The Music And The Dance
So this past week I’ve been ill with a really nasty bug - hence the skipped installment.
Hence, also, the fact that I ended up unexpectedly being home for part of the “Dancing With The Stars” season premiere... an unplanned bright stop in my truly awful week. So I figure I'll start there, as I attempt to write something meaningful and understandable in the midst of my fever-dreams and coughing fits.
I’m a fan of ballroom dance. I’ve been intrigued by it since I was a kid. And one of the things that make it so fascinating (besides the fact that it’s simply amazing to watch, when done with great skill) is that it’s one of the most highly gendered art forms around. In fact it might almost be described, with some accuracy, as being basically an artistic portrayal of gender relationships - albeit largely those of a previous century.
I didn’t have words for it, as a kid, but I always knew which half of the duo I identified with. When Danny Kaye swept Vera Ellen off the dance floor to leap and swirl around the pier in “White Christmas”... well, Vera was lovely, to be sure... but in my imagination, I was Danny.
Anyway, I watch DWTS when I get the chance, even though I generally have no clue (and couldn’t care less) who most of the celebrities are... I’m afraid my pop culture knowledge tends more toward the geeky edge than the mainstream, so I’m more likely to be able to name anime characters than pop singers.
But I do recognize a few contestants, here and there - and I found it particularly interesting last year to watch Transgender activist Chaz Bono (who began his life as a little girl named Chastity - talk about a handicap, poor guy!) compete on the show.
Chaz had some surprisingly good moves, but his downfall in the end was that he never really got a handle on just how strongly the dance is powered by the tension of the traditional gender binary. He never learned how to lead - how to “be the guy” of the couple.
While this disappointed me, it didn’t particularly make me question Chaz’s masculinity. After all, there are plenty of guys-born-guys who have trouble getting that part - figuring out how to “be the guy” in the elegant, stilted and artificial formulae of the ballroom. And plenty of women who could do it easily. Because this isn’t about the reality of gender. It’s about the game of gender, a set of social prescriptions acted out in a highly formulaic (if also highly artistic) manner.
This whole socially-constructed game - hell, we might as well just go ahead and call it “the dance of gender” - also fascinates me, and always has. I’ve wrestled all my life with questions about the nature and significance of this metaphorical dance and the realities behind it, trying to find ways of understanding it all that would make sense in the light of my own life experiences and perceptions.
Up until about six months ago, I’d spent literally a lifetime testing claims about the gender I was “supposed to be” against my own sense of self, my own experience of the world. Not surprisingly, they tended to fit badly - in most cases, quite badly indeed. (Those made about the other side often fit quite well, but I wasn’t allowed to consider those as my own.) I made my judgments accordingly - and what I judged was that just about everything I’d ever been told about gender was, to put it delicately, a bunch of hooey... all game and no reality.
To put it another way: I could see the dance that people were doing, but the music driving that dance simply did not drive me. In fact, I couldn’t hear it at all. (More accurately, I suspect I’d blocked it out, because it kept directing me to the “wrong” steps.) After a while, this made me fairly certain that there was no real music, no innate set of gender differences on which the steps of the dance (the rules of the game) were based. Or at least, that whatever miniscule differences might exist must be highly exaggerated in the interpretation.
Thus I’ve spent much of my adult life identifying as Genderqueer, a broadly-defined term used by those who don’t run with the traditional gender dichotomy, for whatever reason. Persons who identify thusly might consider themselves to be neither gender, or both; they might choose to combine or alternate masculine and feminine elements, or stick to androgynous ones, in their presentation and behavior. They see gender boundaries as flexible, permeable, or, in some cases, just plain illusory... faery music, perhaps, spread by will’o’the’wisps.
Sometimes they simply refuse to take gender seriously in any form, and just... play. I have often played gender as the game that I believed it to be, with a spirit of fun and exploration rather than one of conformity to expectation. It’s a game that I highly recommend.
In coming out (to myself and others) as Trans and male, though, I’ve also found to my surprise that there is real music there. It’s more subtle than the dance suggests... in musical terms, it feels to me like a jazz tune being sketched out in minimalist fashion by a three-piece combo (piano, bass, and drums), whereas the dance itself implies a full-on big-band arrangement, including a ten-piece brass section with trumpets blaring.
