Masculinity of a Different Kind?

Back in 2012, I wrote a post called "Why Aren't all Butches Trans?"  It continues to get comments, and a couple days ago, a reader asked a question that I thought deserved a separate blog entry.  

In the post, I write, "A butch woman's masculinity is not different in degree from that of a butch man or FTM; it is different in kind."  In response, a reader wrote: That is a very helpful statement, but I think "kind" needs to be expanded upon. Can you say how you might define "kind"? Would it be something like the difference between a different breed of animal eg. a cocker spaniel or labrador? Or the difference between a different species of animal eg. dog or cat? Or something else?

It's a good question!  Here's what I mean by "kind."

Masculinity exists as a thing--a social construct we can understand and identify in the abstract.  Even when it's not attached to a particular person, we have a social understanding of certain things as masculine. If you showed a random person a lacy pink tank top and a blue flannel shirt and asked, "Which one is more masculine?" most people would point to the flannel shirt, even if neither shirt is being worn by anyone. (Mind you, I'm not saying that there IS, in any normative or "real" sense, such a thing as masculinity or femininity--merely that these are widely-understood social ideas.)

Still with me?  Okay, let's take a concrete example: water.  Even if we don't know what container the water is occupying, we understand what "water" is, right? Now consider a river; consider a lake.  Rivers and lakes are containers for water, but the water has a different "feel" in each one. We wouldn't argue that one of those is the "real" container, or that one is more "watery" than the other. Nor would we think it was weird if someone said that they preferred rivers to lakes, or vice versa. We get that they're different forms of water.

So, too, with masculinity. A trans man and a butch woman might both contain masculinity, just like a river and a lake might both contain water. They share a common characteristic, but because of who they are, they each take on an inherently different form. 

To take the analogy a little further, there are all kinds of lakes and rivers. There are lagoons, ponds, streams, reservoirs, tributaries. And there are bodies of water that--just like bodies of people--defy or combine or challenge or embrace the conventional definitions.