Yes it's Friday and yes most normal people are out at bars, or enjoying the company of others, or at least live in a town where restaurants don't close for an entire month for cleaning. Instead I am enjoying being inside locked closely away from the frigid temperatures and 30 mph winds, it is actually so cold it is freezing snot in my nose before it can be excreted, I am reading, I am breathing (short inhales and exhales), I am trying to focus. The live guitar music in the background is only slightly distracting as I pick at my own set of keys. I wanted to get all of my reading done, wanted to be productive but find that even more than that I want to write. Just sit down and let it flow out of me. I have been writing in my head in my sleep for the past week, I can't stop-I don't want to. I toss and turn because in my head I am writing the two pieces I am working on one on preschool pedagogy, and the other on my own identity formation in regards to sexuality. I write them as performance pieces-I don't know if that is what I am supposed to do but I guess as I am writing them i am envisioning my bodily placement in relation to other bodies and characters and who could play them if not only myself.
I have wanted to be a writer for as long as I can remember. I never thought I would do well as a fiction writer because in my past I thought my stories would be too autobiographical and I wonder if most fiction generally is. But then at the same time I have been so annoyed with scholarly writing conventions that say topic sentence here, support here, analysis, and conclusion there. I remember my mother telling me years ago "You are such a good writer, I am so upset that your teachers [highschool] try to stifle all of your creativity into five paragraph essays. I just wonder how much benefit there is in that." As if we weren't drawn into the five paragraph essay formation enough throughout our lives, the same boring repetitions we tend to encounter as if writing scholarly articles mimics my daily routine, wake, shower, work, home, bed. It is all the same stupid story and it ends up being the slight disruptions that have the most impact. And performance and performative writing has disrupted my pattern and gives me something to look forward to a sense of joy . I just know there is a lot of pressure to be great at telling a performative story especially through performative writing and I worry that I am not good enough. I think i have good stories that I can tell-but worry that people will think my stories are not worth telling or hearing. And I want so badly to be good at this-because I need so desperately to be good at something and not for only myself that would be much too small, but I want to do something good in this world for someone, for "the other," because I am an other, and my best friends are others, and my mother is an other, and my lovers are others, and my girlfriends are others and even I see how great it is to make those human connections through art (writing, music, painting, poetry, cooking etc...) because those are the things we can and do connect through. Those are ways we create empathy and understanding for each other. So that is the first part; my self-centered desire to be good at performance writing and performance for multi-variant reasons.
The second part. Performative writing/performance has a lot of potential in my mind but I wonder if it is problematic to center human experience as the focal point of the exploration. I should clarify, there is no way to get around human experience and in reality this is the problem. If we cannot get around human experience then is it possible to argue or contest someones lived experience to really create dialogue? How can anyone speak to a situation that is not "their" personal experience except to offer someone their personal experience. I don't think this is wrong I just think it has the potential to be limiting. This is confusing and I am confusing myself as I write it. I just see it (tonight) as a situation that if we clarify or preface our stories saying, "This is my personal experience," that has the potential to be the end of the conversation because no one can say (or if they did they should feel kind of bad) anything negatively about the experience because it is someone's personal experience. it can almost sediment the experience as something that "is" instead of something that is perceived, negotiated or contingent. I just worry about that-I don't think it always happens but I think it can and sometimes does in certain contexts and it just worries me that no one can contest even at a slight level one's personal story and experience without looking like as asshole because people tend to walk on eggshells in this regard because if it is personal experience and especially if it is negative you don't want to question or offend someone. I know i am writing myself into circles because while I am ariting this I am kind of thinking well isn't that kind of the point with the whole thing to talk about personal experience and offer up differing personal experiences to create a larger more diverse composite of human experiences? I just don't want to see the interrogations of the self, the reflexivity of the self end solely in the personal experience, the location of the experience without reflexivity happen I guess. But in the end I have to finish in the only way I know how...I just don't know.
Friday, February 8, 2008
Thursday, January 31, 2008
why does it usually take trajedy to remind me of my body?
I like my body but it has failed me before and will continue to fail me again. Maybe I shouldn't even consider this failure but the fact that my body's weakened immune system tends to be the greatest reminder that my body exists and that I am often at it's mercy. I don't like to write about my illnesses, my several surgeries, my broken bones, and my state of somewhat constant pain. I don't like what this means for myself and my work and so I often try to ignore and push it out of my work. Maybe this is one of my distinct problems. While Goodall and Philbrook Gingrich try to use the positive aspects of daily life it is hard when those things often become overshadowed by the fact that I live most of my life in pain and sickness. And I love writing about the good too-music and dancing, dates to romantic locales for amazing dinners, sipping wine, rivers and mountains, beautiful children and even the ugly ones too, friendships, and femme lesbian identities complete with costumes, fake eyelashes, and combat boots. But I can't help that as I write about these things the fact that my back is spasming, that my pelvis and lower back are aching, the fact that I have spent most of the day vomiting tends to impede on my ability to always see the good sides of life. I think in the end this is something I would like to incorporate into my work, dealing with both pain and beauty simultaneously. How can we reconcile these things and how can I begin to reconcile them in my work. I do not want to add disability to my check list of identities but I can't ignore the levels of pain I experience on a daily basis-what to do and who to be...
Thursday, January 24, 2008
Performance of Narcissism
I like to write about myself. I think this is because I often do it fairly casually as most do, not giving it the real introspection it deserves. I like to write about myself because it is something I know fairly well and something I am always privy to. While I may like to write my thoughts and opinions and reflections on things, I rarely write about my body and my body as a source of knowledge. I tend to disregard my body as it has been a site of immense physical and emotional pain-really feeling all of those things is a pain I tend to dislocate from myself in hopes I won't have to really feel them, really deal with them.
Then tonight I read a friends blog about memory especially in regards to love, pain, trauma and memory. This made me think of my own memories of these things. One memory (and yes it is academic in nature but it still changed my life was reading Anne Cvetkovich's book, "An Archive of Feeling: Trauma, Sexuality, and Lesbian Public Cultures." This book offered me a way to view my own life and deal with my own pain regarding my sexuality (and I use this term broadly not only to refer to my sexual orientation.) This book made me uncomfortable and at the same time felt comfort I had never felt anywhere else.
