If one more person tells me that all gender is performance, I think I am going to strangle them. Perhaps most annoying about that sound-bite is the somewhat snooty I-took-a-gender-studies-class-and-youdidnt sort of way in which it is most often recited, a magnificent irony given the way that phrase dumbs down gender. It is a crass oversimplification, as ridiculous as saying all gender is genitals, all gender is chromosomes, or all gender is socialization. In reality, gender is all of these things and more. In fact, if theres one thing that all of us should be able to agree on, its that gender is a confusing and complicated mess. Its like a junior high school mixer, where our bodies and our internal desires awkwardly dance with one another, and with all the external expectations that other people place on us.Sure, I can perform gender: I can curtsy, or throw like a girl, or bat my eyelashes. Butperformancedoesnt explain why certain behaviors and ways of being come to me more naturally than others. It offers no insight into the countless restless nights I spent as a pre-teen wrestling with the inexplicable feeling that I should be female. It doesnt capture the very real physical and emotional changes that I experienced when I hormonally transitioned from testosterone to estrogen.Performancedoesnt even begin to address the fact that, during my transition, I acted the same, wore the same T-shirts, jeans, and sneakers that I always had, yet once other people started reading me as female, they began treating me very differently. When we talk about my gender as though it were a performance, we let the audiencewith all their expectations, prejudices, and presumptionscompletely off the hook.
About This Quote
About Julia Serano, Gender Outlaws: The Next Generation
Julia Serano, Gender Outlaws: The Next Generation.