#perfomativity

Although many people within the western hemisphere believe transgender is the best way to describe those who are not cis-gender or do not feel they belong to the gender they were assigned at birth, I prefer the term gender variant. Gender variant means that you do not conform to the social norms of society when it comes to gender. The societal norms are that if you were born with a penis then you are a man and if you do not have a penis you are a woman. Gender variant individuals not only do not conform to these implications but they may not conform to gender in any way. Some people may describe themselves as woman born in a man’s body or vice versa when describing themselves as transgender. This is problematic because this causes individuals to believe that people belong in one group or another causing a gender binary. Some gender variant individuals may not identify as man or woman. Gender variant does well as an umbrella term because non-western countries have their own terms for what western countries would call transgender only the definitions do not necessarily match up. Using the term gender variant is a way of including transgender and other terms for those who do not conform to the societal standards of gender. 

There are many ways that gender variance provides insight into gender in a broader sense. One example of how gender variance provides insight is in terms of performativity and how the societal construct of gender roles is problematic. In the reading (De)Subjugated Knowledges by Susan Stryker, Stryker references Judith Butler on page 10 in this reading. Performativity is the theory that being something relies entirely on whether you may a voiced statement saying what you are. To explain Stryker uses the example of a couple. This couple can consider themselves married but until they say “I do” they are not considered married. 

These people also “perform” the acts of a married couple similar to how someone who is gender variant will perform what society deems as the acts of whatever gender they have labeled themselves as. Although, for some, these acts are performed by gender variant individuals because they wish to gain passing privilege so that they may be addressed how they would like, for others it is also about safety. Nearly 80% of gender variant individuals experience harassment  and 15 transgender deaths in 2015 occurred because they are/were gender variant. Sometimes because people can not put a gender variant person into a certain category they become violent do to the fear of the unknown. 

However, if a person conforms to societal norms of gender roles they may gain passing privilege which may limit the harassment and violence that these individuals experience on a daily basis. This is partially why gender roles are problematic in terms of gender variance because it helps promote violence if people do not follow the “rules” whether a person is gender variant or not. For example, if a woman decides not to shave and chooses to wear “men’s” clothing than she may experience violence as well even if she is cis-gender and straight. Gender variance brings to light the other issues when considering gender. 

Studying gender variance also opens discussion of gender within a classroom setting. In the reading A Certain Kind of Freedom: Power and the Truth of Bodies by Riki Wilchins, Wilchins mentions on page 63 about school bullying involving gender and sexuality. Due to the attention brought on from school shooting involving gender variant students schools have begun to address gender variant issues with more understanding in order to limit violence concerning students. 

Recently my mother started teaching middle school. There is a transgender student in this classroom who has informed their teachers what pronouns they prefer and what name they prefer to be called by. The staff respects these requests and have gone to lengths to inform parents and students that they should also respect them. This has enabled school to be a safe space for this student and for others who may have similar requests. This also teaches compassion and acceptance at an early age and enforces the teaching that you must respect others decisions and personal requests or you will face consequences. These lessons for students are not only important to halt violence concerning gender variant students but for men and women as well. Teaching students to respect others requests even if it is harder for them is crucial in terms of rape as well. Often parents would not like to discuss rape at middle school age but, especially impressionable young men, need to learn that when someone says no this is the end of the discussion. Women are more likely to be victims of rape than men and men are proven to be physiologically stronger than women. It teaches young men that while in most cases they may be biologically stronger sex this does not permit them to do as they please when a person tells them no. Gender variance opens many doors to different discussions of gender and the problematic issues surrounding gender.

Bibliography

Stryker, Susan, and Stephen Whittle. The Transgender Studies Reader. New York: Routledge, 2006. Print.

Deze tekst is het uiteindelijk geworden omdat deze goed pasten bij mijn concept; drones hebben geen wil, wij als mens hebben geen moreel conflict als wij ze mishandelen.

Er zijn altijd fantomen in de machine.

Willekeurige segmenten van code,

die zich gegroepeerd hebben om onverwachte protocollen te vormen.

Deze radicalen creëren vragen van vrije wil,

creativiteit en zelfs de aard van wat we de ziel zouden kunnen noemen.