I do not want to go to much into the theory of the book as I am still trying to figure that but what I took from it was that we archive memories into our bodies (or the unconscious) and we act on those memories. While it seems extremely psychoanalytic it isn't just that, it is more complex and sophisticated. What it helped me to learn about myself is that my queerness is inextricably attached to my previous experiences with traumatic events and that that is O.K. While I have heard the argument made that it isn't because women who love women do so because of bad experiences with men, why should this not be a valid reason to be a lesbian? Why do we dismiss this premise as naive or lacking reflexivity regarding one's view of their sexuality. I get wrapped up in this point because as a social-constructionist and one who is committed to the idea that identities are negotiated and performed on a daily basis it makes sense to me that someone who has been sexually abused or assaulted has a valid reason for choosing alternative forms of sexuality, and trauma doesn't even have to occur to choose these alternative approaches to sexuality (such as queerness, s&m, bondage, humiliation, voyeurism, etc...) but that it makes sense that this might be the case. Someone who has experienced immense trauma and felt immense shame in regards to their sexuality may need alternative and safe ways to access their sexuality.
This book also critiques traditional notions of feminist cultures that are in contention with alternative forms of sexual expression. Not lesbian expression, but queer expressions of sexuality like butch/femme which seems to replicate a normative system but does not have to, bondage or s&m or bringing violence (that is completely consensual into a sexual scenario), strap-ons (which may seem to re-center a phallus at the center of sexual desire), role-play and role-play specifically of abuse and incest situations. Feminists (and I use the term broadly as I actually think that most feminists these days are fairly open sexually) critique these practices as being un-feminist. Patriarchy, sexism, heterosexism, violence-that is what alternative forms of sexuality elicit. And they don't have to, which is what Cvetkovich is advocating. Instead Cvetkovich offers that queering sexuality and sexual practice is a necessary tool for working through trauma and pain from the past-that enacting an incest scene from someone's past in a consensual s&m situation can actually be healthy. For example she sights Dorthy Allison, one of my all time favorite writers, and her experience dealing with incest. Allison writes that she received a certain amount of taboo pleasure from the sexual abuse she endured from her father or step-father, and that as an adult she did not know how to reconcile these feelings of pain, shame, horror, and pleasure with one another. For traditionally in feminist thought pain and trauma should not be reconciled, one should only find joy in sex as it is removed from pain and shame. It is extremely queer to link these complex emotions together. But I was relieved...I thought my own pain was solitary and isolated and my feelings were strange and taboo. It was't the feeling of community I needed but simply someone saying your being queer because of you mother and your own sexual abuse is ok. I feel like I shouldn't have been looking so hard for this assurance-but I was and I found it...in an academic book...
But as one who is dire need of a way to reconcile her body with pleasure, pain, queerness, horror, sorrow, and joy, I feel that Cvetkovich's trauma theory as well as performance theory can be ways to help myself to maybe find some peace in these places that I usually try to forget. Letting my body remember may be a helpful way to begin...
Then tonight I read a friends blog about memory especially in regards to love, pain, trauma and memory. This made me think of my own memories of these things. One memory (and yes it is academic in nature but it still changed my life was reading Anne Cvetkovich's book, "An Archive of Feeling: Trauma, Sexuality, and Lesbian Public Cultures." This book offered me a way to view my own life and deal with my own pain regarding my sexuality (and I use this term broadly not only to refer to my sexual orientation.) This book made me uncomfortable and at the same time felt comfort I had never felt anywhere else.
I do not want to go to much into the theory of the book as I am still trying to figure that but what I took from it was that we archive memories into our bodies (or the unconscious) and we act on those memories. While it seems extremely psychoanalytic it isn't just that, it is more complex and sophisticated. What it helped me to learn about myself is that my queerness is inextricably attached to my previous experiences with traumatic events and that that is O.K. While I have heard the argument made that it isn't because women who love women do so because of bad experiences with men, why should this not be a valid reason to be a lesbian? Why do we dismiss this premise as naive or lacking reflexivity regarding one's view of their sexuality. I get wrapped up in this point because as a social-constructionist and one who is committed to the idea that identities are negotiated and performed on a daily basis it makes sense to me that someone who has been sexually abused or assaulted has a valid reason for choosing alternative forms of sexuality, and trauma doesn't even have to occur to choose these alternative approaches to sexuality (such as queerness, s&m, bondage, humiliation, voyeurism, etc...) but that it makes sense that this might be the case. Someone who has experienced immense trauma and felt immense shame in regards to their sexuality may need alternative and safe ways to access their sexuality.
This book also critiques traditional notions of feminist cultures that are in contention with alternative forms of sexual expression. Not lesbian expression, but queer expressions of sexuality like butch/femme which seems to replicate a normative system but does not have to, bondage or s&m or bringing violence (that is completely consensual into a sexual scenario), strap-ons (which may seem to re-center a phallus at the center of sexual desire), role-play and role-play specifically of abuse and incest situations. Feminists (and I use the term broadly as I actually think that most feminists these days are fairly open sexually) critique these practices as being un-feminist. Patriarchy, sexism, heterosexism, violence-that is what alternative forms of sexuality elicit. And they don't have to, which is what Cvetkovich is advocating. Instead Cvetkovich offers that queering sexuality and sexual practice is a necessary tool for working through trauma and pain from the past-that enacting an incest scene from someone's past in a consensual s&m situation can actually be healthy. For example she sights Dorthy Allison, one of my all time favorite writers, and her experience dealing with incest. Allison writes that she received a certain amount of taboo pleasure from the sexual abuse she endured from her father or step-father, and that as an adult she did not know how to reconcile these feelings of pain, shame, horror, and pleasure with one another. For traditionally in feminist thought pain and trauma should not be reconciled, one should only find joy in sex as it is removed from pain and shame. It is extremely queer to link these complex emotions together. But I was relieved...I thought my own pain was solitary and isolated and my feelings were strange and taboo. It was't the feeling of community I needed but simply someone saying your being queer because of you mother and your own sexual abuse is ok. I feel like I shouldn't have been looking so hard for this assurance-but I was and I found it...in an academic book...
But as one who is dire need of a way to reconcile her body with pleasure, pain, queerness, horror, sorrow, and joy, I feel that Cvetkovich's trauma theory as well as performance theory can be ways to help myself to maybe find some peace in these places that I usually try to forget. Letting my body remember may be a helpful way to begin...
Tuesday, January 22, 2008
Some late ponderings
01/22
Some late Ponderings
I had meant to write a reflection on my class period last week right after class. Unfortunately my body has limited my ability to be a human being the past weekend but I do have strong feelings about the last class and the introspection it has provided me and my body.
