Male Femininities

Description

Innovative essays that explore how men perform femininity and what femininity looks like without women What counts as “male femininity”? Is it simply men behaving in effeminate ways or is it the absence of masculinity? Male Femininities presents a nuanced, critical collection of essays that highlight the extent to which male femininities are neither an imitation of femaleness nor an emptying of masculinity. These innovative essays focus on both gay and straight men, and transmasculine and genderqueer people in their construction and performance of femininity, thereby revealing the possibilities that open up when we critically examine femininity without women. Male Femininities asks, What does femininity look like for men? The contributors―highly regarded scholars and rising stars―cover a range of topics, including drag queens, cosmetic enhancements, trans fertility, and gender-non-conforming childhoods. Male Femininities illuminates what happens when we decouple femininity from female bodies and how even the smallest cracks and fissures in the normative order can disrupt, challenge, and in some cases reaffirm our existing sex-gender regime. This volume pluralizes the concept of male femininities and leads readers through an exploration of how gender, sex, and sexuality are manifested in the United States today. Contents Introduction: Defining and Deconstructing Male Femininities Part 1. Historicizing Male Femininities 1. Toward a Typology and Genealogy of Effeminacies 2. The Effeminist Manifesto 3. Three Contemplations on “The Effeminist Manifesto” Part 2. Configuring Male Femininities 4. Pushing (Gender) Hard on the Bike: Navigating Normativities as a Queer Spin Instructor 5. The Small ts and the Gender Binary Shake-up: The Girl in the Boy and the Boy in the Girl 6. Trapped in the Glass Closet: Feminine Straight Men and the Politics of Coming Out 7. Two-Spirit, Not Trans: Joshua Whitehead’s Erotic Sovereignty Part 3. Embodying Male Femininities 8. Dear Masculinity 9. An Interview with Julia Serano 10. Unexpected Breasts, Unexpected Pleasures: Exploring Cisgender Men’s Breast Development and Bra Wearing 11. Brotox and the Retreat from Male Femininity 12. Pregnant Men and Their Reconfigurations of Pregnancy Part 4. Performing Male Femininities 13. Welcome to the Stage: Power, Practice, and the Performance of Drag Queening 14. “In My Dad’s Gun Room, There’s an 8×10 Picture of Me in Drag”: Drag and Respect in the Deep South 15. The Fierce World of Gay Asian Drag 16. “The Reason You Can Suck a Dick Is Because Some Fem Once Got Beaten Up, Right?” A Case Study of Gender, Race, and Sexuality for Latinx Queer Men 17. Radical Cheerbois: Genderqueer Bodies Performing Queer Femininity Part 5. Male Femininities and Intimacies 18. Unloved 19. Assume the Position: Bottom-Shaming among Black Gay Men 20. Are Polyamorous Men Embodying Male Femininity? 21. Male Femininity as Spirituality among Radical Faeries Part 6. Male Femininities and Institutions 22. Funeral Rights 23. When Our Boys Wished to Be Girls: A Retrospective Look at Parenting Gender-Nonconforming Young Boys 24. Negotiating Masculinity in the Fire Service: Accessing Brotherhood or Subverting Gender Norms 25. Resisting Femininity in Responsible Fathering: Men and the Gendering of Care in US Fatherhood Policy Conclusion: Male Femininities and Dismantling the Binaries and Boundaries of Gender Acknowledgments About the Contributors About the Editors Index