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Butch Women Summary

Decent Essays

Throughout her article, Halberstam implicitly presents “butch” women as sharing a very specific characteristic: they are all cisgender women. In writing that butch women may harbour gender dysphoria, including a desire to be male (150), Halberstam ignores the reality that some butch women—namely, transgender butch women—are extremely dissociated with the desire to be male. It is highly likely that Halberstam did not even consider the existence of transgender butch women. If she had, it seems unlikely that she would have used the term “transgender butch” for anyone other than transgender butch women; the terminology is confusing. By erasing the experiences of transgender butch women (that is, butch lesbians who are transgender women), Halberstam …show more content…

The most obvious example is the differentiation of “transsexual” and “transgender.” In the article, “transsexual” is used to refer to someone who has specifically had treatment to physically change their body to match their gender identity; “transgender” is someone whose gender identity does not match the gender they were assigned at birth, regardless of whether they have made physical gender-related changes to their body (155). Today, the term “transsexual” is almost obsolete. Interestingly, however, Halberstam briefly presents conflict between “transsexuals” and “transgenders” that is mirrored somewhat today in informal conflicts between “truscum” and “transtrenders/tucutes” (154-155). In today’s transgender communities, people called “truscum” (generally by other people) feel that people they call “transtrenders” or “tucutes” are not truly transgender; they feel these people are merely pretending to be transgender for the sake of attention. On the other hand, those called “transtrenders” or “tucutes” (generally by other people) feel attacked and policed by “truscum” and insist that they are transgender regardless of whether they meet the standards set by truscum. Halberstam cites some identity politics (154-155) that are reminiscent of this, which suggests that even as terms change, identity policing remains a consistent issue in transgender

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