Structure

Female Masculinity is broken into eight chapters, including the introduction. Each chapter focuses on a different historical or contemporary media conception of perception of female masculinity. The introduction and first chapter serves to introduce the basics of female masculinity and why Halberstam believes a book such as Female Masculinity needs to be written, specifically because of the ongoing lack of theoretical analysis and cultural interest in alternative masculinities.

The second and third chapters present a timeline of female masculinity from early Victorian female husbands and tribades to the inverts of the early- to mid-20th century. These chapters give the reader a historical basis from which to analyze female masculinity, with a specific emphasis on how modern notions of lesbianism cannot be directly applied to the past.

In Chapters 4 and 5, Halberstam moves towards defining specific masculine female identities: that of the stone butch, the transgender butch, and...