The "P" Word: Trans Men, Stone Butches and the Politics of Penetration

Authors

  • Bobby Noble York University, is the author of Sons of the Movement: FTMs Risking Incoherence in a Post-Queer Cultural Landscape; the also recently published monograph Masculinities Without Men?, listed as a Choice Outstanding Title, 2004; and co-editor of The Drag King Anthology, a 2004 Lambda Literary Finalist.

Abstract

The practice of sexual penetration has long been a site of contestation in butch-femme, queer and, more recently, female to male transsexual public cultures. Tracking representations of penetration in several documentaries about female and transsexual masculinities, this paper suggests that not only does penetration mark ambivalent spaces of sexual and gender incoherence, it also signals a resistance to the heteronormative potencies of shame. Résumé La pratique de la pénétration sexuelle depuis longtemps fût un sujet de contestation dans les cultures lesbiennes, gays et plus récemment dans les cultures publiques de transsexuels de femme à homme. En retraçant les représentations de la pénétration dans plusieurs documentaires sur les masculinités des femmes et des transsexuelles. Cet article suggère que non seulement la pénétration marque des espaces ambivalents de l'incohérence sexuelle et des genres, elle signale une résistance aux forces de la honte hétérosexuelle normative.

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Published

2007-09-09

Issue

Vol. 31 No. 2 (2007): "Sexy Feminisms"

Section

Original Research

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