where is neutral?

This is a bit of a stream of thoughts that has come out of a series of ...”heated discussions”… with someone close to me, perhaps someone could offer some insight?

After a fairly prolonged period of preferring to dress more androgynously - kind of a mixture between a little bit baby-dykey and scabby-student, i started to have a bit of a longing to dig out all my old corsets, netting skirts and punk-rock buresque clothes that had been residing in the back of my cuboard for the most part of a year. For the ‘female’ bodied, or those that are usually read as female by the outside gaze – the queer negotiation of femininities can be a bit of a minefield in the juncture between public sex/gender discourse and queer identities and politics. I’ve been having a bit of a problem with this recently, I never really thought about it before – I just dressed how I wanted to dress, played with my look and thought ‘fuck it’, but recently the critiques of certain parts of my gender expression have meant I’ve had to confront the politics of my ‘femme’ side, or as I refer to it, my ‘drag-queen’ side. I go through phases, my gender identity is pretty fluid and I don’t really feel like I do – or should- have to - settle in one place in particular, but traversing the arenas between androgyny, trying to ‘pass’ as a guy and being exaggerated-ly female has brought up some pretty problematic ideas about female-body-female-identity-performance is still read, even in some places within the queer community (to homogenise a bit :o)…).

Femininity is problematic. Decades of feminist deconstruction makes that blindingly obvious. However, focusing only of the socialisation of females makes embodying femininity in a political manner rather difficult. Femininity is often conceived of as the embodiment of ‘false’ (im not talking from academia now here, but from experience of the conversations I’ve had), the embodiment of things learned, socialised, performed. In order to perform femininity we take on actions, we limit our behaviours, we control and regulate, we add – we adorn, decorate, paint and manipulate our bodies. If we state this, we fall prey to seeing masculinity as neutral, and as somehow more ‘natural’, and again, somehow ‘better’ that femininity. If we do this we lose sight of how masculinity is as much of a construction as femininity, as in need of adornments, corporeal manipulation and regulation as femininity – but importantly, in ways that appear in our culturally conditioned consciousness’ as more respectable, less fake. If we make these assumptions, we still find ourselves thinking in binary terms, and still positioning femininity as lesser in that binary.

Negotiating queer femininities is in no way an easy ride. Even when you see both binary sections as intrinsically constructed, as performed as each other – it doesn’t end there. Negotiating femininities is fraught with all the stuff that comes with it. How do you embody something about the fun of femininity - perhaps in an extravagant way – that is sex positive, and can openly display signs or an ironic subversion of traditional aspects of feminine sexuality in a positive light- without stumbling into that quagmire of being overly-sexualised and positioning yourself into that heteronormative fantasy of female-object, sexually available FOR consumption by the masculine patriarchal gaze. There is a thin line between being able to play with overt sexuality and exaggerated femininity, and the self-sexualisation (however non-intentional) that places you in the public view as right up there with burlesque style playboy models and the mannequins in the front window of Ann Summers. Mostly, the line can only be drawn in our own heads and in the heads of those who know us, our identities, our genders and our politics. Overt female sexuality still has a long way to go before we can be comfortable that our expressions won’t be re-appropriated into mainstream meta-narratives of female objectification. And for me, and I’m sure I’m not alone, it’s an uncomfortable place to stand. If you decide to brave on through it, it quickly becomes tiring to keep having to patiently explain/argue/shake someone and scream ‘no – it’s not meant like that’.

To return to taking about what it takes to negotiate “femininities”, I don’t see why make-up, corsets, hold-ups, glitter (with of course, for me, a good measure of doc martins, dread Mohawk and an abundance of body hair) should be read as anything but fun. I’ve fought for a long time to shake off my hang ups about my body, and I don’t see why showing parts of my body should be sexualised – to me my thighs and breasts are no more sexual than my arms and feet (and of course once, these too were considered highly sexual to show), but I know that they still are, and if I go around with my thighs and tits out, for whatever personal/political reason – it will still be read in that oh-so-pervasive particiarchal sexualising manner. Unfortunately I have no answers, I hope some of you will have some insights… I wish we lived in a world when queer could truly be what you want it to be, where FtF (or Queer-to-F?) personas could be taken as seriously as taking on aspects of masculinity, and where it all could be seen as a part of the same deal. What I don’t want for myself is to abandon femininity – despite it’s history and continuation of association with repression, sexualisation and a lack of agency. I don’t want to have to negotiate my femininity in a way that is more masculine in order to have myself taken seriously – that seems to defeat the object for me. To me, we are not better feminists for abandoning what has been typically resigned to the female in favour of a ‘better’ masculine model. But what is neutral if it is not the “female” embodying “more masculine” traits – and what appears as neutral (i.e. what doesn’t have some symbol of feminine identification) tends to get read as masculine anyway… where does neutral lie if not within masculinity? If it does lie within masculinity, then there is something here we have to address… How do we stop people reading things as “masculine” or “feminine” anyway? In my particular gender identity it’s all kind of like playing dress-up anyway, no matter what I put on. How do people embody queer femininities that could sideline the risk of being objectified and sexualised without your consent – or in a way that you didn’t consent to? That tricky negotiation of how you’re going to be read, because we can never escape being read – and appropriated, is one that has be accounted for, especially (but not only) when we leave the safety of our queer bubbles.