(no subject)

[pantryslut]

gender thought to elaborate on later:

It's easier to accept femininity as performative, to see it as a costume. (I'm using performative in a non-academic sense here, primarily). Makeup and hairstyles and fancy clothes. Dress-up.

Masculinity is never supposed to be performative. It's all about "realness."

So why is it that people react to Laura Toby Edison's Familiar Men photos in the way they do? Why is a naked man missing a part of his masculinity if he isn't in clothes?

Drag kings (and FtMs) know that masculinity is performative, too. But there's a lot of resistance to this notion. If you're caught performing masculinity, you're regarded as a fake. An ersatz man. Often, a "sissy."

Comments

Interesting point

[thomasroche.livejournal.com]

As a guy who is perceived by people as being gay like 80% of the time despite "putting on" the gear of a guy every day (blue jeans, combat boots, wallet chain, etc) and also happens to drive a Ford truck, I am so interested in how people dis guys who "try too hard," meaning try at all. Maybe it's my male flagging that leads them to think I look gay. I'm not trying to flag gay or straight (I don't really care how people read me orientation-wise), but I'm kind of surprised that people so rarely know what to make of me. And not just in San Francisco -- people who see pictures of me so often make the comment that I look gay. (I usually say "why thank you!")

So often it seems like any kind of "extravagant" male presentation is read as gay, both by straight and gay people, because if a man "tries" to look (fill in the blank -- "straight," "butch," "masculine") he's got to be a sissy, and gets read that way even by people who don't have a negative feeling about sissies. In fact, it's mostly cool people who think I'm gay, the lame ones seem to be pretty clueless as to what a gay man looks like. I dunno.

How do people react to the Familiar Men photos? I've seen them and even went to the opening at SOMARTS, but I can't recall what the response was to them. I think it's interesting that (at least, it seems to me) photos of guys naked are so often regarded as "unsexy" or undesirable by both men and women, whereas photos of naked women are enthusiastically received. When "erotic" pictures of men are published, so often there are hypermasculine cues in them to replace the clothes that seem to supply so much of our masculine identity -- think Playgirl, Honcho, or Torso, where guys have big muscles and big dicks. Interesting post, and thought provoking. Got me started thinking, at least.

[kiya]

Hm.

I'm now pondering how the idea of masculinity/feminity as performative matters relates to my lack of any sort of comprehension of either.

*takes this notion off to chew on for a bit*