Gender Queer

Photo Source: MushyCat

The idea of gender queerness- that is, the lack of gender or a gender different from the male-female binary is an interesting phenomenon in how we have changed to read gender. Gender is not what people feel they are any longer, we must have the physical representation to match. As wikipedia kindly editorializes, "is someone who identifies as a gender other than "man" or "woman," or someone who identifies as neither, both, or some combination thereof. In relation to the gender binary (the view that there are only two genders), genderqueer people generally identify as more "both/and" or "neither/nor," rather than "either/or." (Genderqueer definition) Now, gender and sex both have to be "real", and gender becomes the performative act physically as well as the mental. The ability to be able to "read" a gender is an important aspect in much of society today, which is what throws people off so much about even the barest of discussions about genderqueer.

In Gender is Burning, Bodies that Matter, being able to read means, "taking someone down, exposing what fails to work at the level of the appearance...for a performance to work it means that a reading is no longer possible" (p 129, Gender is Burning). This artifact of "real" gender is what is used (appropriated may be a better word for it) in the creation of an equally real opposite but equally real and just an valid gender. Genderqueer takes the binary of male and female and turns it on its head, saying that whatever way people can be read, the performance of the gender is a moot point because they are breaking the binary, even if they have to recognize that the binary is there in the first place.