Genderfuck refers to the conscious effort to mock or "fuck with" traditional notions of gender identity, gender roles, and gender presentation.[1] It falls under the umbrella of the transgender spectrum.
[edit] Genderfucking
Genderfuck is a conspicuous refusal to express gender identity in any conventionally interpretable fashion. Often, parody and exaggeration are used to transgress gender roles, usually to expose them as artificial[2] or to create gender dissonance or ambiguity in stark opposition to the gender binary.
An example of modern parody would be Pat, a character from the television show Saturday Night Live which served as the basis for the movie It's Pat. The overall theme of sketches with Pat and the movie was the inability of others to determine the character's sex, including one male's inability to determine Pat's gender after having sex with him/her, while stranded on a deserted island.
[edit] History
Genderfuck is a politics of identity stemming from the identity politics movements of the 1950s and 1960s, a guiding principle of which is the idea that the personal is political.[3]
The term dates at least to 1979, when an article by Christopher Lonc, entitled "Genderfuck and Its Delights", appeared in the magazine Gay Sunshine. Lonc wrote "I want to criticize and poke fun at the roles of women and of men too. I want to try and show how not-normal I can be. I want to ridicule and destroy the whole cosmology of restrictive sex roles and sexual identification." [4]
[edit] See also
- ^ Lawless, Elaine J. (Winter 1998). "Claiming Inversion: Lesbian Constructions of Female Identity as Claims for Authority". The Journal of American Folklore (American Folklore Society) 111 (439): 3–22. doi:10.2307/541317. JSTOR 541317.
- ^ Wilkinson, Sue and Celia Kitzinger (1996). "The Queer Backlash". In Bell, Diane; Renate Klein (eds) (1996). Radically Speaking: Feminism Reclaimed. London: Zed Books. pp. 375–382. Quoted in Weedon, Chris (1999). Feminism, Theory, and the Politics of Difference. Cambridge, MA: Blackwell Publishers. pp. 74–75. ISBN 0-631-19824-5.
- ^ Elisa Glick. Sex Positive: Feminism, Queer Theory, and the Politics of Transgression. Feminist Review, No. 64, Feminism 2000: One Step beyond?. (Spring, 2000), pp. 19-45.
- ^ Quoted in Bergman, David (1993). Camp Grounds: Style and Homosexuality. Amherst: University of Massachusetts Press. pp. 7. ISBN 0-87023-878-7.
[edit] References
- Altman, D. (1996). "Rupture or Continuity? The Internationalization of Gay Identities". Social Text 48: 77–94.
- Coviello, P. (2007). "review of "World Enough Sex and Time in Recent Queer Studies". GLQ: A Journal of Lesbian and Gay Studies 13: 387–401.
- Glick, E. (2000). "Sex Positive: Feminism, Queer Theory, and the Politics of Transgression". Feminist Review 64: 19–45.
- McKenna, Jack (2000). "How I Became a Queer Heterosexual", p. 65.
- Stepp, Meredith (2005-07-15). "Playing our parts in ‘genderfuck’". http://google.com/search?q=cache:oW27EV7Ynl4J:www.floridablade.com/2005/7-15/view/columns/columns.cfm+stepp+genderfuck&cd=4&hl=en&ct=clnk&gl=us [dead link]
- Reich, J.L. (1992). "Genderfuck: the law of the dildo". Discourse: Journal for Theoretical Studies in Media and Culture 15: 112–27.
- Thomas, Calvin, ed. (2000). Straight with a Twist: Queer Theory and the Subject of Heterosexuality. University of Illinois Press. ISBN 0-252-06813-0.
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Pre-modern era
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16th to 19th century
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20th century
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21st century
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