A couple of weeks ago, I had to write a paper about an “on campus event” for my queer African cultures literature class. Because the original event I chose turned out not to work for my paper, I made arrangements with the professor to extend the deadline so I could attend a panel discussion facilitated by the Berkeley Center for Race and Gender on “Pleasure, Power, and Profit in Race Performance.”
The panel featured a number of academics and artists, and was attended by a very diverse crowd of older, very academic looking racial and, perhaps, sexual minorities. I was the only 21 year-old, nerdy, skinny, white, gay guy there. I had no clue what was going to be discussed. Every one else seemed like they knew what was going on. It was strange to feel as if Pleasure, Power, and Profit in Race Performance were quotidian topics of rumination, which had just not occurred to my uncouth mind. I felt very out of place, and very ignorant.
To make matters even better, the weak prescription in my glasses lead me to accidentally seat myself among the speaker designated chairs of the front row. Needless to say, it was not the most ideal location to experience the first strip-tease I have ever witnessed in public (even if it was a reverse one).
I took polite notes through the first couple of speakers. I thought that their presentations were entertaining and relevant to understanding the way that mainstream media and pop culture can pervert our interpretations of race and sex. However, I have been told that it is impolite to take notes during a strip tease. I put down my pen and paper when Narcissister, the last speaker and a successful gallery performance artist, began her presentation. She screened an art-video in which she elegantly manages and admirable physical feat. Narcissister’s performance begins butt naked, and over the course of much dance and frivolity choreographed to the classic disco hit “I Am Every Woman,” pulls an entire outfit, complete with yellow stilettos, handbag, and ray bands out of her hair and the various other orifices of her body.
I figure that on the bright side, I did not have to pay cash for my first strip tease. There were no cover charges, I did not have to tip, and there was no drink minimum. However, I paid double in embarrassment. During the entire, rather lengthy video, with the exception of me, the entire audience was dead silent. People were stroking their chins, and nodding their heads in what appeared to be serious academic and aesthetic appreciation of the art projected bigger than life on to the wall directly in front of me. I, on the other hand, could do nothing but wear a stupid smile and try with all my might to not burst into a fit of giggles. Unfortunately, I do have the comic appreciations of a 5th grader. Why I did not leave earlier, I do not know. But during the question and answer portion directly after the video while Narcissister was discussing the “challenging physical aspects” of her performance, I knew my oh-so-thin mask of self-control was going to split. I gathered my things and left. The door to the lecture hall closed behind me and I burst out laughing.
I have related the shock and embarrassment of my first strip-tease to a couple of my friends. There has been much appreciation and entertainment from my brush with this XXX rated intersection of race and sex. But after laughing, many of my friends have responded with sentiments such as, “the things that pass for art these days,” or even, “this is the sort of stuff that gets funding for the arts slashed.” These responses puzzle me.
The primary reason that I was embarrassed was that out of the event attendees, I thought that I alone was mentally unprepared with the tools necessary to break down and understand the critique articulated by the reveres strip-tease of every woman. Though it is a poor excuse, the shock from my general unfamiliarity with the naked female form, and the dramatized absurdity of the whole situation left me unexpectedly mentally isolated with my own immature sense of humor, which occasionally finds dancing boobs and vaginas funny. The awkward nature of my poorly suppressed laughter in a silent hall perpetuated the embarrassment and caused more laughter. It was a vicious cycle
However, it never crossed my mind that what I was looking at was “not art” or that it was “offensive” or “gross”. In fact, on reflection I think that for me it was the most relevant presentation. You can debate the definition of art and aesthetics all you like. Regardless, as hard as it is to imagine, the art of the reverse strip-tease accurately describes phenomena experienced by a nerdy, skinny, white, gay guy, and perhaps all people who have ever had to understand themselves in the context of race and gender norms.
I was never a “popular person” in middle school or high school. I was awkward, socially inept, lost in magic cards and science fiction novels, and for whatever reason vaguely effeminate. Indeed, many of my peers seemed to know that I was gay before I was personally aware that I had sexual desires for anyone at all. Like a lot of kids, I was harassed and made fun of, to some extent, for the majority of my lower education.
Being made fun of hurts a lot, and so in middle school I talked to my mother. She thought that my effeminate mannerisms were probably part of the reason I was being made fun of (and she was right). It takes a special kid to appreciate cooking, pretty cloths, and singing quite as much as I did. And so, after much thought and the continuation of my schoolyard woes, my mom decided that my father, from whom she is divorced, was not teaching me “how to be a man.” Lacking the appropriate genitals and experience herself, the next vacation we were off to Colorado Springs, Colorado to visit my uncle for what I came to know of as “man-lesions.”