In class last week we were finally able to move around and perform. I love this class as it is (I know Dr. Calafell says it doesn't have to change your life-but it is changing mine) but when we actually allowed to move in class and perform I felt that a theory/practice connection occurred in my my brain and body that hadn't previously. I know I was nervous-I love movement, I was a dancer for years and a mover in college. I love acting although I have never been that great at it, The Vagina Monologues performance I was in changed my life. It came rushing back to me, the adrenaline, the pulsing, the rush of being in front of others connecting to them in a way that is impossible unless bodies and minds are both physically present. It also allowed us to work with one another differently than is possible when just sitting discussing readings for the day. There were arguments and discussions, there were times I didn't want to put my body into certain physical spaces that I was comfortable with. There were ways we wanted to communicate things all different, but all valid and good. I am always overly-sensitive from power and that day after my first class discussing feminism and "the feminist perspective of voice" (dripping with sarcasm) and I just wanted to make sure our pose conveying voice was an attempt at trying to eliminate power differentials. Although not perfect on the first try the second try (and the class) gave us lots of helpful ways to suggest fixing the performance to make it even more dialogic.
Then we performed an excerpt of Soyini Madison's piece on Trokosi women in Ghana. I felt personally connected with the piece on many levels. To give those who may be reading this a little background on Trokosi (not to sound overly confident as I am truly not) are women who live in the temples and shrines dedicated to different deities in the traditional religious practices of Ghana. I am sure this is universalizing and homogenizing the practice much more than it actually is. The issue is complex like Female Genital Mutilation. Those that practice Trokosi say the girls are taken to the shrines in order to receive an education in order to learn to be proper wives etc...while those on the outside believe the women to be oppressed, denied human/personal rights because they are taken from their homes in order to be servants (sex and otherwise) to priests in the temples. Neither side is completely right or wrong instead it depends mostly on one's positionality and where one stands.
I have not been to Ghana but I have been to South Africa and not to homogenize the cultures and assume in any way shape or form that the entire continent is the same, it just happens that I had an interesting experience while I was in South Africa. We visited a community still much rooted in traditional Xhosa! religious practices ad visited an actual kingdom on the east side of the country. While there we received an interesting talk from a ma who basically manages the tourist aspects of the kingdom. A large coliseum type structure was constructed centrally in the kingdom and we were all seated within it in order to hear the man speak. He told us that the coliseum was constructed on a shrine/grave yard of the past kings. At the end of his talk he invited all the males at the talk to the shrine/grave yard but told all the females they were not allowed to enter the grounds. My professor was outraged. She felt the situation was archaic, sexist, and patriarchal. She wanted to know why it was and the man claimed that it was tradition and that they believed women could contaminate the area with bad luck (my professor attributed this to notions of witchcraft-I am not so certain.) While my professor was outraged I had friends I relayed the story to when back in the U.S. who said that she was crazy for being upset. It is their religion, their customs and traditions, we/I wasn't supposed to judge them with a western lens. Honestly I was torn. A large piece of me was in agreement with my friends back home that we shouldn't continue to colonize people by diminishing their practices or trying to get them to change but at the same time I did not really agree with the practice either. I was in a space of cognitive dissonance. I thought of this as I read the words of the advocate for individual human rights by Madison.
I was angry while I read the piece. Angry at the group, although it wasn't really their faults specifically. I didn't like that we were placing me a white woman in the role of "western feminist." It was too real, this position. I had been in too many women's studies classes where the issue of female genital mutilation and similar practices were heavily critiqued by younger women who couldn't get passed the grotesque nature of the act to understand that for many women it is there only way to access economic resources through marriage. I am not particularly fond of the practice but I see it as a complex issue with many pieces and parts that cannot be judged simply by a western criteria of feminist action. But my role was in many ways to take on this kind of naive simplistic way of seeing Trokosi women as oppressed, uneducated, unenlightened women. On the opposite of this the male in our group played who he considered to be the asshole, the character advocating for keeping the practice of Trokosi. Again maybe too real the man advocating for the possible subservience for women-not that that is what the part entailed or the script explained but what I think the perception could be when the role is played by a male character.
I was a bit angry at this, but we were limited in resources and people so the performance was limited also. I didn't mind the "speaking for others" it was more what was being spoken I had issues with because I didn't agree with my character, but at the same time I didn't completely disregard it or agree with the other side either. That was really the beauty of the piece it showed the dissonance that happens with these complicated issues with no easy answers. I thought that aspect was really poignant and meaningful to me. It got at the fact that there are no easy answers to complicated problems and if anything it at least spurned the dialogue into action. In this sense I see that the performance can be a good starting piece when dealing with complicated social justice issues where nothing is as simple as oppressed and oppressor but shows the complicated interworkings of complex relationships.
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Here is a very westernized version of what Trokosi women go through, I hope to not perpetuate this notion but to use this as a demonstration of the western discourses about Trokosi women.
Some late Ponderings
I had meant to write a reflection on my class period last week right after class. Unfortunately my body has limited my ability to be a human being the past weekend but I do have strong feelings about the last class and the introspection it has provided me and my body.
In class last week we were finally able to move around and perform. I love this class as it is (I know Dr. Calafell says it doesn't have to change your life-but it is changing mine) but when we actually allowed to move in class and perform I felt that a theory/practice connection occurred in my my brain and body that hadn't previously. I know I was nervous-I love movement, I was a dancer for years and a mover in college. I love acting although I have never been that great at it, The Vagina Monologues performance I was in changed my life. It came rushing back to me, the adrenaline, the pulsing, the rush of being in front of others connecting to them in a way that is impossible unless bodies and minds are both physically present. It also allowed us to work with one another differently than is possible when just sitting discussing readings for the day. There were arguments and discussions, there were times I didn't want to put my body into certain physical spaces that I was comfortable with. There were ways we wanted to communicate things all different, but all valid and good. I am always overly-sensitive from power and that day after my first class discussing feminism and "the feminist perspective of voice" (dripping with sarcasm) and I just wanted to make sure our pose conveying voice was an attempt at trying to eliminate power differentials. Although not perfect on the first try the second try (and the class) gave us lots of helpful ways to suggest fixing the performance to make it even more dialogic.
Then we performed an excerpt of Soyini Madison's piece on Trokosi women in Ghana. I felt personally connected with the piece on many levels. To give those who may be reading this a little background on Trokosi (not to sound overly confident as I am truly not) are women who live in the temples and shrines dedicated to different deities in the traditional religious practices of Ghana. I am sure this is universalizing and homogenizing the practice much more than it actually is. The issue is complex like Female Genital Mutilation. Those that practice Trokosi say the girls are taken to the shrines in order to receive an education in order to learn to be proper wives etc...while those on the outside believe the women to be oppressed, denied human/personal rights because they are taken from their homes in order to be servants (sex and otherwise) to priests in the temples. Neither side is completely right or wrong instead it depends mostly on one's positionality and where one stands.
