enjoyed this post alotanightingaleFebruary 19 2008, 01:33:36 UTC
i think you are correct in saying that masculinity is naturalized and does not need performed because of this. but as it is seen as the more active gender, it complicates things. to perform masculinity through the female body(performance), is not enough. one has to define femeninity as something, as well as masculinity as something. and if what you are aiming to theorize is the blurring of binaries, i can see how it all fits in. without that binary masculinity's naturalization would be dismantled, as well as femeninity's construction. that does not account for performance. but what i can say is that the nexes between post and modern contributes to the now. we have not yet left the modern. we are continually in the post, and what that means is we can shift around in identity very fluidly. you can be male and a femenist. you can be female and a lesbian. you can be a man and be a lesbian. you can be a woman and identify as male. you get the point. its all very fluid, transexual. transgender. it is so fluid you can identify as male one
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Re: enjoyed this post alotlala_annieFebruary 20 2008, 23:19:12 UTC
I got a lot of insight from this comment. It made a lot of sense and helped me understand the gender framework around me, which I'm always trying to understand better.
Re: enjoyed this post alotginaspiderFebruary 21 2008, 18:47:46 UTC
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Well, I wasn't exactly saying that masculinity does not need to be preformed. I feel it does, specifically by people who are not "male". Male (by which i mean people who are in power) and masculinity are far too intertwined. As an androgynous person, who chooses to be masculine from time to time, I find gender fluidity very important. I find more resistance to me choosing masculinity then I do femininity however.
I wouldn't say that one doesn't actively "perform" masculinity, maybe that was once the case, but i think society is getting more polarised in it's depictions of gender now, to the point where bio boys are getting quite anxious about being masculine enough. (Although this might be an Australian phenomena, where masculinity is shown to be a very rough, brash affair?)Certainly i've noticed that passing is getting harder, ppl either need to be old or blind or exceptionally stupid to sir me now. It virtually never happens with ppl under 35 or so. Which sucks, cause i like passing. :-( Ah well, i try to correct patiently and wait for the day when a critical mass of ppl disengage gender from the narrow confines of primary and secondary sexual characteristics. *dream on*
I do think you can perform masculinity, but doing it, in a sense, is the absense of all decoration and female indicators. There is so many female indicators and so few male ones, so to perform masculinity seems to be to remove all your female indicators. To be neutral in a sense. I've found that gender neutral and masculine are the basically same thing.
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It made a lot of sense and helped me understand the gender framework around me, which I'm always trying to understand better.
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Well, I wasn't exactly saying that masculinity does not need to be preformed. I feel it does, specifically by people who are not "male". Male (by which i mean people who are in power) and masculinity are far too intertwined. As an androgynous person, who chooses to be masculine from time to time, I find gender fluidity very important. I find more resistance to me choosing masculinity then I do femininity however.
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Does this make sense?
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