the way that female masculinity still rests on binary conceptions of power that connote maleness and also on psychoanalytic assumptions. I note the divergent explanatory frameworks for gender nonconformity applied in these cases and their varied cultural contexts. Such theories are migratory, appear ing across conceptual, political, and geographical borders. For Stoller in the 1970s, Freudian psychoanalysis remains the master discourse at a prosperous time in LTnited States history when polarized gender roles seem in retreat and new social movements arise seeking wom en's liberation, civil rights for minorities, and greater equality for les bians and gay men. Twenty years later, Butler speaks from within the academic disciplines of philosophy and gender studies in an era of rel ative social quiescence characterized by a popular sense of "mission accomplished" with regard to women's liberation. A pioneer of queer theory, she critiques older radical feminisms while retaining nuanced allegiances to psychoanalysis and poststructuralism. Following Butler, Halberstam firmly establishes female masculinity on the agenda of trans and queer studies, and her/his taxonomies become JudithKegan Gardiner 599 widely accepted. However, female masculinity is in an asymmetrical alliance with the field of masculinity studies, which is chiefly devoted to analyzing masculinity in men, often through object relations the ories such as those of Nancy Chodorow.6 One paradox of female masculinity discourses is that instead of being considered derivative, female masculinity may be celebrated as superior to masculinity in men. In today's contexts, rapidly changing popular culture, medical advances, and...