Sara Andreasson’s White Noise was a project that was meant to translate and dismiss the constructs that society has placed on us. She says “White Noise is a norm-critical project resulting in a series of fashion illustrations, through conformity and resistance aiming to expose the hierarchies that quietly shape the grid against which we are inevitably measured.” To me, what better way to celebrate femininity, androgyny, and masculinity, than by recognizing that there is interchangeability in them? It seems, however, that there is a comfort in the ability to separate oneself from one another; the prospect of someone who identifies as male adopting feminine traits and mannerisms is almost an impossibility. Unless that person is a gay man.
It appears as though society will always find ways of twisting queer characters, relationships, and symbolism into still somehow maintaining it’s heterosexuality. What better way of normalizing homosexual relationships than by placing them under the same restraints the plague heterosexual relationships? This in turn relates to Green’s chapter from the book In Unseen genders: Beyond the binaries, where he says “When are we really going to talk about gender? Not until we learn to separate it from the language we have traditionally used to describe it.” (pg. 60)
“Wait, so who’s the guy and who’s the girl?”
Anyone who has been in a non-heterosexual relationship will know the absolute utter fury at being directed that question.You’ll probably also know some other variations of this question, starring, “Who tops and who bottoms?”. Honestly, what is the whole point of being in a non-straight relationship if I am still going to be subjected by labels such as “male” or “female”. And trust me, I am neither. This is not only problematic in terms of stereotyping, but it insinuates that there are differences of power in straight relationships. We all know that the “man” in the relationship will never be in any such vulnerable positions as to lie on his back with his legs spread apart, at least in the biblical sense–It’s funny though, that when I’m on the bus men don’t seem to give a shit if they’re spreading their legs, as long as they can take up three seats and force me stand in the aisle –therefore: queer people cannot be queer if they don’t subject themselves to the same horrific roles that straight people do.
People will always find ways of equating gender to sexuality. Gay men want to be women and gay women want to be men. This both trivializes them as queer individuals and does nothing to challenge the societal roles that are placed on different genders; particularly masculine and feminine. In Peters’s article I was struck and almost offended by the how insistent he is on Wonder Woman as a “gay man in drag”; why does she have to be a model for feminine appropriation when she can be a model of queer relationships in general? If a “gay man” wants to be a woman then it has nothing to do with the sexuality of said person, and everything to do with their gender expression; she is not a “gay man” if she is a woman.
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Green_ArtNatureGender(1)-1 Qu(e)erying Comic Book Culture and Representations of Sexuality i copy
Qu(e)erying Comic Book Culture and Representations of Sexuality i copy