I have not been to Ghana but I have been to South Africa and not to homogenize the cultures and assume in any way shape or form that the entire continent is the same, it just happens that I had an interesting experience while I was in South Africa. We visited a community still much rooted in traditional Xhosa! religious practices ad visited an actual kingdom on the east side of the country. While there we received an interesting talk from a ma who basically manages the tourist aspects of the kingdom. A large coliseum type structure was constructed centrally in the kingdom and we were all seated within it in order to hear the man speak. He told us that the coliseum was constructed on a shrine/grave yard of the past kings. At the end of his talk he invited all the males at the talk to the shrine/grave yard but told all the females they were not allowed to enter the grounds. My professor was outraged. She felt the situation was archaic, sexist, and patriarchal. She wanted to know why it was and the man claimed that it was tradition and that they believed women could contaminate the area with bad luck (my professor attributed this to notions of witchcraft-I am not so certain.) While my professor was outraged I had friends I relayed the story to when back in the U.S. who said that she was crazy for being upset. It is their religion, their customs and traditions, we/I wasn't supposed to judge them with a western lens. Honestly I was torn. A large piece of me was in agreement with my friends back home that we shouldn't continue to colonize people by diminishing their practices or trying to get them to change but at the same time I did not really agree with the practice either. I was in a space of cognitive dissonance. I thought of this as I read the words of the advocate for individual human rights by Madison.
I was angry while I read the piece. Angry at the group, although it wasn't really their faults specifically. I didn't like that we were placing me a white woman in the role of "western feminist." It was too real, this position. I had been in too many women's studies classes where the issue of female genital mutilation and similar practices were heavily critiqued by younger women who couldn't get passed the grotesque nature of the act to understand that for many women it is there only way to access economic resources through marriage. I am not particularly fond of the practice but I see it as a complex issue with many pieces and parts that cannot be judged simply by a western criteria of feminist action. But my role was in many ways to take on this kind of naive simplistic way of seeing Trokosi women as oppressed, uneducated, unenlightened women. On the opposite of this the male in our group played who he considered to be the asshole, the character advocating for keeping the practice of Trokosi. Again maybe too real the man advocating for the possible subservience for women-not that that is what the part entailed or the script explained but what I think the perception could be when the role is played by a male character.
I was a bit angry at this, but we were limited in resources and people so the performance was limited also. I didn't mind the "speaking for others" it was more what was being spoken I had issues with because I didn't agree with my character, but at the same time I didn't completely disregard it or agree with the other side either. That was really the beauty of the piece it showed the dissonance that happens with these complicated issues with no easy answers. I thought that aspect was really poignant and meaningful to me. It got at the fact that there are no easy answers to complicated problems and if anything it at least spurned the dialogue into action. In this sense I see that the performance can be a good starting piece when dealing with complicated social justice issues where nothing is as simple as oppressed and oppressor but shows the complicated interworkings of complex relationships.
--
Here is a very westernized version of what Trokosi women go through, I hope to not perpetuate this notion but to use this as a demonstration of the western discourses about Trokosi women.
Tuesday, January 15, 2008
What I would Like to do with Performance
So where do I see my own scholarly contribution being made with performance? I have a few varying research interests all influenced by my subjectivity, positionality, and actual spatial location. I will start with I-dea #1.
I-dea #1
I am very concerned with issues of gender and sexuality and the way those identities are performed. But I am also interested in the inextricability of gender and sexuality to race, class, ethnicity, origin and how a multiplicity of identities and positionalities are taken up in a performative way.
One way I am interested in doing this in engaging with the "other" is through music and specifically I am interested in the Riot Grrrl Punk movement, which is a feminist and often lesbian engagement with punk music. It was created as a way to subvert dominant and normative musical styles but was also a way to rebel against the male-dominated punk music scene. Although the movement reached its peak in the 90's much of the music and Do-It-Yourself feminist attitude prevails in certain subcultural groups.
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An example of the Do-It-Yourself mentalityt would be The Gossip's indie punk video for Standing in the Way of Control. The video is not as high tech or expensive as videos played on mainstream networks like MTV, thus, it is reflective of this subcultural ideology.
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An interesting place for this music and ideology to be taken up is at women's music festivals which, also tend to try and subvert dominant male paradigms of oppression. While the internal politics of festivals can be sites of contention it would be interesting to see how the music speaks to and through people. It would be interesting to see how this kind of performance can affect the audience there to see and how it could be a site for healing, a site for social justice, and a site of possible protest also. While complex, this topic could lend itself very nicely to a performance method and paradigm.
If I were writing it I would write about the performance as it speaks to me accounting for my own positionality as a white, queer, lesbian, bi-sexual woman. I would write about the place as a conflicted space but one that for me is a site of healing and personal growth. But I would also write about my cognitive dissonance with being a staunch social constructionist in a place that tries to define female as people who were born and socialized as a person with a vagina. Not only is this space one of contention for its gender definitions but also it's racial politics, while they may desire diversity I must ask where are all the people of color? Mostly together at the women of color tent-is this bad-no-but it is a reality. Even a "women's only" space is not perfect simply because it is built by the sweat and tears of those with vaginas.
But it is also a place where I feel a grand connection unlike anywhere else. Partly it is personal-but even more I feel as though it social and political to be involved and on many different fronts. I connect, I theorize, I am myself in a different way than the rest of my life, and so much of this is from music and the performers who attend. These people offer up their time and many of them rough it in the woods with the rest of us simple folk. Does that happen many other places? Where the power differentials between "stars" and laypeople is almost eliminated (of course they do get better food)-I don't know but I seem to doubt it? Would this be created by a diverse group of peace loving people-possibly, but all I know is that it is created by a group of semi-diverse people who happen to have vaginas.
But then it would be really cool to do performance in some way (writing or physical stage performance) of the impact a place like a women's festival has on other people. How good of an experience it is. for some. How complicated it is for others, who maybe attend but do not wholeheartedly agree with either the policies of the festivals nor completely want to diminish them either. And maybe those people on the outside too-how it makes them feel to not be included in such a rigid definition of what it means to be female and not be given the same chance for healing.
I think this space would be very interesting and complex for a performance ethnography because it isn't always clear who is outsider and who isn't. It isn't as simple as oh you have one marginalized sexuality you are the other, but in differing circumstances at differing times those who are oppressed become oppressor and then those women in turn become oppressed for sticking to their identities as women and as lesbians. It is complicated-but it would be fun and a good way to maybe create some healthy dialogue between the differing communities.
For those of us who are visual...
