Feminism and CDing

I'm really curious to hear what everyone's position on feminism and queer politics in the context of CDing.

I guess I'll share some background narrative to position myself on the matter:

When I was a teen, I used to have self-esteem issues for feeling like I wasn't manly enough. I grew up in a small town and my closest friends were jocks. Didn't have any more-than-casual friendships with girls either. I had occasional fantasies about having a female body and wearing female clothes, but I chalked it up to my lack of manliness and a desire to have more contact with girl culture. I also, despite being not too chubby, had at least size A breasts, or "man tits", so I couldn't help but consider that if I was a girl they wouldn't be a bad part of my body.

Then as an underclassman college student, I realized that the conservative climate around masculinity in my town was actually really f-ed up. I came to terms with the idea that it was cultural constructions of gender roles that was the problem, not myself. I could form caring, intimate relationships with men and no one seemed to care about how much I knew about sports. I helped start a weekly men's discussion group called Men Against Patriarchy which is a safe space for men to talk about how to be better men for the women in their lives and how to deconstruct harmful notions of masculinity.

In the past year or so, I've gotten extremely involved in feminism. I've started to shift towards viewing not just gender as a social construction, but sex as well. Judith Butler taught me everything we do is a performance. Now I believe that in a perfectly equitable world, we would stop categorizing humans into men and women, stop talking about "what men do" or "what women do", stop describing people in terms of the degree to which they fit shared understandings of sex-linked traits (masculine/feminine), and start viewing people as complex individuals, each one of us situated somewhere on an endless number of spectrums.

I used to think the fact that I didn't have urges to CD and/or transition that were so great I would go to any length, putting family, social status, work, etc on the line to act them out- that I've never felt trapped in the wrong body- meant that I wasn't "one of them"- I could have a normal life and simply work on changing male culture. But a class I just took completely changed my perspective on this when we read an article by Pat Califia (look him up!) where he basically addressed this exact line of thinking. He pointed out that yes, there is a huge population of queers that feel like they had no other choice, that their personal lack of identification with their genetic sex/dress code was so great they needed to transgress. However, there are also those activists who shed off gender privilege willingly, and not in order to pass but in order to blend the distinction between sex and gender that much further.

In a couple of months I'm moving to a new city and would really like to experiment with the form of activism. I've realized that I don't really care about being taken as a male, and neither male nor female feels natural or unnatural to me, so I've started to identify as genderqueer. And it took viewing transgression as a form of activism to realize that I not only endorse it as politics but that I actually really like it and it can be fun!

Wow, that turned out to be much more about queer politics I suppose, but for me it's all wrapped together. How does everyone else view their CDing in the context of everything? Is it something you think about? Do you CD to pass or CD to blend?

-Alex

The post-structuralist Philosopher Judith Butler Had her ideas about life being a performance but that’s just one persons point of view and does not hold up when one applies common sense to the subject in my opinion and that of others.

But let others here give there opinions on your somewhat complicated but interesting thread.

SUZY

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Originally Posted by suzy1

life being a performance...does not hold up when one applies common sense to the subject

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What do you believe is common-sensical about the idea that life is NOT a performance? Butler uses the term a little bit differently than the traditional usage. She acknowledges that much of performativity isn't intentional, but it's something we can become aware of and change. Isn't that a huge part of CDing?

-I should add that I love discussion but hate arguing, so don't take my comments the wrong way!

performativity

is this actually a word?

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Originally Posted by Rachel Newark

performativity

is this actually a word?

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Taken from wikipedia:

Performativity- an interdisciplinary term often used to name the capacity of speech and language in particular, as well as other non-verbal forms of expressive action, to perform a type of being. It is a forum, a performative act, a ritual, a social action that is omnipresent and without restriction; it extends socially, beyond constraints of system or structure. It is the construction of identity or position through active expression.

