There is no gender identity behind the expressions of gender... Identity is performatively constituted by the very 'expressions' that are said to be its results. - Judith Butler
I love Judith Butler. I may disagree with her a lot, but what she writes is so brilliant your mouth just gapes open in awe at her transcendence. She's so amazing. I hope to some day be intelligent enough to really "get" what she's talking about.
Last semester, I took my first course in feminist methodology, and was introduced to Butler's work (for the most part, my previous research dealt with public rhetoric and nonsense like that, and having no feminist scholars on the staff of my previous workplace, I was pretty clueless. I was raised to believe I was a feminist, my mother having grown up in Toledo and in Steinem's shadow, but I had no theory background to back up this self-attribution.) Before I had this LJ, I did a lot of writing about gender, and my issues with it. I don't have gender issues personally, but other people have issues with my gender. It's a perception problem. The writing (which I have somewhere, and will put the essays I wrote here if I find them) dealt with the years I've navigated an odd public assumption that people have had since I was in high school. Despite my streak of hypermasculine heterosexuality, a large section of the public believes, upon meeting me, that I'm gay. Once upon a time, this was a problem for me, but around the age of seventeen or so I came to grips with it and laughed it off at the least and took advantage of it at the most.
Yet I'm placed in this section in between; I dress too nice to be a straight guy, but not nicely enough to pass sometimes. I use long sentences and complicated words, but with a deep, robust voice. My previous occupation is almost exclusively staffed by gay men, many of whom to this day refuse to believe I'm straight (to several of their's dismay). Straight folks lift their eyebrow; lesbians glare with distrust. I say with relative assurity that despite my mild-manneredness, I am a silhouette, a cast representation of something, but one that in the right lighting can be both deceptive and threatening.
Regardless of this public (im)perception, I perform me. Tim. I'm fortunate to be someone who really likes me, and continue to float in the in-between despite however long it's been since I last got laid (I quit counting months ago). I still read The Advocate and wear sweater vests and do whatever I'm driven to do, casting whatever public perception of my performative essence might be to the wind.
This all has a point.
Tonight I went looking for a coffee house I'd heard hosts Monday night open mics. I drove up and down Busch Ave. looking for the place, before finding a small building with a bunch of people out front. As I approached the structure, the scent of clove cigarettes confirmed I'd found the coffee shop.
I coughed up six bucks for a bottomless, grabbed the nearest magazine (which happened to be, of course, The Advocate) and took a seat on a sofa near the performance area. It's a cool place, but probably your typical bohemian coffee shop.
I soon realized that, apparently, a necessary quality for a Tampa Bohemian is homosexuality. Every individual in the shop was accompanied by a partner of the same sex. Cool, I thought; as young as the Tampa Bay area might be, it's sadly still Florida, and alternative lifestyles aren't as welcome in public spaces as, say, Ann Arbor or Athens or anywhere else I've lived. (Zanesville notwithstanding.) Yet, despite my choice of reading material, I was in that middle space, marked, with the stigma of a white, straight, male; an icon of the hegemony.
And the lesbians still eyed me suspiciously.
The rest of the night consisted of me slurping down coffee (which was quite good) and listening to the performers (who were quite bad). I decided, after hearing the third atonally-mumbled "song" in a row, that next Monday, I would bring my geetar and rock these people's world.
Then again, as my songs tend to be an outlet for my aforementioned hypermasculine heterosexuality, maybe not.