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I-dea #1
I am very concerned with issues of gender and sexuality and the way those identities are performed. But I am also interested in the inextricability of gender and sexuality to race, class, ethnicity, origin and how a multiplicity of identities and positionalities are taken up in a performative way.
One way I am interested in doing this in engaging with the "other" is through music and specifically I am interested in the Riot Grrrl Punk movement, which is a feminist and often lesbian engagement with punk music. It was created as a way to subvert dominant and normative musical styles but was also a way to rebel against the male-dominated punk music scene. Although the movement reached its peak in the 90's much of the music and Do-It-Yourself feminist attitude prevails in certain subcultural groups.
--
--
An example of the Do-It-Yourself mentalityt would be The Gossip's indie punk video for Standing in the Way of Control. The video is not as high tech or expensive as videos played on mainstream networks like MTV, thus, it is reflective of this subcultural ideology.
--
--
An interesting place for this music and ideology to be taken up is at women's music festivals which, also tend to try and subvert dominant male paradigms of oppression. While the internal politics of festivals can be sites of contention it would be interesting to see how the music speaks to and through people. It would be interesting to see how this kind of performance can affect the audience there to see and how it could be a site for healing, a site for social justice, and a site of possible protest also. While complex, this topic could lend itself very nicely to a performance method and paradigm.
If I were writing it I would write about the performance as it speaks to me accounting for my own positionality as a white, queer, lesbian, bi-sexual woman. I would write about the place as a conflicted space but one that for me is a site of healing and personal growth. But I would also write about my cognitive dissonance with being a staunch social constructionist in a place that tries to define female as people who were born and socialized as a person with a vagina. Not only is this space one of contention for its gender definitions but also it's racial politics, while they may desire diversity I must ask where are all the people of color? Mostly together at the women of color tent-is this bad-no-but it is a reality. Even a "women's only" space is not perfect simply because it is built by the sweat and tears of those with vaginas.
But it is also a place where I feel a grand connection unlike anywhere else. Partly it is personal-but even more I feel as though it social and political to be involved and on many different fronts. I connect, I theorize, I am myself in a different way than the rest of my life, and so much of this is from music and the performers who attend. These people offer up their time and many of them rough it in the woods with the rest of us simple folk. Does that happen many other places? Where the power differentials between "stars" and laypeople is almost eliminated (of course they do get better food)-I don't know but I seem to doubt it? Would this be created by a diverse group of peace loving people-possibly, but all I know is that it is created by a group of semi-diverse people who happen to have vaginas.
But then it would be really cool to do performance in some way (writing or physical stage performance) of the impact a place like a women's festival has on other people. How good of an experience it is. for some. How complicated it is for others, who maybe attend but do not wholeheartedly agree with either the policies of the festivals nor completely want to diminish them either. And maybe those people on the outside too-how it makes them feel to not be included in such a rigid definition of what it means to be female and not be given the same chance for healing.
I think this space would be very interesting and complex for a performance ethnography because it isn't always clear who is outsider and who isn't. It isn't as simple as oh you have one marginalized sexuality you are the other, but in differing circumstances at differing times those who are oppressed become oppressor and then those women in turn become oppressed for sticking to their identities as women and as lesbians. It is complicated-but it would be fun and a good way to maybe create some healthy dialogue between the differing communities.
For those of us who are visual...
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Monday, January 14, 2008
Commitment to Critical Research Paradigm
Is a commitment to social justice through research necessary and more importantly is it possible? The point of my class on performance is to say yes to both of these questions as the simple and easy response. Do I want to believe-yes...do I commit with faith-not yet-I want to but my cynicism compels me to investigate further. Supposedly performance, understanding that all of life is performance and thus a careful negotiation and also presenting results of research through performance is a way to commit to a social justice, or critical paradigm. I so desire to see-to believe.
This weekend for my qualitative research methods class (not to be confused with my performance ethnography class) I had to read an article on incest and the supposed way that research interviews can be a transfomative process and thus, create social justice. I don't like to compare, I don' think it is an extremely useful tool in the toolbox to have as it does not allow a thing to be a thing on its own, but only has validity through the way it looks juxtaposed with other things. This only reifies binary ways of thinking and looking at things (i.e. we know what man is by understanding what a woman is not-a complex comparison but a comparison nonetheless). Given my current context, two methods courses; one trying to teach me ways of doing that are somewhat normative while still allowing some freedom for creativity and expression and the other, a complete break-down of traditional methods, ways of seeing, and ways of presenting materials found. I bring up the article on incest because I do not think the way it was presented did it the justice it really and truly needed. This article would have benefited much from an engagement with performance ethnography, a combination of both performative writing and actual performance of the women and men's stories dealing with incest. That would have been social justice or at least an attempt. Instead the researchers provided us with some mail in questionaire data about interviews they conducted previously. In this process I saw little commitment to a co-constructed co-performance. The researchers portrayed little connection to their subjects, there was little bodily connection and no bodily responsibility. All things that dealing with social justice and especially something so traumatic involving the body should have present.
As it was the article was presented as a typical research study, but said that it was an attempt to create social justice because it gave victims a voice, a place to speak and be heard by a researcher who had experienced incest herself. Sounds good right? I thought so too at first. But I kept waiting for the bodily interactions, kept waiting to hear the stories. I didn't. Granted I think this piece specifically focused on methods (focus group and individual interviews) and not so much the content-but given the content something as traumatic as incest how can the researcher simply allude to this pain, this awful experience, but use the data as material to publish a methods article. This makes it seem as though the researcher has no responsibility to the people she interviewed to use their testimonies in the way they wanted it to be used-to help people (to really do social justice.)
On top of this the idea of transformation of the research participant, the abused, the victim, the survivor was made apparently clear. Interviews done to give voice to the participants was a "transformative experience." Was it not also transformative for the researcher who had also survived incest, or those researchers who did not suffer incest abuse-weren't they transformed? Seems that it would be hard for those stories, those testimonies not to make any sort of impact. This methodological process seemed to lack lack reflexivity and definitely did not view the knowledge gained as contingent upon both researcher and researched. And this process really seemed to other the victims. While I would never want to imply that something like speaking wouldn't be transformative, when it is presented as so grotesquely one-sided (that only the researched people are transformed) they become othered-taboo, social pariahs, something to avoid. And it seems to imply that the researched need to be transformed, instead of meeting people somewhere in a contingent middle or grey space, the expectation seemed to be that healing needed to happen on the part of the researched in order for them to somehow be whole. It seems an experience with incest would be transformative in itself-I know my own experiences with abuse have been. I would hate it to be implied that I needed to be further transformed through a research interview process in order to be whole. Although I still at the same time respect that it could be-what about those that did not feel the process was transformative?