Gender Performativity- a term created by Judith Butler in her 1990 book Gender Trouble. In it, Butler characterizes gender as the effect of reiterated acting, one that produces the effect of a static or normal gender while obscuring the contradiction and instability of any single person's gender act. This effect produces what we can consider to be 'true gender', a narrative that is sustained by "the tacit collective agreement to perform, produce, and sustain discrete and polar genders as cultural fictions is obscured by the credibility of those productions – and the punishments that attend not agreeing to believe in them."[1] The performative acts which Butler is discussing she names to be performative. Within the larger social, unseen world, they exist within performativity.

I honestly see everyone as an individual that has their own contribution to the overall good of mankind. I've come to accept myself and have folded in all of my feelings and am not afraid or ashamed to express any of them. I do not get involved in politics or groups, however, as they tend to have their own agendas and in those sometimes a person's identity can become lost in the group. That is the very thing I am seeking to preserve, individual identity. I really do not think in terms of gender but rather in terms of personage as each person has their own uniqueness. Sometimes I feel others aren't getting that or it seems to be an uphill battle but I keep going nonetheless. Works for me Hon.:)

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Originally Posted by Agriff

What do you believe is common-sensical about the idea that life is NOT a performance? Butler uses the term a little bit differently than the traditional usage. She acknowledges that much of performativity isn't intentional, but it's something we can become aware of and change. Isn't that a huge part of CDing?

-I should add that I love discussion but hate arguing, so don't take my comments the wrong way!

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I think I would replace the word performance with the word conditioned. Most people are to some extent conditioned by the society around them.
Or to put it another way the ‘herd instinct’ is in most [but not all] people.
A performance is a conscious act or are we just playing with words here Agriff.

It’s been a long time since I read Judith Butler.
I too love a good discussion. Please don’t think I am arguing!

I find your thread interesting as I identify with you.
I don’t CD to pass or blend. I am a mixture of male/female or gender queer as you put it. I am in other words just me.

My gender and the clothes I like to wear have nothing to do with my political views. Which were fairly conservative in a socially liberal kind of way! Till last month when they cut my retire medical plan. Now I voting for whom ever will do the most for me and my family!! Kind of activism.... Personally activism! Lol I don't like politics. Or politicians. They are all crooks that feed their friend and underlying addenda...

I've come to something vaguely like what you're talking about, thought not so much through academic courses as simply from living.

Basically, for reasons I won't bore you with, I'm not very good at performing "masculinity." Just doing what comes naturally, I manage some parts (like being a loud-mouth :) ), others, like fighting and athletics and dominance behavior, I just can't make myself be interested in enough to "pass." But I think the same thing would happen if I tried to perform "femininity" -- some things would fit with my nature, and the rest I would just not be able to do. I'd try "manfully," but I just wouldn't be able to make myself keep it up.

So the idea that "masculinity" and "femininity" are roles that people are expected to perform seems pretty obvious to me. It also seems obvious to me that pushing these roles on people is a way of keeping them alienated from themselves and easier to push around (it's principle #1 of advertising.) (I'd even go a step further, and say that both roles are part of how Patriarchy keeps men and women in an oppressor-oppressee relationship, but I don't expect a lot of sympathy for that viewpoint here.)

As far as how the way I dress fits into this: I don't call myself gender queer or transgender, or much of anything except "just me," and I don't even call how I dress "crossdressing." I don't like labels, because once you allow someone to label you, they start pressuring you to be the way they think people with that label are supposed to be. Right now, all I'm doing is trying to figure out the ins and outs of who I am, and all that "masculinity" and "femininity" stuff is just one more stupid idea that people have been using all my life to get a judo hold on my soul.

On another note, what you are talking about is not what I had expected from the title. Feminism is mainly concerned with how society beats women down just because they're female, and your actual topic (men being expected to perform masculinity) is really a side issue. If anything, I would expect feminists who look at CD'ing to focus on the way that conventional CD'ing promotes a very sexist and male-focussed view of what women are. But so far, I haven't seen any serious feminist bother to say anything about CD'ing, perhaps because they've got so many more serious problems to worry about.

