Summary

Halberstam’s final chapter acts as a consolidation of the embodiments and tribulations of masculine women. He speaks of female adolescence as “an expulsion of preteen female masculinity” and experienced it himself as “the shrinking of my world” (268, 267). Halberstam laments the general lack of interest in or outright hostility directed towards female masculinity, and notes that this has influenced even the language available to use to talk about female masculinity.

Halberstam then moves into a discussion of female boxers, explicitly noting the quickness of many boxers to assert that boxing in no way diminishes their femininity. He expresses concern that this assertion contains a “subtle level of homophobia”: the presumption being that “masculinity coupled with active female strength…must add up to lesbianism” (271). Boxing, Halberstam notes, “has become the arena for the most public contests over the meaning of masculinity...