“Unsettling Gender”

Ethan Freedman

WMST 202A

Prof. Hill

February 28th, 2021

“Unsettling Gender”

Proposal:

List of Behaviors:

  1. Cisgendered Woman
    1. Wearing dresses, skirts, and loose flowing clothing.
    2. Wearing Makeup
    3. Shaving legs, arms, body hair, etc.
    4. Having neat and kemp and painted nails
    5. Having long hair
    6. Showing midriff
    7. Wearing a bra
    8. Wearing high heeled shoes
  2. Gender Queer:
    1. Dyed hair
    2. Drag
    3. etc.

Top 3 Choices:

  1. Wearing dresses, skirts, and flowing clothing
    1. Mixing it up:
      1. One day a dress
      2. One day a skirt
        1. Long / short
    2. This is the one I want to do.
  2. Painting Nails
    1. Changing the nail color a bunch of times
    2. Painting with stereotypical feminine colors
      1. Pink
      2. Red
      3. Purple
    3. Would be very simple and honestly quite boring
    4. It doesn’t make me uncomfortable at all
    5. I bite my nails so it would eventually need to be done every so often
      1. But maybe that is the point
  3. Wearing makeup
    1. Possible things I could do with this:
      1. Gradual use different forms of makeup until I am fully covered at the end of the project
    2. Would be interesting but wouldn’t really make me uncomfortable
    3. I would not be able to workout with it

Thought Process on First choice: Wearing Dresses, Skirts, and Flowy Clothing

  1. First off, I am super comfortable in my own skin so something like this does not make me uncomfortable at all. But that is just in thought. To pick something like shaving my legs wouldn’t be a very big challenge to me because I can hide them under pants and it doesn't make me uncomfortable. To wear a dress on the other hand is more of an outward expression and performance. This would force me to be seen, looked at, and judged. I know I can take it but it is the route where I would be challenged the most and probably made the most uncomfortable. What I am going to do is combine painting nails with clothing. I am going to start with painted nails for the week as well as a skirt here and there and progress into a skirt more often. I may add in a crop top or something that is further assuming the gender performance I am adopting, but we will see. I will document how it makes me feel as well as how it makes those around me feel. This is going to be the most intriguing part to me. If I am not made uncomfortable by this decision of dressing in “women’s” clothing, I will document what insights I gain about gender and in general. Furthermore, I can note how I am responding to the feminist project and adopting it as well. Overall I am very excited.
  • For the final week, my nails were chipping so I adopted the use of a fragrance/perfume for the rest of the project as my constant variable.

Journal Entries:

  1. February 12th, 2021 (Required)
    1. First off, I am super excited for this project. There is nothing better, in my opinion, than challenging societal normalities and further – pushing yourself out of your comfort zone. There is a term called “negative capability” which means to be comfortable with feeling uncomfortable. With this project, I am looking to exercise my negative capabilities and push myself to be comfortable with the discomfort that might come with performing a different gender. My goal in this project is to progressively get more and more aquanied with different forms of gender expression. Because I have always been very comfortable with my gender, sexuality, and identity, I have opted to exercise an expression that is more gender non-conforming. To start off the process I have painted my nails a nice magenta / dark red color. As it was happening I found it comedic to look at my hands and feel that they are more ‘femenine’ than usual. Being a rowing, my hands are typically callused over and to see paint on the tips of my fingers, feel the smoothness of them, and see color on them while I type this makes me smile. This was certainly an easy start to the project. I plan on adding more non-conforming epressions of gender as the project goes on. One thing I found interesting though was that I had to ask a friend to paint my nails. Zo happily said yes but I was asking because I did not have enough confidence in myself to do it in a way that would look acceptable. This was not a worrisome feeling about whether or not I would look feminine, it was a feeling of worry that was derived from not wanting to look like a child painting my nails. I think I truly wanted to look the part. I wanted to worry about gender expression and not how my nails actually looked in terms of paint coverage or splotches or cracks. Anyways, a little piece that I want to add is that I feel that there is no world where I am performing some aspect opposite to my preferred form of gender expression for the span of two weeks and am not comfortable with it by the end. That is why I feel I need to enact many different manifestations of gender expression. Alright, I am getting really tired and I think I should get ready for bed, but before I go, a fear I have is what will my rowing team think of my nails? I guess I will share how they felt and how I felt about them on here soon. Signing off - Ethan.
  2. February 13th, 2021
    1. Today was a rather interesting day because I didn’t really have to get dressed up in order to perform my temporary gender. Well at this moment it is a temporary form of gender expression, but who knows? Anyways, I woke up and my nails were painted and this is the interesting part. I very very quickly noticed that when I would converse with people, I could easily see zo making their way down to my finger nails. It did not make me uncomfortable, but I for some reason found myself telling zos that I have my nails like this for a project. I am writing this down because the goal that I have adopted for myself throughout the day is to not try and justify myself. Instead I am going to be like “oh these bad boys” and then be like, “yah I don’t know, I just felt like it”. Anyways, I am getting to the point where I am ready to add something new to the project. I think I may wear a skirt or something soon but I have to look at the weather. It is fucking cold here in Hamilton. But perhaps I will wear some sort of makeup if there is a week before there is warm weather.
  3. February 15th, 2021 (Required)
    1. I decided that the 14th wasn’t exactly worth journaling as I didn’t leave my room at all as I was doing work. As an update, I am still sitting here with my nails painted. I am continuing to feel comfortable in my skin and have gotten used to the layer of paint that sits at the tips of my fingers. If I think about the idea of performing gender, I am realizing that this is a symbolic practice of gender. This means that what I am doing is only a microcosm of what gender actually is. Yes it is performative but it goes way beyond just painting your nails or performing differently of your identifying gender. At rowing today, I felt everyone of my teammates looking at my fingers and instead of hiding it I kept them out. The most telling thing that happened to me so far was that I was having a conversation with another rower and zo said to me.,“you seem like you are friends with a lot of girls.” I had asked zo why and zo said, “I am not sure how you identify, gay or straight or other or what, but you strike me as someoen who is friends with girls.” Zo followed up by saying zo was too, however, not before acknowledging my nails. This made me think that the littlest of expressions on a person leads to the assumption of gender, sexuality, and identification. However, it also showed me that this is the tip of the iceberg and that is how performing gender is a microcosm of what gender actually is,
  4. February 19 and 20th, 2021 (Required)
    1. The past two days have been incredibly tough for me. I started out wearing eyeliner as well as painted nails on Friday. My goal here was to put on makeup and perform rather nonbinary by also dressing in my typical “masculine” clohting. This is how i expressed myself when I went to my first in-person chemistry class. Something that I learned these two days from this project is the effects that performing your gender has on first impressions. This being my first semester on campus and the first time that many people have seen me, spoken to me, or even felt my presence, all I am practically doing is making first impressions. When asking for help to get my eyeliner put on, one student said to me aren’t you afraid of being seen as gay (he knows that I have a girlfrined) and I said NO. Then zo said that zo couldn’t help me because zo had an essay. As time passed, I reached out to some other people who I assumed would have eyeliner and zo helped me. This was a fun process as I have only gotten my makeup done for TV episodes and never for the sake of doing it. The dabbing and the massaging of the eyes was very meditative and relaxing. I almost fell asleep, but not before I thought about the fact that I couldn’t even do my own makeup. I tried to do it before I reached out for any help but it didn’t go too well. There was a piece of me that was like: I am thankful I don’t want to or feel the need to take the time out of my day to do all this work and make myself appear more attractive. But then I was like, this is the side of gender being a performance, I changed it to I am thankful that I don’t want this for myself because it seems like a bit of a hassle. The next day was a friday and I had gone to a little common room party (no substances of course), but I had gone to dinner with eyeliner and then to the party. At the party, these two zos took off my eyeliner and redid my makeup with bright blue and white eyeshadow. It was honestly great work that zo did. However, at this covid safe gathering, I felt people looking at me. I wasn’t ashamed of how I looked, wore it confidently, and happily, but as I was walking through a hall to get to my common room something happened. A girl that I was walking by dropped her jaw wide open and stared at me in complete aborrence – or so it seemed. I asked her what zo was thinking and zo said nothing. It was at this moment where I began to get sad about the fact that I am at a new school with new people who do not know me one bit and zos are getting the first impression that I am someone I am not. BUTk, then I realized who the FUCK wants to be friends with people that judge you based on how you look and not who you are. This was a journal entry that was quite therapeutic.
