Opengender

Mulvey's (1981) analysis of the significance of the western tomboy was based on structural and post-structural analyses of the western (Kitses, 1969; Cawelti, 1971; Wright, 1975), as well as on Freudian and Lacanian psychoanalytic perspectives used in theories of film spectatorship (Stam, 1992 : 146-1582). The questions of female protagonism and spectatorship were addressed as an afterthought to Mulvey's seminal (1975) essay in which she had argued that the relay of the gaze set up by Hollywood's IMR enforces the masculinisation of any

The western genre has been viewed by literary historians (Fiedler, 1949; Smith, 1950) as the popular cultural form in and through which America moulded and popularised its imperialistic myth of 'white destiny.' This myth, to which white Americans looked to justify European expansion and the expropriation of native Americans, was based on concepts of linear progress and a Darwinian hierarchy. The mythology of the frontier set the tone of American popular democracy (Fiedler, 1949; Smith, 1950; see also Cawelti, 1971; Wright, 1975;

It seems obvious that female-addressed genres such as melodrama would feature (feminised) female protagonists, but the presence of protagonistic, crossdressed, female, figures might seem quite unexpected in action genres which are most popular with men. Although Hollywood barely kept box-office records at the time, it can be deduced by the number of films made as well as by the limited audience research available (Buscombe, 1991 : 36) that the western genre was one of the most popular genres with young males in

In the period following World War II, an expansion in publishing diversified popular literature considerably and even produced a specifically lesbian form (Uszkurat, 1993: 26-7). Although often rejected by more literary and academic lesbians, who focused rather on 'high' literature, lesbian 'pulp' novels such as Anne Bannon's Beebo Brinker series remained popular with lesbians in the new urban communities and were regularly reviewed in The Ladder (27). Lesbians identified with Anne Bannon's butch protagonist and accepted such novels as part of lesbian reality

As a result of the medicalisation process, lesbianism had been available as an articulable identification prior to the 1940s but conditions had not existed for the formation of substantial lesbian communities. Faderman saw the context of the two World Wars, and especially the aftermath of World War II, as crucially productive in the formation of visible, lesbian, urban-subcultures:

In spite of the sexologists' efforts, the boundaries of femininity continued to expand in the early part of this century. As part of the freedoms associated with the 'New Woman,' Edwardian girls began to be permitted to take part in sport and athletics. Given the association of utilitarian clothing with (lesbian) sexual pathology, however, they were expected to wear 'normal,' feminine clothing with its heavy garments, restrictive stays, and suspenders. Hence, although genteel girls participated in athletic activities in the pages of middle-class

The modern association of female-to-male crossdressing with lesbianism is sufficiently ubiquitous in western culture to be received as a necessary one. The connection is, however, of relatively recent date. The significance of the 'maiden' in male clothing across a range of cultures and time-frames is far too extensive even to summarise here. However, prior to the 19th Century in Europe, female-to-male crossdressing seems rather to have been associated with sexual laxity and female rebellion than with lesbianism or, indeed, with any

A structural disposition for the gaze to be masculinised within the heterosexual ordering of visual space in cinema has formed a central problematic for feminist film theory. At the same time, 'masculinisation,' 'mannishness,' or 'butch' identifications have been a perennial focus of lesbian politics. Of course, both problematics derive from the effective 'masculinisation' of all representations of control, authority or any kind of pro-activity in the discursive production of heterosexual gender. More recently, in the

I have referred my own assumptions and conceptualisations of lesbian reading strategies to the context of a more general body of American, European, and British lesbian political debates, histories, literatures, and media through which key struggles over lesbian identity, sexuality, and representation have been articulated. In dealing with the relevance of specific film-texts to lesbian sub-cultures, I have referred to lesbian and gay overviews of popular cinema in which particular popular films are mentioned again and again

Without some kind of extra-textual or inter-textual contextualisation it is difficult to avoid not only the negative positioning of the lesbian spectator by heterosexualising feminist accounts of the scopic relay; but also the occlusion of the specificities of lesbian oppositional reading practices themselves. Black feminists working within a film-studies paradigm (who had also been marginalised by the dualistic construct of gender in film-theory) seemed to be moving in similar directions. Bobo (1988), for example, cited black women's