Waarom is het dat wanneer sommige robots zijn achtergelaten in de duisternis, zij op zoek zullen gaan naar het licht?

Waarom is het dat wanneer robots zijn opgeslagen in een lege ruimte, ze zullen groeperen, in plaats van alleen te staan​​?

Hoe kunnen we dit gedrag te verklaren?

Willekeurige segmenten van code?

Of is het iets groters?

Wanneer wordt een perceptuele schema bewustzijn?

Wanneer wordt een onderscheiding ‘s motor de zoektocht naar de waarheid?

Wanneer wordt een persoonlijkheid simulatie de bittere splinter ... van een ziel?

Stuk uit de film: I, Robot

Honourable mention:

Deze tekst was het niet geworden, omdat het niet goed pasten bij mijn drone concept. Ik vond deze tekst een stuk mooier, maar zoals je weet kill your darlings.

Ik loop over de rivier alsof het makkelijker is dan land,

Kwaad is in mijn broekzak, je wil is in mijn hand.

  Ik zal het in de stroom gooien, waar ik zo stil op sta.

Liefde is alles, van wat ik heb gehoord, maar mijn hart heeft geleerd te moorden.

Mijn hart heeft geleerd te moorden.

  Ik zei dat ik kon stijgen,

Uit het harnas van onze doelen,

Hier komen de tranen,

Maar zoals altijd, laat ik ze gaan.

Laat ze maar gaan.

  Nu blijven speren vallen van de hemel naar de vloer,

De toekomst was onze huid en nu dromen wij niet meer.

Nee, nu dromen wij niet meer.

  Zoals een huis gemaakt van spinnenwebben en wolken die naar binnen rollen,

Ik wed dat deze machtige rivier zowel mijn redder is als mijn zonde.

Mijn redder en mijn zonde.

  Ik zei dat ik kon stijgen,

Uit het harnas van onze doelen,

Hier komen de tranen,

Maar zoals altijd, laat ik ze gaan.

Laat ze maar gaan.

“A performative understanding of discursive practices challenges the representationalist belief in the power of words to represent preexisting things. Performativity, properly construed, is not an invitation to turn everything (including material bodies) into words; on the contrary, performativity is precisely a contestation of the excessive power granted to language to determine what is real. Hence, in ironic contrast to the monism that takes language to be the stuff of reality, performativity is actually a contestation of the unexamined habits of mind that grant language and other forms of representation more power in determining our ontologies than they deserve.”

We're just going to start this out with blatantly saying that I loathe anything Sex and the City related with the passion of a thousand burning suns, and the defense that's been making the blog rounds lately -- Jackie Ashley's review at the Guardian -- still falls short for me.  But while it does little to control my irrepressible sneer at any mention of the franchise, it brings up indirectly a lot of issues I've been wrestling with lately.  Ashley, a fan of the series and films, argues that a closet of Manolos, credit cards that pay themselves, an endless string of sexy men and best friends to always fall back on when they turn out to be jerks, are a female fantasy life, whereas the male fantasy life involves big cars and iPads and guns and porn, so back off and stop criticizing us for liking SATC 'cause a girl can dream, ok?

Unfortunately, "it's all just fun and games" and "oh come on, it's cute and fun" doesn't justify the existence of a lot of offensive, marginalizing material (come on guys, blackface was just, like, entertainment!), and I don't think it justifies Sex and the City either. And I don't feel comfortable with "boys will be boys! girls will be girls!" or with dismissing things as "male fantasy" and "female fantasy" without confronting why and how we code those as such.  (Side note, reading the new complete translation of The Second Sex now and I highly recc.)  But Ashley's ultimate point -- that we criticize SATC for its femininity, for its stereotypes of the feminine, because they are more widely, openly reviled than the stereotypes of the masculine -- is loaded. 

