Expression of masculinity or femininity can drastically impact the way that women are perceived and treated. This is an especially pertinent issue for lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender, and queer (LGBTQ) women, for whom gender expression can be very tricky because of rigid expectations of how masculine or feminine they should be. Depending on how these women are marginalized, they may feel pressured to present as more feminine or masculine than they really feel comfortable. Stereotypes often leave femme lesbian and bisexual women feeling invisible or invalidated in their identities, while gender nonconformity or butch identity puts many women, especially transgender women, at tremendous risk of violence and uncomfortable scrutiny in their
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Society overwhelmingly treats the masculinity of most cisgender men as authentic while subordinating the masculinities of others. He discusses the gender binary and what he refers to as “the bathroom problem,” where those who do not conform to the gender they were assigned at birth find themselves in deeply uncomfortable and even dangerous situations when entering areas which are highly gender-policed, such as public bathrooms. When in such situations, gender nonconforming individuals feel pressured to “pass,” for their own safety and comfort and to not upset or provoke others, as the binary gender of the environment they are in. Halberstam points out that, while plenty of progress has been made in gender theory, gender binarism is still an obstacle for many individuals who do not fit the binary. Hardly anyone fits into the strict categories of “male” and “female,” and so this binarism continues by allowing for feminine men and masculine …show more content…
Because she also uses words such as “confidence” and “independence” to describe butch women, reinforcing the idea of attraction to one’s opposite does enforce an unintended negative attitude toward femme women. This is distinct with Serano’s belief that “we must move away from pretending that women and men are opposite sexes” because the traits attributed to women are typically negative in comparison to those attributed to men (550). Halberstam, too, does not treat masculinity and femininity as strictly polar opposites, but as a spectrum where almost everyone is accepted to be somewhere
Society overwhelmingly treats the masculinity of most cisgender men as authentic while subordinating the masculinities of others. He discusses the gender binary and what he refers to as “the bathroom problem,” where those who do not conform to the gender they were assigned at birth find themselves in deeply uncomfortable and even dangerous situations when entering areas which are highly gender-policed, such as public bathrooms. When in such situations, gender nonconforming individuals feel pressured to “pass,” for their own safety and comfort and to not upset or provoke others, as the binary gender of the environment they are in. Halberstam points out that, while plenty of progress has been made in gender theory, gender binarism is still an obstacle for many individuals who do not fit the binary. Hardly anyone fits into the strict categories of “male” and “female,” and so this binarism continues by allowing for feminine men and masculine …show more content…
Because she also uses words such as “confidence” and “independence” to describe butch women, reinforcing the idea of attraction to one’s opposite does enforce an unintended negative attitude toward femme women. This is distinct with Serano’s belief that “we must move away from pretending that women and men are opposite sexes” because the traits attributed to women are typically negative in comparison to those attributed to men (550). Halberstam, too, does not treat masculinity and femininity as strictly polar opposites, but as a spectrum where almost everyone is accepted to be somewhere