Each and every day most of us both consciously and subconsciously perform gender in a specific way. But what does that really mean? When we think of performance, we tend to think of a stage performance, movie, or concert; someone or several people learning to portray something in a certain way for the benefit or entertainment of an audience. In my life, I have performed many carefully crafted, rehearsed, and executed performances using a French horn. I have performed carefully choreographed and sharp drill routines as a member of my high school JROTC program (eons ago). Both of these speak to what we would classically call a performance. Days, weeks, months, even years of work put in to both discover oneself as well as (and perhaps more âimportantlyâ) entertain or benefit the observer.Â
In much the same way, if not exactly the same way, we perform our genders. Society tells us what is expected within a gender binary, how to dress, what to say, how to act, how to present oneself all of which is done for the benefit of others. Sure, many of us get satisfaction out of the way we, ourselves, perform gender, but not all of us. Some of us do not like the idea of constantly performing to appease a rigid binary constructed by a society that requires of us a certain order.Â
Throughout our lives we are taught how to perform gender in much the same way a musician is taught how to perform. Early on we use easily comprehensible symbols to distinguish an either/or in the form of shapes and colors meant to show a distinction between boys and girls; this provides the foundation for expanding upon conformity into which ever category one is placed. In music one must comprehend the basics in order to perform; one must be able to hear differences in pitch, tone, rhythm, timing, and volume before one can begin to read or play music. The musical foundation, like the gender foundation, is the spring board through which we learn certain ways of doing things. Though we are permitted far more choice in music performance, the way in which we learn to perform is not dissimilar from any other way we learn to perform. The musician listens to others who have come before them to help understand the basics, the musician is instructed by prior performances as much as the teacher. With gender we see and are told by âteachersâ how to distinguish this from that and are essentially forced to work on a performance in one way or the other.Â
The musician practices by reading music, listening to music, and playing music to themselves. Gender is practiced by observing how to âproperly performâ, by listening to others tell us how to act and dress, and by privately working these things behind closed doors to ourselves. The musician is trained in their art by following both the strict rules of music itself (music theory) and the precedent of those who have come before (think genres of music performed in certain ways). Gender is trained by parents and peers and carries great consequences if not done correctly.
Of the two it is gender that carries the harshest penalties for a bad performance. While my personal experience in music has shown me how much a bad performance can hurt, it is gender performance that can hurt more and in multiple ways. For example, the last time I played a French horn was my final semester at EKU, I bombed my solo performance at the end of the semester for my final grade and was so embarrassed that I stopped 2/3 of the way through and burst in to tears as I hurried off the stage and out of the music building. I was devastated, too embarrassed to talk to my professor, sold my French horn the following week, and regrettably turned away from music. To this very day I am still heartbroken over how music died for me. This, however, pales in comparison to what a âbadâ gender performance can look like. For some, not conforming to societyâs gender binary can result in harm or death; for others forced conformity can gnaw at oneâs very existence tearing them apart inside themselves.Â
Ironically it is music that is seen as an art rather than a science, whereas gender is often mistakenly said to be a science and not an art. Through my experience, though, music is science whereas gender ought to be seen as art. By this I mean, musical creativity is beautiful and its beauty can be scientifically measured, despite the inherent subjectivity of music. Music exists within certain rules that can be bent to a certain extent, but deviation outside of some rules is objectively bad however experimentation outside the rules of music is not only acceptable but is encouraged in many ways. Gender, on the other hand, is not science and ought to be seen as art. By this I mean gender cannot be quantified or empirically measured like music is bound by scientific rules of a paradoxically objective nature. Though musical taste is subjective, music itself can be objectively bad if it deviates from the rules, and it is easy to tell even for someone who had never heard music. Gender, on the other hand must be taught through socialization in order to form an artificially objective framework masquerading as subjectivity. The social artifice of gender pretends to have objective rules governing a binary that benefits those outside of the body. These rules are âobjectiveâ only because society pretends they are objective. From where I sit as I write this, I believe that gender, if it must exist, should be seen as subjective and open to interpretation and creativity. Gender, like music, is performed for the benefit of others, but unlike music gender is seldom performed for the benefit of oneself. The musician gains many internalized benefits from performing music, even if it is without an audience. The musician gets the benefit of creative expression, creativity of sound and construction, and greater curiosity about more than just music which feeds itself to grow even further. All of this can be done for the benefit of others. Gender, on the other hand, has been built up as a pillar of social structure and as such oneâs performance is designed to make others feel more comfortable around them. There are scant internalized benefits beyond mere survival that I have been able to discern from gender performance. But that kinda says it all, doesnât it? The greatest benefit one can derive from good gender performance is survival. Sure, performing gender can have great internalized benefits for some of us. There is nothing inherently wrong with loving the way your makeup looks or how a pair of jeans fit on you; in many instances these simple things can be extremely validating and make you feel amazing. The larger issue is that there is pressure from society to look one way or the other in the first place. This isnât to say that we shouldnât derive any benefits from conforming to a social artifice, but we ought to take a step back and understand why and how we arrived in a situation where these things are important.Â
Some days I canât stand what I see in a mirror; I detest compliments affirming my outward performance... They say a musician is their own harshest critic, and while I can absolutely confirm that this is the case, it is worth noting that despite societyâs expectations we can often be our own harshest critic when it comes to our gender performance. In general we donât go out of our way to hurt musicians for their performances (not to say this doesnât happen), but society both at an individual and civilization level has few qualms about going out of its way to assail those who perform gender poorly; only âcorrectâ gender performances are praised, and even then at its root gender performance primarily serves the observer.
Though I didnât specifically engage with the readings from this unit, this long line of thinking has its roots in Dean Spadeâs 2000 article, âMutilating Genderâ and especially Judith Butlerâs â88 piece âPerformative Acts and Gender Constitution: An Essay in Phenomenology and Feminist Theoryâ.