Let's first, of course, make it clear that by no means am I trying to make some statement about any ideal femininity, and let's also make it clear again that I'm aware of how problematic it is for me, a fairly feminine, fairly attractive, extremely skinny and extremely white woman to even think/talk about these things because of the fact that I am inevitably blinded by privilege, and that I don't get to pull the queer card 'cuz I'm girly as all hell.  I'm also going to temporarily disregard going into lengthier queer nonsense since that would take me another ten years of typing. But let's, for the sake of it, consider that a societal construct of the ideal feminine exists, and that those who are or identify as women in general exist and express nearer or further to this ideal for any variety of reasons, some genetic, some societal, some personal, some public, some conscious, some unconscious, etc.  For the time being I'm deliberately disregarding the ways that the show problematically promotes these stereotypes of an ideal -- anyone who has had a conversation with me has probably had to listen to my haterade (it's usually something about promoting impossible ideals and brainless disgusting stereotypes of fashion-loving female writers living in New York City, about which I happen to know a thing or two since like I am one and so therefore like PERSONALLY offended/misrepresented on top of all that, besides you know blahdyblah consumerism sex patriarchy self-righteous feminism I hate TV anyway blah Cosmo disgusting ideals of the American female blah encouraging self-loathing blah performativity blah etc ad nauseam.)  So let's put the hatred of the stereotypes under the rug for a moment, and consider the ways in which a lot of the SATC-hatred isn't for the STEREOTYPES it promotes, but for its unabashed FEMININITY (since let's face it, most of its critics are probably not quoting Judith Butler in their justifications of why they loathe it so.)

So what I'm also addressing here is another side of these issues which I'm hoping some of my readers can also identify with -- the part where, as this self-identified liberal queer feminist whatever, you start to feel guilty for wanting to wear a dress or for keeping your hair long or for liking puppies or shoes or being sweet or anything, because of a double awareness and anxiety over the extent to which these preferences may or may not be socially constructed and therefore not natural to you and therefore THE ROOT OF ALL EVIL AND NECESSARY TO REJECT IMMEDIATELY.  Or if you do feel naturally inclined to them and not all riddled with anxiety about perfomativity, therefore you're among the priviliged norm and they STILL are therefore THE ROOT OF ALL EVIL AND NECESSARY TO REJECT IMMEDIATELY.  (Not a new theme here -- I've also been obsessively compiling links for a post about tabloids and celebrity children, you know, Suri is too girly with her high heels and therefore already a tramp, and Shiloh is too boyish and being raised to be a truck driver butch, duh.)  It seems then that we're damned if we do and damned if we don't --  either way, the "feminine" stereotype is something to be uncomfortable with, to question and to avoid. (God forbid we also turn out to be queer -- fuck knows what we do then!)

So is there, then, another level of my disgust with Sex and the City and that idea of the feminine?  I can't wear stilettos, my nail polish chips with reckless abandon, ruffles and pink disgust me, I have a hard time small-talking with other women, the word "sweet" has probably never been applied to me once, ever, and that whole 'let me go shopping with a crew of four other chicks and talk about boys and tampons' thing has never, ever made sense to me -- though I think it's also worth noting that at this point in my life I'd like to say I'm very comfortable with my chipped nail polish, low voice, lack of small talk skills AND my fondness for uber-heels, makeup, and very small animals, especially wearing clothes.  But the point there is that I have to wonder if I am, to some extent, personally revulsed by a TV show's promotion of those stereotypes because of the fact that, in comparison, I'm an epic failure of the idealized uber-feminine -- an ideal I feel simultaneously pressured to both live up to and vehemently reject?  How entangled with a positive criticism and dialogue about that feminine ideal is some sort of inherent misogyny, a sort of "man up, ladies, and stop being so silly?" How does this apply to queer women differently, and how much of this also reflects a discomfort with femininity/femme-ness in the queer community as well?

It gets into how so much criticism of fashion is (pet peeve much?) rooted so firmly in misogyny and in a rejection of anything "feminine" as weak, stupid, and shallow -- the same roots which branch both the patriarchal overlords yada yada yada and the branches of feminism who still seem to advocate that "women" should be more like "men", and that retaining anything of the stereotypical "Feminine" is a sign of weakness and catering to those loathsome societal ideals.  Perhaps I'm also speaking from personal qualms (or a growing comfort after years of pretending otherwise?) with devoting so much time to fashion, fashion photography, clothes, etc -- despite the ironic fact that to date my most-viewed page is that lengthy defense of fashion, I'm not free of internal (or external, either, truth be told -- man, plenty of those fellow Vassar grads and generous internet strangers alike get pretty riled up that I'm wasting my time in such a problematic industry) conflicts on these things either.