This makes sense to me, based on how human cultures seem to work. We don’t make up folktales from scratch; rather, we take some small thread of truth and embroider it into a marvelous tapestry. We don’t invent saints and heroes at random; we build them up out of bits and pieces of people we know, polished up and embellished into eminence.
And I don’t think we invented gender, though we’ve certainly used it in ways that have little to do with its underlying realities. The truth of gender, separated from the social magnification field that surrounds and enwraps it, seems to be made up of subtle but significant differences in the ways we interact with and interpret the world and each other. But the game of gender is a rich tapestry of image and function, fashion and philosophy, custom and law. It has been used to empower and disempower, to force both action and inaction, to create and to limit opportunity. It’s a force to be reckoned with, and hence one that we need to question, and keep questioning.
The game of gender can be a delight, as when it directs the beautiful, intricate steps of a dance. And it can be a horror, as when it keeps people trapped in boxes, either because they do not fit the mold, or because they fit it altogether too well.
And that’s one reason why, in coming out as Trans and identifying as male, I haven’t abandoned my earlier designation - I still identify as Genderqueer, too. It’s become a secondary identification, and my understanding of how it fits me has changed somewhat, but it still does fit. Because I still believe that gender can be played as a game - consciously and in a spirit of fun - and that playing it thus can help to make us more aware, more curious, more likely to probe and question the “rules” and to understand that those rules are largely (not wholly, but largely) of our own creation (and that we can therefore creatively alter them). In other words, it helps us to see the difference between the root reality and the game, between the basic tune and the complicated dance that has developed from it.
And after all, I did promise, upon my coming out, that just because I had finally chosen a gender didn’t mean that I was planning to stop being confusing. I remember confessing then to a strong suspicion that, had I been born a cisgender male, I’d totally be a drag queen... and hey, that could still happen. Because I deeply believe in play, and gender is a rich field for play.
One thing’s for sure: one of these days, I have promised myself, I shall learn to ballroom dance. I’ll make you a bet that I'll have no trouble learning to lead, and I shall revel in that role. And then perhaps when I’ve done that, I’ll turn it around and also learn to follow... and in the spirit of play and the sheer celebration of Queerness, hey, maybe I’ll even do it en femme.
I may not be a star, but I bet that’d sell a few tickets. :)
Hence, also, the fact that I ended up unexpectedly being home for part of the “Dancing With The Stars” season premiere... an unplanned bright stop in my truly awful week. So I figure I'll start there, as I attempt to write something meaningful and understandable in the midst of my fever-dreams and coughing fits.
I’m a fan of ballroom dance. I’ve been intrigued by it since I was a kid. And one of the things that make it so fascinating (besides the fact that it’s simply amazing to watch, when done with great skill) is that it’s one of the most highly gendered art forms around. In fact it might almost be described, with some accuracy, as being basically an artistic portrayal of gender relationships - albeit largely those of a previous century.
I didn’t have words for it, as a kid, but I always knew which half of the duo I identified with. When Danny Kaye swept Vera Ellen off the dance floor to leap and swirl around the pier in “White Christmas”... well, Vera was lovely, to be sure... but in my imagination, I was Danny.
Anyway, I watch DWTS when I get the chance, even though I generally have no clue (and couldn’t care less) who most of the celebrities are... I’m afraid my pop culture knowledge tends more toward the geeky edge than the mainstream, so I’m more likely to be able to name anime characters than pop singers.
But I do recognize a few contestants, here and there - and I found it particularly interesting last year to watch Transgender activist Chaz Bono (who began his life as a little girl named Chastity - talk about a handicap, poor guy!) compete on the show.
Chaz had some surprisingly good moves, but his downfall in the end was that he never really got a handle on just how strongly the dance is powered by the tension of the traditional gender binary. He never learned how to lead - how to “be the guy” of the couple.
While this disappointed me, it didn’t particularly make me question Chaz’s masculinity. After all, there are plenty of guys-born-guys who have trouble getting that part - figuring out how to “be the guy” in the elegant, stilted and artificial formulae of the ballroom. And plenty of women who could do it easily. Because this isn’t about the reality of gender. It’s about the game of gender, a set of social prescriptions acted out in a highly formulaic (if also highly artistic) manner.
This whole socially-constructed game - hell, we might as well just go ahead and call it “the dance of gender” - also fascinates me, and always has. I’ve wrestled all my life with questions about the nature and significance of this metaphorical dance and the realities behind it, trying to find ways of understanding it all that would make sense in the light of my own life experiences and perceptions.
