Thanks to a Facebook post by Danial Chandler for this:
‘I consider semiotic codes to be constitutive of the meanings out of which individual subjectivity is born. They define the social and symbolic context within which subjectivity takes shape and are therefore basic to the social formation of gendered and sexual identities.’
David Halperin (2012) How to be Gay. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, p. 335.
On the principle of using this blog to store stuff of interest, and since I've written on gender in the past (and so have a label for it!), I'm sharing this article:
Judith Butler on the culture wars, JK Rowling and living in “anti-intellectual times”
Alona Ferber, New Statesman 22 September 2020
which I found to be a particularly clear presentation on the current arguments between trans-exclusionary feminists and trans rights activists.
A possible framing might posit gender as an informational concept and (biological) sex as a physical concept. Or biology as data and gender as information. That might serve some purposes but won't really survive interrogation: biological sex is informational too.
Our ancient ancestors may have known more about gender than we do
[...]
The past is frequently used, consciously and unconsciously, to reinforce what we consider to be normal. And the idea of fixed genders with their associated roles and identities is especially true of this. Archaeological material has frequently been used to reinforce these ideas about gender [...]
But considering archaeological evidence from another angle, it becomes apparent that our expectations of gender roles can be problematic. In ancient terms, our gender divides are far from universal. It is not the experience everywhere that gender falls neatly into binary categories of male or female; that is, into being either male or female, with nothing in between. In fact, the evidence suggests that much of what we perceive as core components of our identity were not significant categorising factors in the past. Rather, we see ambiguities in identities repeatedly represented in the material culture from archaeological sites.
[...] our understanding is blinkered by our own perspectives of gender categorisation ...
If you show someone a map and say ‘this is how people get from Point A to Point B,’ the statement is performative when it creates the behavior it describes. In this case, a path gets worn in the ground between Point A and Point B.So, gender performativity:
Thus, performative statements don’t reflect reality (as in the declarative statement ‘this is a pen’), but intervene in it. Performative language is an engine, not a camera.
A model becomes performative when its use increases its predictive capabilities.
—David Stark, Paris, 17.07.2009 Quoted by Brooke Harrington
...I will draw from theatrical, anthropological, and philosophical discourses, but mainly phenomenology, to show that what is called gender identity is a performative accomplishment compelled by social sanction and taboo. [...]
Gender reality is performative which means, quite simply, that it is real only to the extent that it is performed.
Judith Butler, “Performative Acts and Gender Constitution: An Essay in Phenomenology and Feminist Theory” (1988)
Model Casey Legler: is she the perfect man?I wonder where our gender resides? Not, it seems, the clothes we wear, not the body parts we have or our X-Y chromosomes, not our sexuality. I was at an "all-male" school for much of my childhood. I remember we referred to some boys by the female pronoun "she ...". At first this was certainly a form of teasing, the usual cruelty of children. But later and for some it seemed natural. We thought of them as (maybe relatively) feminine. Not as a criticism: it was just what they were. I don't think it was exclusively those who were gay, nor were all who (later turned out to be) gay talked about in those terms, though there was an overlap. It was more to do with behaviour. Not quite that they were camp. And it wasn't about not being tough and into rugby. (I was most definitely not tough nor into rugby, and I came in for my fair share of teasing because of it, but I was never addressed as feminine.)
The first woman to be signed exclusively as a male model, ex-Olympian Casey Legler is not just a pretty face. She's smart, creative and says exciting things about the way we portray gender
[...] Legler is 6ft 2in, 35 years old, and the first woman to sign exclusively as a male model. She is muscular and cheery, with the awkward swagger of a rock star. Her voice is soft and earnest, and when she talks, she holds unblinking eye contact. In front of the camera, edges appear. Spikes. She juts her chin; she becomes a boy.
Fashion has always played with gender, from 18th century men in their wigs and make-up, to Patti Smith and David Bowie, through to the recent success of Andrej Peji'c, the male model who FHM named as the 98th "sexiest woman in the world". Maison Martin Margiela and Rei Kawakubo of Comme des Garçons have long manipulated gender codes with their designs, and this year JW Anderson's menswear collection featured halternecks and knee-length gowns. The most exciting designers today are the ones who cheat gender, who affect our ideas about what makes a man. And while much has been written about 21-year-old Peji´c (who models both menswear and womenswear), he enjoys, he says, a "level of mystery", and rarely rises to the debate. Which is why Casey Legler, who, at 35, sees modelling menswear as part of her work as an artist, is so refreshing. She talks. She has the vocabulary to describe what she's doing, why she's doing it and what impact that might have on the world outside fashion.
[...] This conversation is about gender, about reading a woman as a boy. "I am the person who has to introduce this. They want to shoot me because I have a narrative, and implicit in that is a conversation," she explains. "I'm not androgynous," she stresses, holding her drink with tattooed fingers. "There is no ambiguity with me." [...]
[I]f my entire body was removed, and only my head remained, somehow attached to machines that kept me alive, I'd still feel entirely female, just as I felt as a child, before my breasts had developed, before I even knew I had a vagina or a womb.So what is it that makes someone male or female?