In retrospect, My mom’s choice in “man-teacher” was not the best one; granted there weren’t many options. Whatever his virtues, when one thinks of manliness and virility, one does not think of my uncle. He is a short middle-aged engineer and pianist with a passion for cycling in bright, multicolored spandex outfits. In fact, off the top of my head, about the only conspicuous, heteor-normatively masculine thing that he does is raise two kids with his wife.
Needless to say, after many bike rides and much time spent with an uncle that was way too smug about his “successful life choices,” the only definitive things that I knew about being a man were 1) drinking out of a water bottle without the sports cap was more manly than drinking water with the sports cap on; and 2) that I could not be the type of man my uncle was, and certainly did not want to be. Though the initial result of the trip was confusion and insecurity, it left me with an understanding of just how absurd and arbitrary labels like “girly,” “manly,” “effeminate,” ect. really are.
I started with knowing what kind of man I did not want to be and eventually figured out that though there are things you can do to avoid being made fun of in school, ultimately, it is more important to try and be a good person whoever you are and whatever your gender happens to be. Conforming your personhood to someone else’s ideas about what it is to be a man (or a woman) is always a matter of performance. In such cases, it is funny how irrelevant your genitalia actually are.
My clever mother understood that gender was an act. Inherently it has to be, if it is something that can be taught. My mom was even right in understanding that many of my social woes (social ineptitude aside) came from my gender nonconformity. Unfortunately because people insist that the act of manhood is attached to a narrowly defined set of observable behaviors that often conflict with people’s desires, gender nonconformity is often perceived as a threat to the masculinity of others.
For these reasons gender nonconformity is not ok with a lot of homophobic people or ignorant kids who have confounded the external act of gender performance with internal moral personhood (yours and their own). Unfortunately, this is a confusion that often results in suffering and, in recent news, teen suicide.
To those who have suffered at the hands of bullies who gay bash and gay bate: these people aggress because their internalized conception of their own masculinity is so fragile that the existence of any queer identity is a threat to their self-concept, which is tied up in masculine norms. In nonacademic terms, though it is no excuse for their behavior, bullies are ignorant and afraid because they think they have accidentally given you the power to decide whether or not they are a man. My recommendation is to do them (and yourself) a favor and show them that as long they labor under this delusion, they have already made themselves the very ungendered thing they fear. Remember, people do learn and things do change with time. Nothing, not even suffering lasts forever.
It is the dire consequences (in this case teen suicide) of misunderstandings like homophobia, which make art, like Narcissister’s so valuable. In its own lewd and laughable way Narcissister’s art reminds us that “identities” like race and gender are merely specific external acts that must be legible to an external reader for them to be conceptually coherent, or to exist at all. The satirical overly dramatized way that Narcissister takes a racialized costume of womanhood out of her orifices debunks and pokes fun at the notion of race and gender as emanating from our bodies instead of from the way we read each other and ourselves.
What a strange world this would be if gendered garments really did come from people’s sexual organs. The song Narcissister dances to proclaims, “I am every woman, It’s all in me!” and indeed, Narcissister shows us that it is. But how did it get there, for we can all agree that articles of clothing don’t in fact come from a human body? Narcissister is able to pull a scarf out of her ass, a dress out of her vagina, a shirt and gloves out of her mouth, and stilettos, a purse, and ray bands out of her hair, because in reading African American womanhood in the naked form of her body we have already mentally attributed those objects to and of her body. Ironically, it is ultimately the reader that transforms Narcissister into the figuration of the “every woman.” Here race and gender are represented literally as they are ideologically: just costumes that we pull out of our asses.
Shakespeare once wrote “All the world's a stage,
and all the men and women merely players.” God, how true it is. We can’t stop acting, and we can’t stop reading. Narcissister is merely reminding us that there is a big difference between the way we read the acts others use to convey an internal personhood and the actual internal content of that personhood. Narcissister has shown us that the reading audience defines the content of the performance. In light of Narcissister’s demonstration and Shakespeare’s perception I think that there is a very important question people are forgetting to ask: if all the world's a stage, and all the men and women merely players; then who the hell is the audience, because, god damn it, the show must go on?
and all the men and women merely players.” God, how true it is. We can’t stop acting, and we can’t stop reading. Narcissister is merely reminding us that there is a big difference between the way we read the acts others use to convey an internal personhood and the actual internal content of that personhood. Narcissister has shown us that the reading audience defines the content of the performance. In light of Narcissister’s demonstration and Shakespeare’s perception I think that there is a very important question people are forgetting to ask: if all the world's a stage, and all the men and women merely players; then who the hell is the audience, because, god damn it, the show must go on?
