Gender in Performance

[Ganymede]

I wasn't sure where to post this topic, but since it does deal with performance, I figured it could go here.  

Recently, I've been working on a project in which I have been cross-dressing and trying to pass as a man at various locations in the town I live in.  As I have been "practicing" I've noticed how much goes into a performance of gender.  It's like I'm preparing to perform a character on stage.  Yet, I do not believe gender is innate, but rather constructed.  During childhood and adolescence, parents, peers, and society in general work to socialize individuals to fit into a gender category.  In general, there are two gender categories (women and men), yet these two categories are not enough to explain the aray of differences that exist within the two categories.  

All male gender identities are not the same, just as all female gender identities are not the same.  Yet, there are certain expectations that members of either category must contend with.  

It's been an interesting experience, and has made me think even more about gender performativity on the Renaissance stage, as well as on the modern-day stage.  So I was wondering if anyone out there has had a similar experience to mine.  Have you ever cross-dressed, whether on the stage or off?  How has your experience affected your ideas about your gender or about gender in general?

[shaxper]

A fascinating question, perhaps even more so for me because I have had the privilage of watching your project progress.  

I think one aspect that I find fascinating about cross-dressing, is the fact that it is far more acceptable for a woman to dress as a man than for a man to dress as a woman.  This is a product of the age-old belief that a woman was improving her station by becoming a man, while a man was degrading himself by becoming a woman.  It helps explain why Shakespeare's cross-dressing characters were always women posing as men, as well as why only boys played the roles of women.  Frankly, it astonishes me that this outdated belief still survives, at least in practice.  In the last century, films like Some Like it Hot, and comedians like Milton Berle pionered the idea of men dressing like women in entertainment (at least in the Western World), but this was always done purely for the sake of base humor.  How absurd and pathetic for a man to wear a dress and act like a woman!  These films and entertainers were still bold and revolutionary (the ending of Some Like it Hot still floors me every time), but theirs were only small steps forward.  A man dressed as a woman is still a topic that is yet to recieve serious treatment in the world of entertainment (unless you include traditional Asian theatre).  As open-minded as I consider myself to be, you will never find me wearing women's clothing.  It is, unfortunatley,  far more of a risk.

[Ganymede]

Yet, there are few films that take seriously the woman who cross-dresses as a man-- or even films that contain female cross-dressers at all.  While I can name a whole slew of films with males cross-dressing as females (Some Like It Hot, The Rocky Horror Picture Show, Hedwig and the Angry Inch, Mrs. Doubtfire, The Crying Game, Tootsie, etc.), I can't think of many films showcasing women as cross-dressers.  Boys Don't Cry is, of course, the most recent exception, yet that is a tragedy, while most of the films I named above are considered comedies.  Why do you think that is?  

I have my own ideas.  Personally, I think 1) that masculinity is more cherished that femininity and therefore, men might feel more uncomfortable seeing a woman pass as a man than a man pass as a woman and 2) that most people think that it's easier to perform femininity that masculinity (because masculinity is often considered more natural and subtle, while femininity is usually played as contrived and outlandish).  

Does anyone else have any thoughts on this?

[shaxper]

I buy your #1.  I think it's a sad result of centuries of women being placed at the bottom of the social scale and treated like inferiors.  Many women still talk about winning themselves a man, as if it will somehow boost their status.  Television and film constantly reinforces this.  But have you ever heard a man talk about winning himself a woman in the same tone? 

As for your #2, I think that may be your own gender bias, resulting from 21 years of being told how to be a woman.  I think both genders have a tremendous amount of artificiality to them.  I don't think there's anything innate in men's genes that makes them incensitive, sex-obsessed, and sports-loving.  Some of it comes from the genes (we do have sexual urges and our bodies do enjoy exercise) but not to the extent that culture enforces those behaviors, and who's to say that guys really are innately more horny or athletics-driven than women?  As a lethargic, sensitive guy who'd be ashamed to say "look at the tits on that one!", I see masculinity as highly constructed and artificial.  I think it all depends on which side of the fence you're viewing the situation from.

[Ganymede]

I definitely that both genders are constructed by society.  But most people don't see that.  Most people, not necessarily just men, take their gender for granted.  Yet, I can't help but recognize the great disparity between the number of male to female cross-dressers compared to the number of female to male, and the amount of informational literature available to each.  I recently read somewhere that psychiatrists disregard female transvestites, claiming that if a woman dresses as a man, it means she wants to become a man.  The same is not said of male-to-female cross-dressers, either implying that few men would ever want to become women or that dressing as a woman is only play for men, while to imitate a man would require the woman to "become" a man.  The assumption might be that it is easier to perform femininity than masculinity-- to imitate a man, one has to be (or become) a man.  

Of course, I don't agree with all this, but I've found these theories to be true in the research I've done on cross-dressing.  Historically, masculinity has been a man's only club, while feminiity has been something easily imitated (like on the Renaissance stage).  

[Abhorson]

I found this subject interesting, so I thought I would volunteer my thoughts on the matter. I totally agree with your idea that gender is a mental and social construct fabricated over time rather than something actually integral to the time. My youth was spent almost exclusively with my mother, who did her best to prevent me from interacting with anyone, even to the point of withdrawing me from school, and so i had little basis upon which to form my identity, except by modeling myself on her, which has caused some problems over the years, and so now I must assume an act when dealing with people that requires concious effort to maintain.

