TOMBOYS, DRAG KINGS, & WARRIOR WOMEN: Part 1

TOMBOYS,  DRAG KINGS, & WARRIOR WOMEN

There is a long line of female characters that have made their mark on popular culture by refusing to be "feminine" or to take on the typically confining roles that have been given to women in mainstream media. In Female Masculinity (1998),  J. Halberstam describes the term female masculinity as “masculinities without men” in a project that sought to highlight and honor masculine women and individuals who are not male but are masculine. Halberstam also analyzed several examples of masculine women or individuals from popular films and novels. In Sons of the Movement: FtMs Risking Incoherence on a Post-Queer Cultural Landscape (2006) Bobby Noble disagreed with the assertion that there are "masculinities without men" because female masculinity is actually in conversation with other masculinities which are more layered in terms of intersections of identity than simply female/male.

MASCULINITY CONTINUUMS

In Indigenous Men and Masculinities (2015) Lisa Tatonetti also responds to Halberstam’s work: “I found connections and disjunctions-moments in which the depictions of female masculinity in Native literatures both align with and exceed Halberstam's theory (p. 131).”  Tatonetti goes on to write: “If Halberstam provides a jumping-off point for discussions of female masculinity, he does not offer the final word. Moreover, I contend that in the context of Indigenous literatures, re-seeing dominant ideologies of masculinity necessitates a recognition of what Halberstam's theory, as useful as it is, omits: female masculinities signify differently in First Nations and American Indian cultures (p. 131).”  

In Persistence: All Ways Butch and Femme (2011) B. Cole writes: “Unlike white female masculinity, female masculinity for womyn of colour is based on sites of power and systemic oppression through masculinities of colour. The assumption that they can be resignified with equal subversive and revolutionary actions against white manhood is false. The ability to access masculinity pivots upon the ways in which gender intersects with race, and these gaps have been filled with many new ways of naming ourselves (p. 133).”

In  films such as West Side Story (1961), Conan the Destroyer (1984), Terminator 2: Judgment Day (1991), Set It Off (1996), Run Lola Run (1998), Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon (2000), Bend It Like Beckham (2002), Saving Face (2005), Spider Lilies (2007), and  Hanna (2011) viewers encounter sympathetic, intelligent, and strong female protagonists who identify with the masculinities they are in proximity to (to varying degrees) and fashion themselves in unique ways. 

Grace Jones's Zula, is the most interesting character in Conan the Destroyer (1984) . Zula's advice to Olivia D'Abo's princess character about how to attract men is : "Grab him! And take him, like that!" Jones holds her own with Arnold Schwarzenegger by being more dynamic and humorous than him. She also became an international queer icon who performed in gay nightclubs long before that was fashionable or even accepted. In North America, Jones was often insulted and mocked by the mainstream media. This was to be expected of a culture that is heteropatriarchal, racist, and aggressively capitalist. Jones is unlike other action heroines of colour such as Pam Grier and Tamara Dobson, because she is aligned with queerness, not opposed to it as Grier and Dobson's characters were in their 70s action films, which featured homophobic epithets and lesbiphobic plots. However, I think Grier deserves credit for her great work on The L Word and Dobson had an interesting bond with her female partner, Tanny in Cleopatra Jones and The Casino of Gold (1975). 

Grace Jones paved the way for Queen Latifah's Cleo in Set It Off (1996). Queen Latifah plays a butch lesbian whose friends resort to robbing banks in order to deal with circumstances beyond their control brought about by racism, sexism, and classism in America. Cleo fashions herself after the local gangsters and is more than a match for them. Cleo is tough and tender and we can see this in the way she takes care of her friends and her femme girlfriend, Ursula. 

Lola and Sarah Connor are actually motivated to take action by love and both characters prove that being masculine does not mean that you have to be cold and vicious. The fierce Jen Yu of Crouching Tiger becomes a better person through romantic love with, Lo.  In the next part of this discussion, I will analyze the character development of masculine heroines in Bend It Like Beckham (2002), Saving Face (2005), and Spider Lilies (2007). Following that I'll analyze some popular and obscure masculine female cartoon characters. To be continued...


REFERENCES

Cole, B. (2011). Masculine of Centre, Seeks Her Refined Femme. In Persistence: All Ways Butch and Femme (pp. 127-136). Arsenal Pulp Press.

Halberstam, J. (1998). Female Masculinity. Durham And London: Duke University Press.

Noble, B.J. (2006). Introduction & Sons of the (Feminist) Movement: Tranny Fags, Lesbian Men, and other Post-Queer Paradoxes. In Sons of the Movement: FtMs Risking Incoherence on a Post-Queer Cultural Landscape (pp. 19-31). Women’s Press, Toronto, ON.

Tatonetti, L. (2015). “Tales of Burning Love”: Female Masculinity in Contemporary Native Literature. In In Anderson, K. & Innes, R. A. (Eds.) Indigenous Men and Masculinities. (pp. 130-145). University of Manitoba Press, Winnipeg, MB.