am i even real? for_A4CT_journal
Am I truly seeing something here, or am I just too safe and jobless, as my mom would say, and started to ponder on the concepts that have no real meaning or relations with reality?
Even if that second paradigm is true, who was jobless and safe enough back then to establish the binary, heteronormative frameworks of what we define as ‘a man’ and ‘a woman’? (It is a rhetorical question, of course.) And moreover, what about all the intersex people who somehow fall into neither of the categories? What about Imane Khelif who was so brutally taken apart by the Olympic committee and the media, just for falling out of those rigid binarities? And what is there so enticing in constant structuring, defining and categorization of things that continue to prove themselves to be uncategorizable?
I keep pondering on the analogies of language and science, but cannot quite grasp what’s in them that bothers me so much.
Language is a completely human invention, it is a system that doesn’t exist before we postulate it. It’s fluid and can be bent according to our needs. Though I remember all the fights in the russian segment of the internet about the use of feminitives. Russian language is extremely gendered, and most non-service professions there are conveniently masculine. Author, editor, designer, director, animator, copywriter, doctor, psychiatrist. Some people, including me, have trained themselves to add a feminine suffix -ка to those words, some people use it with a gender gap in writing: автор_ка (author), дизайнер_ка (designer), thus making the feminine-sounding version their default.
However, even now, though this suffix, its usage, and gender gaps are not at all new, the media and individuals that use them keep getting ridiculed for this sole reason.
Butler writes: “Consider also Wittig’s argument that the category of sex is, under the conditions of compulsory heterosexuality, always feminine (the masculine remaining unmarked and, hence, synonymous with the ‘universal’).” (Butler, 1990, p.24-25)
Thus, the entirely human invention that would not exist without us perpetually using it, that in reality serves a bigger need <for communication>, and sometimes falls flat even within its direct purpose, is somehow estranged from its initial quite trivial function. When language in our minds transcends functionality, it becomes a part of objective reality, of nature, that unexplainable nature that could have only been created by some higher power.
I find Russian fights about feminitives to be a very peculiar case of how language and gender blend together in people’s minds into some universal, continuous/stable and untouchable (as they’re created by some higher power) concepts that can be compromised, insulted, even dirtied by improper use.
Language is not real until we make it such, but nature is.
It is something we can observe, feel and touch, and humankind as a whole seems more open to the idea of also changing and affecting the parts of nature that surround us, rather than ourselves.
We treat ourselves simultaneously as any other species – categorizing into the divisions that only matter to us, – but also with way more negligence. We’re afraid to question ourselves as humans as much as we can dissect other species. I guess it comes from the religious reverence we possess towards the human body and soul, and I guess that’s what would lead us to the downfall. We cannot move forward unless we accept inherent intersections and contradictions that come with being a part of this world, a part of nature, a part of humanity.
‘...the notion that sex appears within hegemonic language as a substance, as, metaphysically speaking, a self-identical being. This appearance is achieved through a performative twist of language and/or discourse that conceals the fact that “being” a sex or a gender is fundamentally impossible.’ (Butler, 1990, p.25)
We cannot play-pretend any longer that gender, sex and sexualities are as rigid as we define them, that they’re, in the first place, not entirely constructed by our imagination.
Though, I have so much fear in regards to the potential subversion of the norms. Conveniently, what is the most visible is also the most plausible within the heteronormative hegemonies. I’m afraid that what’s currently happening within the Western queer community are the same effects of late capitalism that could be observed in most other areas of life.
‘Through repetition within commodity culture where <it> carries market value’ (Butler, p. xxi), the whole substance of ‘subversion’ of normativity becomes obsolete. The commodification and appropriation of marginalized identities is equal to the effects of colonization, when authenticity is being forced into frameworks so foreign that it in turn creates simulations (Baudrillard, 1981) of itself to survive.
Drag does not equal RUPAUL’S DRAG RACE ITEMS IN FLYING TIGER COPENHAGEN with landfill-core-styled neon pink makeup boxes and glittered fedoras that were probably produced by someone who doesn’t have safe working conditions, and that’s the best case scenario; queer pride does not equal ‘Helsinki pride’ that erases Palestinian flags from their photos; tolerance does not equal a light scolding of a working active Finnish MP who categorized certain classes of immigrants as ‘sub-humans’, from his other colleagues.
What concerns me is that it has been continuously proven that as long as something desires publicity and visibility, it gets simulated by the capital and its meaning and intentions are stripped away. I believe that what we really yearn for is the actual power-to-be, which, yes, in turn has to be acknowledged and visible to be real; however, the power-to-be can only be taken forcefully, otherwise it is only a parody, a simulation that is produced by the power to which we appeal. Heteronormativity is a part of this power, it is omnipresent and sticky, and it penetrates every aspect of Western society and politics starting from the very beginnings: language.
I can forcefully take and have anything and not be of any gender, sex and sexuality. I reject them, and I appropriate them <back> from binarity, because I have that power, and everyone else has. It is not anything to be performed in search of validation, as it is not being. Being is imposed by heteronormativity, within which we pretend to be, perform to be.
I would argue that my own ‘non-binarity’ is not that of the ‘non-binarity’ on the spectrum between a man and a woman. By calling genderlessness, or being -non-gendered- as ‘non-binary’, we inherently imply binarity as something default. The lack of something (= binarity and concrete definitions) is also a substance in itself, maybe more fluid than what we’re used to, but nevertheless concrete. I am not on any spectrums, as their opposite ends do not exist. I am not a being of some gender, gender is something I can possess. I possess the lack that is so thick that it now carries the essence. I am not a counterform, I am not a negative space, as they imply the existence of form and ‘positive’ space. I possess the suffix -ка until it becomes the norm. I am not ma 間, I am not the emptiness full of possibilities, I am just full.
And I’m also just too lazy to perform.
References:
Butler, J. (1990). Gender Trouble: Feminism and the Subversion of Identity. Routledge.
Butler, J. (2004). Undoing Gender. Routledge.
Baudrillard, J. (1981). Simulacra and Simulation. University Of Michigan Press.
this piece was written for A4CT online journal.