bashoGWSS1

The idea of gender as performance resonates strongly with me. Over the past week I have found myself in situations where I have consciously thought of the way I am acting is particularly “girly� or not so. I just bought myself a new bike; it’s a cruiser with a basket and a little bell, and I find myself riding it, chest out, tossing my hair in the wind, thinking, “I feel very pretty riding this hunk of metal.� It wasn’t until Saturday night, though as I was riding home from work through downtown and a group of guys (who I read very consciously as “guys� through their jeans and button down shirts, slight drunken swagger, and buzz cuts) called out “Hey! Nice curves!� I replied thanks, thinking they were talking about my newly acquired, very curvaceous cruiser. Unfortunately the compliment was followed by another’s catcall, and I felt very “girly� in a different, preyed-upon way. I went straight home before going to meet friends for ice cream, took off my boots and jacket, put on a sweatshirt and switched back to my road bike.
This is a direct example of how Butler says we “do� gender, not just individually but within our social culture, and how through interactions, performing gender is perpetuated. I consciously thought of myself as performing “woman� through the way I was acting, and as soon as another person recognized that, I reacted by changing how I was being read.
One thing to point out is that even though I was aware of myself as “girl,� it wasn’t until the point of interaction with another person, that I was acutely aware of being read as such. In other words, I was aware of my performance because it was different than my personal “norm� of Britta;Female. I just got a new bike, I was getting used to its style, enjoying sitting upright, not going so quickly, and yeah, sticking my chest out and tossing my hair. But I didn’t feel like I was performing for anyone, I was just riding my new bike and enjoying it. When the group of guys started the comments, I was cast under the social condition of female. While I was just constructing a performance, the way I was presenting myself led to a situation that made me feel badly and react. I was changing the way I “do� gender. Im not so sure that I was proactively changing the way I performed in order to improve my overall social condition, but I recognized the relationship between my actions and how others were reading me in a real way.
How this relates to the naturalization of gender I am still grappling with. I think the key to changing the social condition of the genders lies in this process, somehow. But this blog entry is already too long, so maybe we’ll try wrestling with that one next week.