When I was getting my Ph.D. in English, my professors tried to pound into my head that gender was a false construct--an act of linguistic performance manufactured by a society hell-bent on dialogic, binary thinking. I didn’t really get it. But a night at Asia SF has convinced me. I mean, most of the “women” weren’t really “gender illusionists,” as the the club advertises; I don’t consider putting on a Tina Turner wig and prancing around to “Proud Mary” to be much of an illusion so much as a bad night at the karaoke bar. But then there was one girl, and...whoa.
The cheekbones! The legs! The lack of an adam’s apple! That was a guy?
I think I need to give the place a wide berth, because “she” could cause me to constantly question what I think I know, and I prefer to think that I sort of know all there is to know about the crying game. It’s an illusion that I’d rather not be stripped from me; I might see beyond the veil of patriarchal gender norms and wind up accidentally getting pregnant.
Never forget the first time I was in an edit bay approving an investigative story. Photographer is showing it to me and it’s full of some of the most gorgeous women you’d ever see. We’re talking supermodel gorgeous. It was only after the story had finished playing that he told me they were all.. uhm… not. Sometimes you just can not tell.
Gender is an act of linguistic performance? Sexy.
I had a sociology professor that was really up on “the fluidity of gender” and “the social construct of sex.”
This was in a class called “Sex and Society” and it was one of the most popular non-core classes at my university. Usually, however, most people would drop the class. They changed the structure of the syllabus so that things like fluidity of gender, transgenderism as well as most forms of fetishism and aberrant sexuality were all in the second half of the class, after the drop date.
I’m amazed how uptight people can be about this sort of thing.
The ladies at Asia SF made me feel homely.
Pants, same thing happened to me in Amsterdam in a bar full of transvestites/sexuals. Me: huge grey sweater & jean. Them: shiny sparkly skinalicious. My gender expression flows through the non-glittery river.
i hate it when i get pregnant.
If the first thing you thought was “the cheekbones,” then you have more to worry about than you think!