  5. Sunday, February 21, 2021 (Required)
    1. Copied from my physical Journal: It has been a week since I started this journey of actively performing gender. For me, this means it has been a week since I painted my nails. While I did do some makeup things here and there, this was the starting act for my performance (haha). BUT I am tired of it now. It didn’t bother me one bit to have my nails painted. In fact I very much liked it. I would have picked a different color from dark dark red because it did give off this look of dark and depressing, but it was pretty fun. I had a lot of people commenting on my nails saying zo thought it was cool and one even took my hand to look at them. It sparked conversation and got a lot of respect. Furthermore, I was trying out for the rowing team along this process and I feared a lot about the toxic culture of a men’s sports team, however, I realized that I did not need this fear for the rowing team. Zos were incredibly supportive of the nails and I didn’t even feel the need to tell zos that it was a women’s studies project. This was something I was adamant about because I realize if I refused to say why I am actually wearing nail polish, makeup or later on a skirt, then this might make me more uncomfortable and it did. Because of rowing, I found my nails to be chipping very very quickly and so I think I need to switch up what I am constantly doing. For the next week, I have asked my neighbor to let me borrow her perfume. I am going to wear it at different strengths depending on what I am wearing that day. The more masculine performing I am, the stronger the perfume I will be wearing, the more femenine, the less. On wednesday, I plan on wearing my skirt with strong amounts of perfume to really test the feminine performance. So we will see. I am excited.
  6. Monday, February 22, 2021
    1. Today was a unique day for the project because there were a lot of people coming up to me telling me: first off that I smelled really good, and second, why are you wearing perfume. My responses were something along the lines of “thanks” and “why not, it smells good and I want to smell good.” I say that it was a unique day for the project because it was my first real moment of wearing perfume in public. WHAT THE FUCK IS THE DIFFERENCE BETWEEN PERFUME AND COLOGNE. THERE IS LITERALLY NONE! THE NAMES ARE JUST MASCULINE AND FEMININE. FUCK IT IF I WANT TO SMELL LIKE VANILLA ONE DAY AND PINE TAR THE NEXT! Anyways I just realized that stigma and I am not a fan. It seems so toxic for someone to tell someone zo can’t smell like vanilla if it is perfume, but when zo is wearing vanilla cologne zo is fine. I am more of a fan of the word fragrance. Very gender neutral there. By the way, today was a strongly scented day and I found myself getting a bit of a headache because when I wear my fragrances I do it at an incredibly small amount. Moments where I am stuck in an elevator with an overly scented human tend to make me really nauseous and I don’t need to make anyone nor desire to make anyone feel that way at all. At the end of the day, I haven't noticed anyones engagement with me to be any different. I feel like zos just commented on how I may smell nice and left it at that. I would say that tomorrow, when I wear my skirt, it will be a bit different.
  7. Wednesday February 24, 2021 (Required)
    1. So today was the second day of me wearing a skirt/dress and my goodness was it fun. Let me start off with the context of tuesday, I had asked my neighbor if I could borrow a long skirt from zo and zo said yes, however all zo had was a leopard print skirt. All I could think to myself is, “this is perfect, you wanted to go all out now do it” So on tuesday, I tried to do my best impression of a California flower girl with a light tucked in t-shirt and boots. I think I killed it but that's just my opinion. There was one experience where I was walking through the halls of my dorm and my neighbors asked me to stop for a minute and do a spin. Zos legitimately thought I looked good and one said I looked “kinda sexy.” This was too much confidence of an identifying man to have in a skirt, but I fucking loved it. I felt like Harry Styles on the cover of vogue. But this was Tuesday; Wednesday had its own moments. It had happened to be that tuesday I had not seen my roommate at all while I was wearing a skirt. Meaning from the moment I left while zo was asleep in the morning to the moment I arrived back at my dorm and was in bed going to sleep, zo had no idea that I wore a skirt. Now zo is from an entirely different culture and continent where a man wearing something like this could be perceived differently. This is the most uncomfortable moment of the project. Middle of the day today, I walked into the dorm room with my skirt on. Today, I had some great looking boots with the same leopard print skirt and now tucked in a grey shirt. I was sporting the look and I knew it but when I walked into the dorm room my roommate paused and said “what the fuck are you wearing bro”. My response was simple “a skirt, why do you not like it”. Silence fell upon us and then zo said “you look like a girl” and I started to challenge him about that. I asked him, “does that make you uncomfortable” and zo fell silent again. That is when I left the room because I actually had to go to this class (women’s studies). It was a weird feeling that I thought about on my walk to class because I genuinely felt uncomfortable. I had had a good day in the skirt getting lots of support and compliments and then the roommate I have, the person I go to sleep 5 feet away from and spend my time living with, was judging me, actively, the most. It is the closest glimpse that I have right now to a person who actively expresses zo selves in this way and how zos may be mistreated and often are.
  8. Friday February 26, 2021
    1. Today was my last day of the assignment and this one is short as It is basically what I am going to write all about, but the experience changed how I view myself, gender, and actively expressing gender. I am at a loss of words for how pushing yourself to do something uncomfortable for two weeks will place you into the shoes of someone else. It was a great experience.