So I turn to performance-since this article I feel lacked a bodily sense of responsibility to the "other" the incest survivor, the research participant. What may have better served them? First in performance studies one does not physicially have to get on a stage and perform-using performative writing techniques can also suffice. Being committed to social justice in langage choice, and other forms of presentation where power relations are minimized is helpful.
Using both physical performance and performative writing can create the ultimate amalgamation of re presentation methods to engage in ethnography and the construction of the other. But it takes the responsibility of the researcher and a commitment to the other to use their words as they desire and to research them in the most ethical way possible. This means bodies involved in trauma have to be accountable to one another and even if a researcher s body has not been subjected that they approach the situation as Pollock says, with "empathic empathy." The researcher must approach the subject with empathy, that both the futures of the researcher and researched are contingent upon one another, thus the researcher can no longer approach situations with an objective lens but must approach with a critical mindset to do social justice. Especially with trauma survivors. Do use my words to tell a social justice story, do be reflexive about the work, do recognize limitations in research methods and data, but do not use my words to imply I need to be transformed. My transformation will be personal and social in my own time on my own terms, I don't care how caring the interview situation supposedly is.
And part of the researcher's responsibility is to write in their own bodily knowledge. Not to make the entire piece about the self of the researcher(Madison)-but to understand the complex relationship between participants and researchers, between self and other (Corey). This is where Tami Spry's words about the "performative-I" really seem to ring true. She says, "I offer the phrase performative-I as a researcher positionality that seeks to embody the copresence of performance and ethnography as these practices have informed, reformed, and coperformed one another..."(340). She then goes on to detail the performative-I position is a positionality affected both by her personal life and her research but that it explicates her inability to either live inside or escape her physical body. Part of her healing was to write from that space between-the only space she could, which was her body. She writes about the knowledge she learned from her body when dealing with her study of healing among the Mapuche people as well as the bodily knowledge needed to survive the death of her child. The body is for the most part void in the article on incest, which is suprising given the content, which is placing the body and bodily harm as the focal point of research. How can the researchers forget their own body, their own sites of pain, grief and frustration with reading about others' pain and trauma. we must write from our bodies as we cannot escape them as much as we might truly wish to. Is it not the responsibility of the researcher to not maintain neutrality since this is absolutely never possible. We can never rid ourselves of our bodies and thus we cannot rid ourselves of our positionalities, so shouldn't we use those things to our advantage. I do not want to tell someone my stories of abuse and assault to someone cold and stone-faced with no reaction. I want someone to want to know my story in a way that they try to feel my pain and that they are upset with the ways I was treated. I want to hear the anger at such injustice. I want to hear that the socially constructed sexism, patriarchy, and domination that men hold over women is something the researcher is not ok with. If I can't hear this I will not want to share. And I do not want as a reader to see this kind of neglect for the body, this neglect to the humans who have shared the intimate portraits of their lives-it is unfair and it is not right.
This weekend for my qualitative research methods class (not to be confused with my performance ethnography class) I had to read an article on incest and the supposed way that research interviews can be a transfomative process and thus, create social justice. I don't like to compare, I don' think it is an extremely useful tool in the toolbox to have as it does not allow a thing to be a thing on its own, but only has validity through the way it looks juxtaposed with other things. This only reifies binary ways of thinking and looking at things (i.e. we know what man is by understanding what a woman is not-a complex comparison but a comparison nonetheless). Given my current context, two methods courses; one trying to teach me ways of doing that are somewhat normative while still allowing some freedom for creativity and expression and the other, a complete break-down of traditional methods, ways of seeing, and ways of presenting materials found. I bring up the article on incest because I do not think the way it was presented did it the justice it really and truly needed. This article would have benefited much from an engagement with performance ethnography, a combination of both performative writing and actual performance of the women and men's stories dealing with incest. That would have been social justice or at least an attempt. Instead the researchers provided us with some mail in questionaire data about interviews they conducted previously. In this process I saw little commitment to a co-constructed co-performance. The researchers portrayed little connection to their subjects, there was little bodily connection and no bodily responsibility. All things that dealing with social justice and especially something so traumatic involving the body should have present.
As it was the article was presented as a typical research study, but said that it was an attempt to create social justice because it gave victims a voice, a place to speak and be heard by a researcher who had experienced incest herself. Sounds good right? I thought so too at first. But I kept waiting for the bodily interactions, kept waiting to hear the stories. I didn't. Granted I think this piece specifically focused on methods (focus group and individual interviews) and not so much the content-but given the content something as traumatic as incest how can the researcher simply allude to this pain, this awful experience, but use the data as material to publish a methods article. This makes it seem as though the researcher has no responsibility to the people she interviewed to use their testimonies in the way they wanted it to be used-to help people (to really do social justice.)
On top of this the idea of transformation of the research participant, the abused, the victim, the survivor was made apparently clear. Interviews done to give voice to the participants was a "transformative experience." Was it not also transformative for the researcher who had also survived incest, or those researchers who did not suffer incest abuse-weren't they transformed? Seems that it would be hard for those stories, those testimonies not to make any sort of impact. This methodological process seemed to lack lack reflexivity and definitely did not view the knowledge gained as contingent upon both researcher and researched. And this process really seemed to other the victims. While I would never want to imply that something like speaking wouldn't be transformative, when it is presented as so grotesquely one-sided (that only the researched people are transformed) they become othered-taboo, social pariahs, something to avoid. And it seems to imply that the researched need to be transformed, instead of meeting people somewhere in a contingent middle or grey space, the expectation seemed to be that healing needed to happen on the part of the researched in order for them to somehow be whole. It seems an experience with incest would be transformative in itself-I know my own experiences with abuse have been. I would hate it to be implied that I needed to be further transformed through a research interview process in order to be whole. Although I still at the same time respect that it could be-what about those that did not feel the process was transformative?
So I turn to performance-since this article I feel lacked a bodily sense of responsibility to the "other" the incest survivor, the research participant. What may have better served them? First in performance studies one does not physicially have to get on a stage and perform-using performative writing techniques can also suffice. Being committed to social justice in langage choice, and other forms of presentation where power relations are minimized is helpful.
