Re: [-empyre-] cultural genitals

[Christina McPhee <christina112@earthlink.net>]

(quote from an internet ad, observed by Michele).

> > "Lesbian
> > Antique Real Photograph Kissing" but then notes
> > "Lesbian (?) two girls (?) kissing!  On a boat with
> > Teens type bathing suits.  The more colorfully dressed
> > person on left is of indeterminate gender as far as I
> > can judge.  Returnable if you can prove other than my
> > title" (2006).


Real LIfe! returnable if you can prove otherwise!


The ad reminds me, Conor, of Joyce's Ulysses,  Bloom as an adman  
(Plumtree's Potted Meats, etc).

"Bare Life!  returnable if you can prove otherwise!"

Dirk thinks of going
> straight to the bare artist and her right to claim the
> title without the usual vestiments, the torn off shirts and  
> trousers of
> former appearances

Is  this   'straight to the bare artist'   (straight or queer)  a  
surmise that anybody could actually catch a bare live one, her torn  
shirts tattered at her feet in a tangle, her hair wild?

  (Or are we in the forest of Arden).


There is no 'bare artist;''  I am just trying to figure out how to  
say something about this.  (nor bride stripped bare)


"They saw a naked woman running at night..."  (Calvino)


Hoping to erase gender-ed self by changing names,  I was  eight,  in  
second grade when I said I'd be called henceforth "Chris".    I  
thought,  if I could do this the name would make a space for art  
work, by being inside or wearing a boy's or anyway ambiguous name.  
The wearing would create a space around.   The name stuck for about  
twenty years.


 Some years after graduate school, when I reclaimed my full first  
name as a professional name, it was a kind of torture,   antagonizing  
the old child=bred desire to displace and hide,  but i did it anyway.
I guess I thought it'd make me bare, or seeable as I 'am' .  And,  
hedging bets, also thought, it'd be a nice 'cover':  taking-up of my  
'real' name was a new 'mode', maybe even pret a porter.

Under my new old name  I  found I was even more acutely seen as doing  
--- what  Michele writes of here:  Women
> performing many of the aspects of "man" indicate and
> provide a critique of how the role is produced.
 Not conscientious about this production, nor even, often conscious.

Apparently  the 'feminine' persona tagged to 'artist'   shifting  
target  apart from whether or not I was deliberately trying to create  
a critical position about gender;

It's strange how  the over=writing onto that persona  attributes of  
gender  gave a kind of a subversive dodge , in the present case, into  
online media.

I am not totally sure why this is.   Perceived as persisting, in  
'doing a man's job'  could  my persona / aka work  not be completely  
eviscerated, because the "critique of how the role is produced" was  
always right there? alongside the confused presence of inarticulate  
queries ,  'who is that woman / is she a man? if she's a woman / how  
could it be she /who made that work of art?'


 Recast online in new media,   I'd see through / be 'seen'

Like,
> > "Lesbian (?) two girls (?) kissing!

the real me kissing the persona me

   But not one anybody 'watching' online could ever know (as in  
'know' a woman  = rape a woman).   The audience might hunt but it  
would never be able to catch and trap the bare life.

 47REDs:  http://naxsmash.net/47reds/47redshift.html

They saw a woman running at night

through an unknown city;

she was seen from behind, with long hair,

and she was naked.

They dreamed of pursuing her...



from "Invisible Cities"





-cm





>

Michele writes:
> Alisa Solomon indicates that butch performances can be
> the "most dangerous queer image" because they
> challenge normative gender and sexuality. Women
> performing many of the aspects of "man" indicate and
> provide a critique of how the role is produced. The
> confusion of identification is visceral when the eBay
> seller photoguyred describes an image as "Lesbian
> Antique Real Photograph Kissing" but then notes
> "Lesbian (?) two girls (?) kissing!  On a boat with
> Teens type bathing suits.  The more colorfully dressed
> person on left is of indeterminate gender as far as I
> can judge.



On Jul 12, 2006, at 2:41 PM, Michele White wrote:

> I found Susana's discussion of the ways viewers
> engaged with images of veiled bodies quite
> interesting. I think we could push their readings and
> incorrect attributions even further. Such cultural
> presumptions about sex suggest the general belief in a
> set of coherent attributes for male/masculinity that
> is different than the attributes for
> female/femininity. While gender and sex are supposed
> to be different, we often "see" real sex below the
> constructued aspects of gender. Nevertheless, gender
> and sex identifications are usually based on readings
> and assumptions rather than proof—and what would this
> proof be? Emily Martin, Anne Fausto-Sterling, and
> other science studies scholars indicate how the
> biological and fleshy aspects of sex are also
> constructed and medically produced. This makes the
> distinctions between gender and sex messy and perhaps
> counter-productive. People rarely see the genitals of
> other individuals that they have accepted as
> "biological" men or women. They also rarely considered
> the possibility that there is an array of genital
> variations.
>
> Alisa Solomon indicates that butch performances can be
> the "most dangerous queer image" because they
> challenge normative gender and sexuality. Women
> performing many of the aspects of "man" indicate and
> provide a critique of how the role is produced. The
> confusion of identification is visceral when the eBay
> seller photoguyred describes an image as "Lesbian
> Antique Real Photograph Kissing" but then notes
> "Lesbian (?) two girls (?) kissing!  On a boat with
> Teens type bathing suits.  The more colorfully dressed
> person on left is of indeterminate gender as far as I
> can judge.  Returnable if you can prove other than my
> title" (2006). These moments of failed identification,
> with the need for constant contextualizing question
> and exclamation marks, suggest that clothes make the
> man and the woman but that the genitals and shapes
> beneath these clothes can be complicated. At such
> instances and when Susana's viewers get sex
> identification wrong, the functioning of cultural
> genitals and the ways we read rather than know bodies
> is difficult to ignore.
>
> Thanks!
> _______________________________________________
> empyre forum
> empyre@lists.cofa.unsw.edu.au
> http://www.subtle.net/empyre




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