(no subject)

[pantryslut]

You are all going to laugh at me for this one.

I just figured out that from my perspective, gender is entirely performative. As the situation warrants, I pretend to be one thing or another, and none of them ever fit comfortably for long periods or time -- but then again, stage costumes aren't meant to, are they?

Oh, you mean I'm expected to wear these things every day?

I don't suffer exactly from gender dysphoria -- I don't even like the term much. I know what I am, and I'm happy with it. There's just no category that describes me. Not even "close enough" for more than half a day at a time.

I get irritated with people who think that my appearance or percieved behavior means that I am 'x' and therefore expect me to act in 'x' ways and get surprised when I do 'y' instead. In other words, I'm grumpy at people who assign me a gender role and then expect me to stick to it. I didn't sign any contract, social or otherwise. Your assumptions are your problem.

But, out of politeness, I do perform gender. I pretend that I fit into one category or another a lot. And it doesn't really bother me, in the short term.

It was odd, realizing in a more visceral way than before, that for some people, gender is not performative at all. It's something deeper than that. That part is really hard for me to wrap my head around. I can observe it, I can describe it -- but I can't feel it.

Pretending is easier. I've been doing it since I was very small. It's not passing, exactly -- I think because I don't care so much about keeping the rest of me a secret. When I am performing gender, I am doing it for your comfort, not for mine. To put you at ease, to make things easier for you. I neither forget nor deny who I am when I perform. You may not realize the whole of what I might be -- but that's your problem.

Comments

Thanks for some interesting thoughts

[redbird]

Actors who believe they really are Hamlet or Napoleon?

I don't exactly perform gender, in a deliberate sense. But I don't take it as seriously as a lot of people do--I do a bunch of things, and somehow that combination of what I do and how I look is generally labeled "female" and people seem happy to use that label. I think a lot of that labeling is based on the physical (height, breast size, voice) and a lack of anything that conflicts with said physicality. I've passed for male online, without meaning to--back in the 1980s in contexts that were 80 or 90 percent male, using a non-gendered nickname--and assume I could do so again, were there a reason.

And now I'm thinking that this connects to performing certain family roles. I want to cogitate about this, which means I'm copying this comment into my own journal.

The roles I have trouble performing aren't, or aren't just, gender or familial: they're anything that includes keeping quiet for reasons of status/power/relative position. I more or less know, by now, that people who ask for "any questions" don't always mean it--but I blurt them out anyway. That ties into cultural female roles, but in a hierarchical organization, most people are expected to perform subordinate at least part of the time.

[wild-irises.livejournal.com]

No laughter, just deep appreciation. Often, I feel like the best response to a statement this genuine is to respond in kind, but only after thanking you.

So thank you.

I think your story is a lot more complex than mine, but I hear a resonance nonetheless.

When I started knowing transfolk, I started wondering why I didn't "feel trans," why I couldn't find any piece of myself that wanted to be male. Over time, I figured out that it was because I had long since taken all the pieces of cultural male gender that particularly appealed to me and integrated them into "me." So, in effect, I built my own gender, which I continue to call "female" and most people who know me continue to believe is "female," but is actually a personal construct with a fair amount of range.

This came up for me last week, in a group exercise where I ended up saying, "Look, I know how to get the attention in a room turned on me when I'm speaking. It's easy. What's hard is deciding not to do it." That reminded me again of some of the culturally male stuff I have in my toolkit.

[nellorat.livejournal.com]

I had an odd reaction to this, since I mostly agree with Judith Butler's idea that all gender is performative--ie, acted out in certain ways that we learn as a (not conscious) "scipt," but also with slips and stutters of the script so that our performance has built-in variation, which can be a source of freedom by allowing changes in the role. But I can see the difference between "performing" and "pretending," a term you use that I like. In fact, pretending may be a good term for self-conscious performing, which I think Butler says is a good thing and I definitely think is. Performing can be done subconsciously by imitating others; pretending means you're aware of what you're doing, which probably means you use of those areas of choice and attain greater freedom.

[pantryslut.livejournal.com]

Performing vs. pretending, subconscious vs. conscious -- that's a good distinction. Thank you.

Yes, I'm always aware of what I'm doing, genderwise -- that's a big part of what I was reaching for.

I also forgot to note for those playing along that I pretend to be more than one gender, depending on the occasion. (This is pretty obvious, I think, if you know me in person, but not so much if you only know me online.)

[millefiori.livejournal.com]

I think I may be one of those people for whom gender is not performative, although some aspects of it are. I'll put on and do various 'womanly' things depending on the audience and how I wish to interact, but beneath all that, femaleness seems to be an unchangeable aspect of myself.

I get irritated with people who think that my appearance or percieved behavior means that I am 'x' and therefore expect me to act in 'x' ways and get surprised when I do 'y' instead.

I've actually made a deliberate decision to use this tendency to my advantage. I usually dress and behave in such a way as to present a perfectly normal, unobjectionable, nonthreatening woman. Once people have securely sorted me into that box, I find that I can discreetly carry on being just as weird as I like without backlash or interference. I suppose this may seem dishonest, and it's definitely not a method for everybody, but I'm kind of shy and non-confrontational, so it suits me. The main drawback is that I likely miss out on making friends with people who might be kindred spirits simply because they're not drawn to someone who seems so white-bread conventional.