ABSTRACT
Discourses on female masculinity were, in Swedish popular media in the 1920s, characterized by paradox: On the one hand, a young women’s masculine looks were configured as playful and modern more than threatening or “queer,” but at the same time, critics also expressed concerns with the fate of femininity and the institution of marriage in a world of challenged or even dissolved gender boundaries. This chapter explores a range of voices from the 1920s that were concerned not only with the boundaries of women’s gender expressions, but also with the boundaries of their sexuality. The examined Swedish source materials include texts written by cultural critics worried about modern decadence, by medical experts explaining the science of sexuality, and by feminists who struggled to distance themselves from accusations of “mannishness.” Even though female masculinity appeared in all of these discourses as a source of anxiety or concern, the potential “queerness” of the masculine woman remained at the same time highly ambiguous. Nevertheless, by the end of the 1920s, a consolidating ideal of heteronormative femininity, formulated within an ideological vision of a Swedish “people’s home,” increasingly positioned the masculine woman as different—or even queer.
