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The philosopher Wittgenstein claimed that there are some
categories of things, membership of which does not require any
particular property. His example was the category 'games'. Many
things fall into the category of games but there isn't a feature
common to all of them; they don't all require balls, they aren't
all competitive, they don't all involve teams etc… However, he
claimed because of certain overlapping characteristics we know well
enough what we should define as a game. For example, football,
unlike tennis involves teams but they are both played with balls.
Tug of war is not played with a ball but involves teams. He
called this mapping of characteristics a 'family
resemblance'.
This idea of a family resemblance seems to be at work when we make
inferences from certain character traits to attributions of male or
femaleness. Despairingly often you hear from both heterosexuals and
queer women their confusion regarding lesbians either acting or
looking 'like men' or dating women who act or look 'like men'. The
assumption being, that as having certain 'game-like'
characteristics appropriates things to the game-category; having
certain masculine properties aligns you with the
man-category.
Of course it depends on the definition of 'maleness' the
proponents of such statements are working with, which is
unfortunately a failure to differentiate between the biological
factors that determine 'man' and the social construction that
created 'masculinity'.
Historically, femininity has been associated with vanity,
submission and domesticity, where as transcendence and strength
were considered masculine; women were definitively the former and
men the latter. Whilst femininity and masculinity don't have such
polarised connotations these days, suggesting certain traits have
implications of one sex or another compounds the ridiculous idea
that we should be characteristically determined by what's inbetween
our legs. One of the things feminists and philosophers have fought
against is the idea of an essential female essence, that is, that
some characteristics are innately female whilst others are
intrinsically male.
Suggesting certain traits equate to ´maleness´ is not only
incredibly ignorant and disparaging towards butch women but does
womankind a great disservice in general. To illustrate the problem
of associations between sex and behaviour, take traditional
'femininity'. For a long time it was associated with, amongst
other things, passivity, making it as one feminist pointed out,
impossible to be both a successful woman and a successful human
being because to aim at one was to miss the
other.
The defining feature of both lesbianism and bisexuality is an
attraction to women, not an attraction to femininity. In dating a
masculine woman you are dating a woman. A butch woman does not look
like a man; she looks like a butch woman. Indignant lesbians who
claim they date feminine women because they're attracted to 'er,
you know, women' would rightly be affronted by the suggestion that
they date an effeminate man. Why? Because they are attracted to
women and whilst they might like their women feminine, femininity
isn't the primary draw. There is nothing even slightly
contradictory about a lesbian being attracted to masculinity;
butchness does no more make you a man than does a long stride make
you a horse.
So as I try and work out the universal property of ´game´, we
should happily conclude that masculinity is as appropriate for a
man or a woman; or like our games analogy, balls are definitely not
necessary.
