The sex and gender question, infiltrating our use of the internet.

Okay, so I know it's not my turn to blog this week, but I can't help sharing this, because I think it's super-relevant to what we were talking about today with the Butler reading.

This is a blog post by someone who uses deviantART, which is a web community where artists can upload their work and share it with others for comment and critique. During the sign-up process, like many other websites, dA asks users to select their gender, either male or female. There were some transgender users who found this extremely offensive, and there was a huge blow-up about it, the details of which are outlined in the post. The fact that there was a huge outcry and debate over the distinction between gender, sex, and the various kinds of genders that people can now identify with, lead dA to change the way it let users display (or not display) their gender, as is explained in dA's CEO's blog post on the subject.

I just wanted to know what you guys thought about the subject. Did the users go too far in assuming that dA was being disrespectful? Did dA go too far in changing their sign-up interface? Or is this all just nuts?

THE UNCANNY!

The caps are definitely warranted on this one, because I just realized that we discussed Judith Butler on the very same day that The Westboro Baptist Church was in town discussing Judith Butler!



I don't know how to reconcile all of this all of us being queer and all of us being made in God's image and all of us being hated by Jesus. Maybe we can use the comments section to do some theorizing?

The Lesbian Body

I took a dean's seminar freshman year called "Sensing Bodily Boundaries" which dealt with a lot of what Judith Butler talks about in the selection we read tonight. I wanted to read a little more in depth, so I found the main textbook we used for the class, "The Body: A Reader," edited by Mariam Fraser and Monica Greco, and thumbed through it.

I found an interesting selection by Barbara Creed entitled "Lesbian Bodies: Tribades, Tomboys, and Tarts" that I thought you guys might be interested in in light of Butler's arguments. It is a little more focused, as it is about lesbianism specifically, but still recalls many of Butler's ideas, namely those about the role of gender performance and gender as an act that is continually repeated.

The selection claims three stereotypes of the lesbian body that Creed argues cannot also be applied to the non-lesbian body, thereby introducing an interesting duality into Butler's arguments about the female gender.

These stereotypes are:

1. The lesbian body as active and masculinized
2. The animalistic lesbian body
3. The narcissistic lesbian body

The active, masculinized body is referred to as the "tribade" by Creed. Tribade is another word for lesbian, as "tribadism" is another word for lesbianism. This stereotype says that these women are actually men trapped in a woman's body, to put it simply. They are the dominant, powerful women...the "tomboys."

The second stereotype, that of the animalistic lesbian body, connects lesbianism with bestiality, and places the lesbian as part of the natural world yet different from those who are "civilized." Therefore, this image is the most closely connected to that of the "Other."

Finally, the third stereotype of the narcissistic lesbian body plays on the natural tendency of women to copy and imitate each other when they are close to each other, creating a "forcefield" of femininity that is impenetrable by men. This idea of the "lesbian double" is threatening to men precisely because it allows no room for them.

I just thought that this selection provided an interesting corollary to Butler's selection from Gender Trouble, as well as some fodder for further thought. Lesbian stereotyping is apparent in all areas of our culture, from television and movies to music and art. I am interested in hearing some examples that you guys can think of!