Lakoff, Butler, Halberstam and The Man with a Pussy

In Gender Trouble: Feminism and the Subversion of Identity, Judith Butler contends that gender is an act; a repeated performance. To be honest, after reading an excerpt of her words, my head was spinning—not because what she said didn’t make sense, but because she explains gender so well that I can't even wrap my brain around the complexity of it.

Butler highlights the difference between performance and performativity. Performativity is unconscious and constant, it is pervasive. Performance is episodic and purposeful. An example of performativity is the way women and men communicate differently. In Language and a Woman’s Place, Robin Lakoff says “’Women’s language’ shows up in all levels of the grammar of English. We find differences in the choice and frequency of lexical items; in the situations in which certain syntactic rules are performed; in inotonational and other supersemental patterns. As an example of lexical differences, imagine a mane and a women both looking at the same wall, painted a pinkish shade of purple. The woman may say: The wall is mauve, with no one consequently forming any special impression of her as a result of the words alone; but if the man should say ‘the wall is mauve’ one might conclude he was imitating a woman sarcastically or was a homosexual or an interior decorator” (264).

Minus the bizarre combination of “homosexuals and interior designers,” Lakoff has a point—the way we speak exemplifies the performative nature of gender. For example, the word choice I use when writing this blog—or when speaking—is indicative of how I’ve been socialized to communicate in a way that identifies my gender. This is gender performativity. Check this out.

As far as performing my gender, I think I do this when I knowingly showcase the fact that I am a woman and identify as so. For instance, when I wear heels or makeup or allow a man to open a door for me. Sometimes I wonder if there is any merit to being aware of gender performance. If I make the active choice to do these things I am still contributing to the very institution that oppresses me by making and effort to look feminine and act submissive? Isn’t feminism about choice? Yet this doesn’t seem like a step towards eradicating sexist oppression…and my head is spinning again.

Another key question Butler asks is where gender identities come from. She writes

“…how is [identity] shaped, and is it a political shaping that takes the very morphology and boundary of the sexed body as the ground surface, or site of cultural inscription? What circumscribes that site as ‘the female body’? Is ‘the body’ or ‘the sexed body’ the firm foundation on which gender and systems of compulsory sexuality operate? Or is ‘the body’ itself shaped by political forces with strategic interest in keeping that body bounded and constituted by the markers of sex?” (496). I can’t begin to answer this set of questions, but I think she vaguely answers herself by writing “gender does not necessarily follow from sex, and desire, or sexuality generally, does not seem to follow from gender” (500). What happens when the lines are blurred and individuals step outside of their prescribed roles? Butler says “…as a strategy of survival within compulsory systems, gender is a performance with clearly punitive consequences” (520).

A question I have, though, is do these punitive consequences differ depending on the offense? For instance, Buck Angel—who markets himself as the first female-to-male transsexual porn star—is followed by both men and women, of all sexualities. Clearly he has deviated from his prescribed gender and while I can’t definitely say this—especially not in any politically correct way—it doesn’t seem that he faces punitive consequences. I understand this is a generalization and not all transsexuals are porn stars. Obviously most of them are pushed to the margins of society because they choose to perform their gender and sexuality in a way other than prescribed. Angel seems to have turned this around and capitalized on his transsexuality…and I’m not sure how I feel about that.

Buck Angel started his career as a female fashion model. Now he is a porn star. In Female Masculinity, Judith Halberstam states: “If we study the fault lines between masculine women and transsexual men, we discover…that as transsexual men become associated with real and desperate desires for reembodiment, so butch women become associated with a playful desire for masculinity and a casual form of gender deviance” (550). I think this excerpt applies to Buck; self-described as a “man with a pussy” he gains acceptance by allowing himself to be fetishized as a transexual person, which in a way undermines how seriously he takes his gender and sexuality.

I have to admit that I'm uncomfortable with this particular form of gender and sexuality subversion. I consider myself a very accepting person who embraces the continuum of gender, but this just gets me. When I try to identify exactly why he makes me uncomfortable the best I can come up with is that it seems wrong for someone who identifies as male to be able to have such direct power over the female body. If he were out in public, clothed from the bottom down, no one would know he had a vagina and he would be treated with male privilege. Who is he, then, to exploit the anatomy that by cultural construction makes me inferior? I understand that challenging notions of gender falls in line with feminism, but I can’t quite get behind Buck Angel.