Using both physical performance and performative writing can create the ultimate amalgamation of re presentation methods to engage in ethnography and the construction of the other. But it takes the responsibility of the researcher and a commitment to the other to use their words as they desire and to research them in the most ethical way possible. This means bodies involved in trauma have to be accountable to one another and even if a researcher s body has not been subjected that they approach the situation as Pollock says, with "empathic empathy." The researcher must approach the subject with empathy, that both the futures of the researcher and researched are contingent upon one another, thus the researcher can no longer approach situations with an objective lens but must approach with a critical mindset to do social justice. Especially with trauma survivors. Do use my words to tell a social justice story, do be reflexive about the work, do recognize limitations in research methods and data, but do not use my words to imply I need to be transformed. My transformation will be personal and social in my own time on my own terms, I don't care how caring the interview situation supposedly is.
And part of the researcher's responsibility is to write in their own bodily knowledge. Not to make the entire piece about the self of the researcher(Madison)-but to understand the complex relationship between participants and researchers, between self and other (Corey). This is where Tami Spry's words about the "performative-I" really seem to ring true. She says, "I offer the phrase performative-I as a researcher positionality that seeks to embody the copresence of performance and ethnography as these practices have informed, reformed, and coperformed one another..."(340). She then goes on to detail the performative-I position is a positionality affected both by her personal life and her research but that it explicates her inability to either live inside or escape her physical body. Part of her healing was to write from that space between-the only space she could, which was her body. She writes about the knowledge she learned from her body when dealing with her study of healing among the Mapuche people as well as the bodily knowledge needed to survive the death of her child. The body is for the most part void in the article on incest, which is suprising given the content, which is placing the body and bodily harm as the focal point of research. How can the researchers forget their own body, their own sites of pain, grief and frustration with reading about others' pain and trauma. we must write from our bodies as we cannot escape them as much as we might truly wish to. Is it not the responsibility of the researcher to not maintain neutrality since this is absolutely never possible. We can never rid ourselves of our bodies and thus we cannot rid ourselves of our positionalities, so shouldn't we use those things to our advantage. I do not want to tell someone my stories of abuse and assault to someone cold and stone-faced with no reaction. I want someone to want to know my story in a way that they try to feel my pain and that they are upset with the ways I was treated. I want to hear the anger at such injustice. I want to hear that the socially constructed sexism, patriarchy, and domination that men hold over women is something the researcher is not ok with. If I can't hear this I will not want to share. And I do not want as a reader to see this kind of neglect for the body, this neglect to the humans who have shared the intimate portraits of their lives-it is unfair and it is not right.
Gender and Sexuality as Autoethnographic Performance
So in light of all the performance reading I have been doing specifically about Conquergood I have asked my professor to let my blog be my "archive of feeling" for the class (read: journal). I may eventually do a spin-off blog directly about my performance class-but I can't decide if trying to compartmentalize is really a good idea or not. I mean in the performance of myself, my multiple, shifting and contesting identities as Conquergood suggests, are not stable or fixed, it would make sense that sometimes I would write about performance-while other times I would not. So even as I write myself and my body into my blog I find myself having trouble articulating who I am.
Part of this is about my love and desire for queering things, and when I use queer I do not use it as an umbrella term for "the gays" as it so often gets minimized to but as a more broad term for those who do things in non-normative ways who believe that their identities, sexual and otherwise have a level of contingency upon given social contexts, circumstances, surroundings, negotiations etc...(look at me trying to be all Foucauldian stringing my synonyms together.) I like to use queer as a verb not a noun. And in saying this I still must except my positionality as a white, middle class, femme bi-sexual lesbian, who enjoys school, blogging and cheesy television shows. But I like Linda Alcoff's suggestion, that identity not be an over-determination of the spaces we occupy in the world and the behaviors associated but that simply put our position affects how we see. It is not the be-all end-all (there's a platitude for ya) of understanding but it simply gives us different ways of looking and being in the world. But within this we all have agency to a certain extent to enact social justice through whatever means we can. I mean it isn't as though our positionality is essential or innate or something ridiculous like that. It changes, fluctuates, depending on my social context and sometimes my mood.
But this doesn't help with the writing of my blog, or the understanding of how to do my performance. I mean my fingers can move the keys and I can write about things I seem to know about and truly want to understand, but I still do not know who I am. I can pick at my face to the point of bleeding hoping to reach an answer-I don't and all I have is blood and puss. This is gross-but this is the truth. This is my body.
I know my positionality, I know that my positionality changes. I see it change. When I am with the women I date who happen to be more masculine in appearance and stature I immediately notice the looks and stares we both get. My body juxtaposed against theirs says it pretty clearly. Because bodies are political and as spoken word artist Alix Olson says, "At least lesbian bodies are political." Because when my body and her body are together occupying a shared space (like a dinner table in a restaurant full of heterosexual couples the stares "their" bodies give mine and hers say, "What are you?" "Why is she with that?". "She could get a man, she's pretty enough." "She looks normal, how is it that she can like women...and that kind of woman?" "I mean it's cool if she wanted to make out with a hot chick I wouldn't have a problem with it, I'd watch, maybe they'd let me join in on the fun." When I am with a more masculine woman of color the stares become even more intense. "Why would she do that doesn't she have it hard enough as it is [in reference to being a person of color and dressing like a boy]?"
When I am in this situation my perceived heterosexuality is challenged and that is when I become gay. Before this I was a heterosexual woman as conceived by our heterosexist society. It isn't just with lovers/partners it happened with my best friend too. When I walked with her in our small college town in Iowa completely platonically I became a lesbian because that is how she was perceived. "Dykes!" they would yell as they drove by us, those high school boys in their white suv. That's what I mean by contingent-when I walk with my more feminine looking friends I don't get the same yells or stares. "They're all straight," because that's the problem with linking up gender performance and sexual identity in a "heterosexual matrix" if they don't look like women trying to be men than they must be straight women desiring men. If they only knew...
And I say I am queer, but I question that too. I mean I shop at J-Crew, I wear make-up (eyeliner is my favorite), I carry a purse, and when I walk down a street nobody would ever have to know. I could pass for straight. But I don't want to. I am pretty open with anyone you ask, "Yes, I am indeed open to loving anyone, it just so happens that most of the people I love happen to have vaginas (it is not however, a requirement.)" That too goes for friends and lovers.
I like women who look different than me. Am I homophobic? I can't imagine I am-but is my desire for difference somehow interlaced with notions about heterosexism and heterosexuality. My friend who is more masculine once suggested this about herself in reference to dating another more masculine and possibly ftm trans person. These thoughts all infiltrate my space. Maybe that's why I am queer-because the women I date and befriend are not male or female, man or woman, they occupy a space somewhere in between and yet completely different and outside at the same time.