I do not think that femininity is more easy to perform. Transgendered Females achieve a far more credible appearance and adopt the mannerisms in their emulation of the opposite sex with far less artificialiality then men generally do, although some, perhaps in agreement with what you said about feminity being contrived and outlandish, go to far in their efforts to appear and act as female.

One question strikes me though, why are so many more men than women apparently willing to lose their masculinity by cross dressing and gender reassignment if masculinity is more cherished?

[Ganymede]

That's a good question.  I think it has to do with the ways in which femininity is portrayed.  For male-to-female cross-dressers, putting on femininity is like playing dress up.  The inherent assumption for most people is that these men don't actually want to BECOME women. They only want to perform femininity.  This is different than the inherent assumption with female to male cross-dressers.  Most psychologists do not recognize female-to-male cross-dressers as transvestites.  They call them transsexuals or transgenders.  Either term implies that the woman wants to become a man, physically or socially.  However, male-to-female cross-dressers are termed transvestites because psychologists assume that they wouldn't want to become female and are only playing at being feminine.  

Of course, reality doesn't reflect these biases.  There are
many males who want to become females and many females who just want to play at being men.  Yet, for society as a whole, I believe these assumptions operate self-consciously, reinforcing the non-performativity of masculinity and the easy performativity of femininity.  

[N.N.W]

[glow=red,2,300]hmmm... a good source of theory for this is Antonin Artauds 'Theatre of the Oppressed' - a collection of essays focussing on his formation of the theatre of cruelty, where he seeks to establish a common language, or hieroglyph for theatre - seeking a purely styalised and iconic performance space.
Artaud focusses on Lunar (feminised) and Solar (masculine) aspects of performance with the lunar representing that which is hidden or concealed, and the solar that which is oblique, prominant and exposed - Nietzche tackles the same issues in 'Birth of Tragedy' with his Dionysac as opposed to Apollonian drama - Dionysis god of madness - women, revelry and the sub-conscious verses the revealed sanitised plasticity of Apollo. Richard Schechner and his group explored this wonderfully in his 'Dionysus 69' - performed in New York at the end of the sixties.

I'm a little out of touch with my material, but an interesting viewpoint, if your interested, would be to look at some of todays prominant PoMo performance artists, like Annie Sprinkleand gauge their views. Routledge have released a pretty comprehensive text- 'The Explicit Body in Performance', I think writen by Rebecca Schneider. [/glow]

[shaxper]

Some excellent resources there. Thank you.


Interestingly, If I remember Nietzche correctly, he argued that one needed a balance of both the Apollian and the Dionyzac to be content and happy. What then would that say about our division of masculine and feminine? Perhaps people cross because men need to be able to express themselves and be emotional and Aquarian, and women need to be the strong, in control, and rational Leos. In a sense, we're forced to be a half of ourselves and only satisfy half of our needs. Perhaps this practie of dividing came into being because it strongly compliments a society that propegates itself through heterosexual marriage. If we can only be half of ourselves, then we must marry "our other half".

[N.N.W]

[glow=red,2,300] hmm... could well be an issue of catharsis - the need to experience the other - alternativly much like the yin and yang, each seperate half contains the genesis of the other...

...saying that... Nietzche could be wrong... just look at that whole facism, 'will to power' malarky...! [/glow]

[Harry]

If I might interject a couple of thoughts:

While I agree that much of what we think of as gender specific is cultural, I suspect there is some innate gender specific bias. I wouldn't care to comment on how much is innate or on specific details that are innate. The problem is that it is impossible to entirely separate the cultural from the innate.

I suspect that the experiences of a woman cross-dressing as a man would be entirely different than those of a man cross-dressing as a woman. This is partially because our society does let women wear men's clothing without shame, but no man can ever wear anything identified as female. I wonder if there is a practical difference in that a woman may have an easier time passing herself as a man than a man passing himself as a woman?

[Juliet]

Great conversation. I'd just like to throw in a little something I heard from Alex Meyers, a transgendered person (born female, passes as male) who did a 60 minutes presentation or what have you on being transgendered.

Meyers switched over in his senior year of high school (in, needless to say, a fairly liberal and supportive school) As a girl, he had been perceived as pushy and a little obnoxious, he said, when he joined hte classroom discussion. As a guy, however, this same agressive intellectualism was perceived more as intelligence, and given more respect.

Meyers hasn't had surgery and doesn't plan to. He dresses and regularly passes as a man, yet, besides a traditionally-more-masculine haircut, has done nothing else especially to pass. He does not introduce himself as male or female, but lets people make what assumptions they choose to make: and assumptions and judgements are made regularly, usually labeling him as a man. But Meyers discovered that he didn't want to be a man: his true identity was as a transgendered person.

His main point, when I heard him speak, was that biological sex is a very different thing from an inner sense of gender, which is what, I think, some of you are saying.

However, he also said, I believe, that a sense of gender is innate, and present from a very young age. He never felt comfortable raised as a girl: he made the analogy of going up to a young child and saying: oh, what a nice little boy/girl you are, if they're a girl/boy. Even at a young age, they'll quickly get annoyed and then quite angry with you. Meyers said that he felt this angry confusion all of his life.

So is gender, while partly societal, also partly intrinsic? With so many cultural biases and individual fluctuations, it's hard to tell. Anybody feel they can pinpoint something to either side?

~Juliet~

[shaxper]

I suspect it's one of those issues where you can never really distinguish between nature and nurture. I'm definately male in terms of sex, but there are many aspects of my persona that might be construed as feminine, and I suspect this comes from being raised by a single mother. Who can say?