It’s always the dudes that are insecure in their masculinity who are so damned worried about policing the level of femininity in women.

… or otherwise it’s the women who enjoy that they may benefit from putting down others for not coming up to par femininity-wise.

Stereotype sure, but no less true.

yes, even if they’re stereotypes, they illuminate the basic mechanism at work here: these kinds of “jokes” are all about people choosing to perpetuate a gender dynamic that’s fucked up. even when they’re aware it’s fucked up, people collude with it all the time. and if we ever wonder how that happens, this, right here, is an example.

I used the word in scare quotes because femininity as it is applied to immutable physical characteristics isn’t real; it’s not even a meaningful cultural construct the way silks and velvets and the color pink can be said to be feminine–when people talk about naturally occurring bodies and hair types being feminine, rather than female, all they’re doing is extending or withdrawing the patronizing hand of patriarchal approval. It’s only about power, not aesthetics, whatever they claim. So I sometimes feel like stressing how white women aren’t any more feminine than anybody else lends a false legitimacy to the very concept of the physical feminine, which I do not like to do. But I nevertheless see that you are right.

We are spending our time telling people they don’t conform well enough to society’s standards of gender presentation. This is, of course, a totally worthwhile endeavor for someone committed to gender justice.

It sure is funny when a person tries to pretend to be something they’re not!

You know, because Ann Coulter is really a MAN but is pathetically trying to look female.

What does this say about how we really think of transfolk? What are you “really”? Do we really support your right to self-determination if we’re busy using your image as a weapon against people we find distasteful?

Meanwhile, Michelle Obama has as classic an hourglass shape as a woman can have, a pretty face, dresses in tailored skirts and dresses much of the time, and has long, salon-treated “feminine” hair. Even inasmuch as traditional femininity is defined by white stylistic norms, she even lives up to those when she chooses.

Okay I get where you were going with this but even in quotation marks the “feminine hair” routine is problematic. Black hair that is untreated is just as feminine and desirable; it is whiteness that has chosen to see difference as less than.