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Originally Posted by Asche

Feminism is mainly concerned with how society beats women down just because they're female, and your actual topic (men being expected to perform masculinity) is really a side issue. If anything, I would expect feminists who look at CD'ing to focus on the way that conventional CD'ing promotes a very sexist and male-focussed view of what women are. But so far, I haven't seen any serious feminist bother to say anything about CD'ing, perhaps because they've got so many more serious problems to worry about.

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Ah, I suppose my op could have been a bit clearer then. When I said that I see feminism and queer politics as being wrapped up, I was trying to beg the question of what is womens oppression other than the enslavement to a very purposely constructed sex role?
I see CDing and trans issues as a perhaps indirect but very powerful point of attack on this front, whether CDs mean to be fighting in the name of redefining sex roles or not.

For a critique of the trans embodiment of femininity akin to the point you seem to have made on the topic of feminism, check out Janice Raymond's 1979 The Transexual Empire. But IMO (and Butler wrote Gender Trouble partly in response to the rhetoric that the trans community propagates womens oppression) that perspective doesn't account for the fact that queers are widely oppressed in a unique group, specifically AS nonconformers. For that reason I see the queer movement as being just as related to dismantling patriarchy as the movement commonly understood as feminism.

Suzy- yes I agree we ARE playing with words to some extent, but I think the word choice of performativity over conditioning offers a better insight into Butlers vision. Conditioning makes us sound like we're trained dogs, unable to learn new tricks. Performativity is much nicer to me, and I think in a world without chromosomally-defined gender roles gender expression would look a lot more like performance- in the same way we express ourselves to others in our choice of music we play.

Your post reminded me of the term "pansexuality",it's designation and how your not addressing gender if you consider yourself pansexual.I've heard of it just being another term for being bi,but that's not really the case,it's more about seeing and acknowledging one for who and what they are inside and then sexual attraction is secondary to that irregardless of their gender.

Hi Alex

I always seek clarity of thought and try to reduce everything down to it's essence first and than move toward higher complexity.

Politics is a worthy endeavor if it promotes individual freedom but to often it becomes a club to beat individuals of one group by individuals of another group so becomes divisive between people who have joined groups for a sense of security, identity and egocentric expressions of power against opposing groups of people doing the same thing, this is often referred to as war.

In my opinion it is dangerous to only think of life as performance because that means you are than dependant on an audience to have a sense of existence and value much like a child needs an adult to know that they exist and are valued so experience fear when they are not loved in ways that nurture and guide there growing sense of self leading than to the ability to separate and become autonomous which at it's core is the ability to hold your life and destiny in your own hands taking full responsibilty for your actions without need to blame others, it is ultimately the ability to face the risk and inevitability of suffering and death squarely head on without blinking but yet not trying to escape this awareness (fear) by testing it through intentional self destructive acts, it is accepting pain (destruction) but not by loving it only by accepting it's inevitability.

Performance is wonderful because through others we learn about ourselves and through others we can heal the damage done to us by others but it absolutely must rest on a firm foundation of autonomy or you become a slave to others and never fully realize self actualization but remain an actor on stage always playing a role that others have chosen for you, always reacting and never fully becoming engaged in the experience of life. Performance must remain a tool but it cannot become you or there will never be a you. You most move beyond awareness of others as an expression of self. This is the difference between what a child is (dependant on others for sense of self) and what a adult is ( psychologically autonomous), it has nothing to do with age and many people die still trapped in childhood. Moving from childhood to adulthood is the single most terrifying experience a person can have and many chose death instead. Everything you see on the stage of life is in some sense touched by everyone going through this experience, trying to avoid the realization that they suffer and die alone no matter how many people you are surrounded with or what God you believe in, move toward autonomy not from fear of others but to discover and experience the riches of your own mind, a universe onto itself independant of everything.