The Toxicity of a Binary Society: A reflection on the Project “Unsettling Gender”

For the last two weeks, I have been tasked with something seemingly simple: to challenge my understanding of how I perform my own gender. As a white cisgender male, lucky does not begin to describe my position in life. Not only have I felt like a male in society, but I have led the world to believe  I am one. The reality of this is society's conceptions of gender expression have seemingly been helpful and harmless, but they have actually created societal norms of body politics and gender expression that inflict an unimaginable harm on society and advance the patriarchy.

In Judith Butler’s presentation on “Your Behavior Creates Your Gender”, zo prescribes that the reasons I have led the world into believing I am a man is because gender is “performative” and “it produces a series of effects” (Butler, 2011).  For years, neon Nike outfits resembled something more than my parents letting me pick my own outfits – it was helping people understand I identify as a boy. But this is why I am lucky! I am a boy and was able to present myself this way, but for Audrey Mason-Hyde, a non-binary assigned female at birth (AAFAB) and speaker on “Toilets, bowties, gender and me”, it is incredibly complicated. Expressing zoself in a way society views as more masculine: short hair, pants, and bowties, Mason-Hyde says zo felt “alienated” from society (Hyde, 2018). How could one not feel this way when the first thing people do when zos meet you is subconsciously determine your biological gender as your identity. Mason-hyde says “we assume what gender someone is based on how zo looks, and if we can’t tell, we get confused” (Hyde, 2018) It is the binary society has been built on and seemingly thrived on, but it covers the truth up.

Through this project, I have done my best to alter my conceptions of what it means to identify as male. Having painted my nails, worn makeup, and dressed in skirts, I have come to the conclusion Toni Cade, author of “On The Issue of Roles” came to: “we need to let go of all notions of manhood and femininity”(Cade; p. 125). I know, it's a riveting conclusion! However, the truth of the matter is societal body politics and the viability of certain bodies should not be regulated. The patriarchal society says masculinity must be, for example, “aggressive” while femininity is to be “emotional”  (C; p. 124). When these performances switch, society ostracises the exerciser and calls them a “bitch” or a “fagot” (C; p. 124). While both would be considered negative, the patriarchy values aggression over emotional and places men in a position of power.

This concept is only the basis of the “gender conflict theory” described in “Theories of Gender” which says gender is a structural system that distributes power and privilege to some and disadvantages to others (Crash Course; 2017). When expanded further, the societal expectations of masculinity and femininity end up putting people at more of a disadvantage than just being misgendered. How we perform our gender is just the start. It goes as far as to cause those who do not identify with the social norms to cover, conform, and often disappear from society's view.

Word Count: 540

Bibliography

  1. Theories of Gender: Crash Course Sociology #33. Accessed February 28, 2021. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CquRz_cceH8.
  2. Judith Butler: Your Behavior Creates Your Gender | Big Think. Accessed February 28, 2021. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Bo7o2LYATDc.
  3. Toilets, Bowties, Gender and Me | Audrey Mason-Hyde | TEDxAdelaide. Accessed February 28, 2021. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NCLoNwVJA-0.
  4. On the Issue of Roles, Toni Cade Bambara, 1970