Up until about six months ago, I’d spent literally a lifetime testing claims about the gender I was “supposed to be” against my own sense of self, my own experience of the world. Not surprisingly, they tended to fit badly - in most cases, quite badly indeed. (Those made about the other side often fit quite well, but I wasn’t allowed to consider those as my own.) I made my judgments accordingly - and what I judged was that just about everything I’d ever been told about gender was, to put it delicately, a bunch of hooey... all game and no reality.
To put it another way: I could see the dance that people were doing, but the music driving that dance simply did not drive me. In fact, I couldn’t hear it at all. (More accurately, I suspect I’d blocked it out, because it kept directing me to the “wrong” steps.) After a while, this made me fairly certain that there was no real music, no innate set of gender differences on which the steps of the dance (the rules of the game) were based. Or at least, that whatever miniscule differences might exist must be highly exaggerated in the interpretation.
Thus I’ve spent much of my adult life identifying as Genderqueer, a broadly-defined term used by those who don’t run with the traditional gender dichotomy, for whatever reason. Persons who identify thusly might consider themselves to be neither gender, or both; they might choose to combine or alternate masculine and feminine elements, or stick to androgynous ones, in their presentation and behavior. They see gender boundaries as flexible, permeable, or, in some cases, just plain illusory... faery music, perhaps, spread by will’o’the’wisps.
Sometimes they simply refuse to take gender seriously in any form, and just... play. I have often played gender as the game that I believed it to be, with a spirit of fun and exploration rather than one of conformity to expectation. It’s a game that I highly recommend.
In coming out (to myself and others) as Trans and male, though, I’ve also found to my surprise that there is real music there. It’s more subtle than the dance suggests... in musical terms, it feels to me like a jazz tune being sketched out in minimalist fashion by a three-piece combo (piano, bass, and drums), whereas the dance itself implies a full-on big-band arrangement, including a ten-piece brass section with trumpets blaring.
This makes sense to me, based on how human cultures seem to work. We don’t make up folktales from scratch; rather, we take some small thread of truth and embroider it into a marvelous tapestry. We don’t invent saints and heroes at random; we build them up out of bits and pieces of people we know, polished up and embellished into eminence.
And I don’t think we invented gender, though we’ve certainly used it in ways that have little to do with its underlying realities. The truth of gender, separated from the social magnification field that surrounds and enwraps it, seems to be made up of subtle but significant differences in the ways we interact with and interpret the world and each other. But the game of gender is a rich tapestry of image and function, fashion and philosophy, custom and law. It has been used to empower and disempower, to force both action and inaction, to create and to limit opportunity. It’s a force to be reckoned with, and hence one that we need to question, and keep questioning.
The game of gender can be a delight, as when it directs the beautiful, intricate steps of a dance. And it can be a horror, as when it keeps people trapped in boxes, either because they do not fit the mold, or because they fit it altogether too well.
And that’s one reason why, in coming out as Trans and identifying as male, I haven’t abandoned my earlier designation - I still identify as Genderqueer, too. It’s become a secondary identification, and my understanding of how it fits me has changed somewhat, but it still does fit. Because I still believe that gender can be played as a game - consciously and in a spirit of fun - and that playing it thus can help to make us more aware, more curious, more likely to probe and question the “rules” and to understand that those rules are largely (not wholly, but largely) of our own creation (and that we can therefore creatively alter them). In other words, it helps us to see the difference between the root reality and the game, between the basic tune and the complicated dance that has developed from it.
And after all, I did promise, upon my coming out, that just because I had finally chosen a gender didn’t mean that I was planning to stop being confusing. I remember confessing then to a strong suspicion that, had I been born a cisgender male, I’d totally be a drag queen... and hey, that could still happen. Because I deeply believe in play, and gender is a rich field for play.
One thing’s for sure: one of these days, I have promised myself, I shall learn to ballroom dance. I’ll make you a bet that I'll have no trouble learning to lead, and I shall revel in that role. And then perhaps when I’ve done that, I’ll turn it around and also learn to follow... and in the spirit of play and the sheer celebration of Queerness, hey, maybe I’ll even do it en femme.
I may not be a star, but I bet that’d sell a few tickets. :)
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