I recognize what this means for me, I will be seen as the straight one. I am not really a lesbian-I am a bisexual, a confused silly school girl going through a phase. But I am queer-I too see my masculine and feminine traits and those that defy both of those to create something entirely new and fantastic. I am as much queer as those women in suits, or track jackets with popped collars and sideways trucker hats, even if my appearance might not suggest it. Another friend of mine once wrote about gender in her blog as being so much more than appearance but about gender play. About the way we negotiate and perform gender in social spaces WITH OTHER PEOPLE!! It is not just the way we look, I know that, than why does it matter so much to me? I am not really a lesbian, I don't look the way lesbians look. I must be a bi-sexual, an unspeakable, "she'll end up with a man one day..." I don't like femme lesbian or bi-sexual as labels, but as an identity expression I create as a daily negotiation-yeah I can live with that. I can occupy the shit out of that space-just watch me!
And how can I write this? How does one articulate that I am a daily negotiation always contingent upon my circumstance, my surrounding, my situation. I am a fractured whole-I do not actually believe I was ever whole to begin with, but instead I am actively creating different pieces of myself everyday that will probably never complete me-I don't want to be completed, I want to be challenged and complemented. And how do I write this. How do I write fluidity into such a static medium. The way I just did? Is that good enough-explain where I am coming from and the rest will tell itself in a way? How do I write my change in a way that is compelling, truthful and honest. How do I write myself into my text, when I do not know who or what I am? I may have a sense of self but this sense of self is completely unstable and at times completely lashes out at me! How do I write this? How do I perform this... Maybe I just did...
Part of this is about my love and desire for queering things, and when I use queer I do not use it as an umbrella term for "the gays" as it so often gets minimized to but as a more broad term for those who do things in non-normative ways who believe that their identities, sexual and otherwise have a level of contingency upon given social contexts, circumstances, surroundings, negotiations etc...(look at me trying to be all Foucauldian stringing my synonyms together.) I like to use queer as a verb not a noun. And in saying this I still must except my positionality as a white, middle class, femme bi-sexual lesbian, who enjoys school, blogging and cheesy television shows. But I like Linda Alcoff's suggestion, that identity not be an over-determination of the spaces we occupy in the world and the behaviors associated but that simply put our position affects how we see. It is not the be-all end-all (there's a platitude for ya) of understanding but it simply gives us different ways of looking and being in the world. But within this we all have agency to a certain extent to enact social justice through whatever means we can. I mean it isn't as though our positionality is essential or innate or something ridiculous like that. It changes, fluctuates, depending on my social context and sometimes my mood.
But this doesn't help with the writing of my blog, or the understanding of how to do my performance. I mean my fingers can move the keys and I can write about things I seem to know about and truly want to understand, but I still do not know who I am. I can pick at my face to the point of bleeding hoping to reach an answer-I don't and all I have is blood and puss. This is gross-but this is the truth. This is my body.
I know my positionality, I know that my positionality changes. I see it change. When I am with the women I date who happen to be more masculine in appearance and stature I immediately notice the looks and stares we both get. My body juxtaposed against theirs says it pretty clearly. Because bodies are political and as spoken word artist Alix Olson says, "At least lesbian bodies are political." Because when my body and her body are together occupying a shared space (like a dinner table in a restaurant full of heterosexual couples the stares "their" bodies give mine and hers say, "What are you?" "Why is she with that?". "She could get a man, she's pretty enough." "She looks normal, how is it that she can like women...and that kind of woman?" "I mean it's cool if she wanted to make out with a hot chick I wouldn't have a problem with it, I'd watch, maybe they'd let me join in on the fun." When I am with a more masculine woman of color the stares become even more intense. "Why would she do that doesn't she have it hard enough as it is [in reference to being a person of color and dressing like a boy]?"
When I am in this situation my perceived heterosexuality is challenged and that is when I become gay. Before this I was a heterosexual woman as conceived by our heterosexist society. It isn't just with lovers/partners it happened with my best friend too. When I walked with her in our small college town in Iowa completely platonically I became a lesbian because that is how she was perceived. "Dykes!" they would yell as they drove by us, those high school boys in their white suv. That's what I mean by contingent-when I walk with my more feminine looking friends I don't get the same yells or stares. "They're all straight," because that's the problem with linking up gender performance and sexual identity in a "heterosexual matrix" if they don't look like women trying to be men than they must be straight women desiring men. If they only knew...
And I say I am queer, but I question that too. I mean I shop at J-Crew, I wear make-up (eyeliner is my favorite), I carry a purse, and when I walk down a street nobody would ever have to know. I could pass for straight. But I don't want to. I am pretty open with anyone you ask, "Yes, I am indeed open to loving anyone, it just so happens that most of the people I love happen to have vaginas (it is not however, a requirement.)" That too goes for friends and lovers.
I like women who look different than me. Am I homophobic? I can't imagine I am-but is my desire for difference somehow interlaced with notions about heterosexism and heterosexuality. My friend who is more masculine once suggested this about herself in reference to dating another more masculine and possibly ftm trans person. These thoughts all infiltrate my space. Maybe that's why I am queer-because the women I date and befriend are not male or female, man or woman, they occupy a space somewhere in between and yet completely different and outside at the same time.
I recognize what this means for me, I will be seen as the straight one. I am not really a lesbian-I am a bisexual, a confused silly school girl going through a phase. But I am queer-I too see my masculine and feminine traits and those that defy both of those to create something entirely new and fantastic. I am as much queer as those women in suits, or track jackets with popped collars and sideways trucker hats, even if my appearance might not suggest it. Another friend of mine once wrote about gender in her blog as being so much more than appearance but about gender play. About the way we negotiate and perform gender in social spaces WITH OTHER PEOPLE!! It is not just the way we look, I know that, than why does it matter so much to me? I am not really a lesbian, I don't look the way lesbians look. I must be a bi-sexual, an unspeakable, "she'll end up with a man one day..." I don't like femme lesbian or bi-sexual as labels, but as an identity expression I create as a daily negotiation-yeah I can live with that. I can occupy the shit out of that space-just watch me!
And how can I write this? How does one articulate that I am a daily negotiation always contingent upon my circumstance, my surrounding, my situation. I am a fractured whole-I do not actually believe I was ever whole to begin with, but instead I am actively creating different pieces of myself everyday that will probably never complete me-I don't want to be completed, I want to be challenged and complemented. And how do I write this. How do I write fluidity into such a static medium. The way I just did? Is that good enough-explain where I am coming from and the rest will tell itself in a way? How do I write my change in a way that is compelling, truthful and honest. How do I write myself into my text, when I do not know who or what I am? I may have a sense of self but this sense of self is completely unstable and at times completely lashes out at me! How do I write this? How do I perform this... Maybe I just did...
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