As most of you know, the Rhodes Vagina Monologues are currently going on at Rhodes (there's a show tonight and Saturday night at 7 pm in Hardie, so you should come out!). Despite my involvement with the Vagina Monologues, I have a lot of problems with Eve, her play, and her One Billion Rising campaign. This blog post will be spent laying out my issues with the Vagina Monologues which relate to gender and sexuality. (I have a lot of problems with Eve's white savior mindset, misappropriation of the experiences of indigenous women, carceral feminism, lack of diversity, focus on the body, inclusion of a monologue about rape as a positive experience [note that this is a somewhat misogynistic article, but his criticism about the monologue is decent], use of racist stereotypes, and the blatant existence of heteronormativity. But that's for another class.)
I mentioned my criticism of the monologues briefly in my last blog post, so I thought I'd explain myself here. My main issue with the monologues as it pertains to gender/sexuality comes down to cissexism. Not all women have vaginas, and not all people who have vaginas are women. Placing the emphasis of womanhood on anatomy is super problematic, especially when you claim to be about justice for women and your marketing is discriminatory toward transgender women. (Who just happen to be women!) You cannot claim to be about justice for women when you are truly only focusing on justice for cisgender women.
Equating vaginas with femaleness is what we call gender essentialism, the assumption that gender is a fixed category based on biological fact. As we talked about with the Butler reading, gender is performative, and therefore whether or not you have a vagina has little to do with your gender. And it is wrong to make the argument that this latter generalization is okay simply because most people who have vaginas are women. By doing this, you are erasing a large portion of women's experiences, and you are also calling non-female people women when they may not want to be called that.
After receiving these criticisms of her play, Eve Ensler added a monologue titled "They Beat the Girl Out of My Boy." This monologue is by three trans women, speaking about their experiences being trans. First off, having three women perform the monologue should give the monologue an opportunity to show that not all trans women are the same. Instead, all three women's experiences are almost exactly alike. Each woman decides to get surgery (when not all trans women do), each woman is feminine (not all trans women are), and each woman knew she was trans from a young age (not all trans women know right away). There is also a lot of problematic language in the monologue, as "beating the girl out of my boy" insinuates that there is some boy there in the first place. (Hint: There's not.) The monologue mentions the partner of a woman being murdered for being with her, but it does not mention the ENORMOUSLY high rates of violence against transgender women (especially transgender women of color). 53% of anti-LGBTQ murders in 2012 were committed against transgender women, when these women make up a small proportion of the LGBTQ community. 73% of all anti-LGBTQ murders in 2012 were committed against people of color. These statistics obviously overlap for trans women of color. [x] And including one token monologue about trans women (1) does not solve the cissexism issue and (2) is not even barely inclusive of the variety of experiences of trans women.
Lastly, as my friends are growing sick of hearing from me - Eve, you mean "vulva," not vagina.
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ReplyDeleteLeah,
ReplyDeleteI've got a question: in your critique of Ensler's monologue, "They Beat the Girl Out of My Boy," you take issue with its presumption that there ever exist an essential maleness for transgender women; however, would it be equally incorrect that there ever exist an essential femaleness for transgender woman? It seems like either would be equally essentializing.
Schaeffer - Thanks for your question. This is where I depart from traditional performative ideas about gender. I believe that, in order for a trans person to feel like they're the "wrong" gender, there must be something essential about gender. It obviously isn't biological, but it has to be something else. Because if you're saying a trans woman's femaleness is not essential, you are saying that she chose it. And I can guarantee to you that no trans person chooses to be trans. (They may choose to present as a different gender or identify as trans, but they don't choose their feelings that they are a different gender than the one they have been assigned.) A quote I really like about this comes from Julia Serano, a trans activist who wrote Excluded: Making Feminist and Queer Movements More Inclusive. In this book, she wrote the following:
ReplyDeleteInstead of trying to fictionalize gender, let’s talk about all of the moments in life when gender feels all too real. Because gender doesn’t feel like drag when you’re a young trans child begging your parents not to cut your hair or not to force you to wear that dress. And gender doesn’t feel like a performance when, for the first time in your life, you feel safe and empowered enough to express yourself in ways that resonate with you, rather than remaining closeted for the benefit of others. And gender doesn’t feel like a construct when you finally find that special person whose body, personality, identity and energy feels like a perfect fit with yours. Let’s stop trying to deconstruct gender into non-existence and instead start celebrating it as inexplicable, varied, profound and intricate. So don’t dare dismiss my gender as a construct, drag or a performance, because my gender is a work of non-fiction (Serano).
While I still think that gender is a construct, I believe something else must be there in order for someone to so strongly identify with one gender over another. If gender were simply performative, I don't believe we would have such emotional ties to it. I am obviously still working out my views on this, but this is what I have so far.
Yo, thanks for that response, that was incredibly elucidating. I think what you're getting at resonates with the idea of gender "affirmation" rather than simply gender "performance." Affirmation being "yes-saying" means that feelings/desires/compulsions of gender need not be disputed as voluntary or involuntary, and moreover that such a dispute is totally irrelevant. The point is that one feels as though one should act in some way, and that a) the feeling/desire/compulsion is real and deep and meaningful and b) that every individual's gender affirmation should be respected.
ReplyDelete