Baudrillard is one of the foremost theorists who have drawn attention to the apparently "free-floating" nature of gender signifiers in postmodern fashion. He argues that, as with all other signs, the markers of gender have become increasingly subject to the process of infinite commutability in fashion, so that dress no longer signifies the gender and sexuality of the wearer in an unambiguous manner. According to Baudrillard, we live in a "transsexual" era in which the binary distinction between masculine and feminine has collapsed. In its place, we are surrounded by the constant circulation of signifiers of sexuality, which bear no necessary relation to the gender of those who adopt them as part of their sartorial "costume." Signifiers of masculinity and femininity are now treated simply as part of a repertoire of "looks" that individuals can adopt irrespective of their gender, as epitomized by celebrities such as Madonna, Michael Jackson, La Cicciolina, and Andy Warhol. Detached from the body, gender signs are employed as "masks" that can be adopted and discarded at will. For Baudrillard, the key figure of postmodernity is that of the mannequin, which, in French, signifies simultaneously a masculine, a feminine, and a neuter. Baudrillard is equivocal about whether this apparent implosion of gender distinctions in fashion is emancipatory or not. In his work On seduction, he celebrates it as the harbinger of a postgender utopia in which sexual desire is no longer governed by the dichotomous logic of heterosexuality. The manipulation of the signs of gender in the realm of "appearances," here, is interpreted as a subversive act that undoes the systems of meaning and power. This is epitomized for Baudrillard by the figure of the transvestite. Rather than seeking to overturn social inequalities in the "real" world, the more effective strategy, according to Baudrillard in On seduction, is to unravel the system of signification of gender difference, thereby ushering in a polymorphous eroticism free from the strictures of Oedipal sexuality.
Elsewhere, however, Baudrillard is less positive in his appraisal of the postmodern play with gender. Thus, for instance, in The transparency of evil, he laments the infinite exchangeability of gender signs as an ersatz form of sexual liberation. In contrast with Baudrillard's equivocation, other analysts of postmodern fashion, such as Polhemus and Schwichtenberg, have embraced the recent "transvestism" in fashion wholeheartedly. Ted Polhemus praises it insofar as it challenges the apparent "naturalness" of the categories of "masculinity" and "femininity," thereby highlighting the constructedness of identity. For Polhemus, the sexual indeterminacy of the transvestite, who flaunts the artificial construction of the body, is what carries the greatest erotic charge in contemporary culture, rather than unambiguously sexed bodies. In a similar vein, Cathy Schwichtenberg regards the freewheeling play with gender signifiers engaged in by celebrities such as Madonna as a liberation from the straightjacket of gender binaries. For her, Madonna's gender bending ". . . represent[s] a deconstruction of lines and boundaries that fragment[s] male/female gender polarities and pluralize[s] sexual practices. This is a postmodern, unbounded feminism that unifies coalitionally rather than foundationally". In her analysis of this phenomenon, she draws on Judith Butler's concept of gender as performance. As outlined by Butler "gender" is not a set of characteristics that individuals possess, but is rather the product of a series of actions that individuals perform, that is, gender is not something one "is," but is the product of what one "does." As such, it is not the expression of the identity of a subject who preexists the performance of gender.
Rather, the identity of the subject is itself constituted by the gender performance. Gender then, should not be seen as a substantial thing or a static cultural marker, but rather as an incessant and repeated action. Gender is something that one becomes but can never be. Because it is reliant on the continual reenactment of certain actions, behaviors, and modes of presentation deemed by culture to be "masculine" or "feminine," gender is inherently unstable. Since gender is dependent on the constant reinstantiation of socially defined norms of masculinity and femininity, rather than being an inherent property of the individual, there is always the possibility of the disruption of gender performances. Similarly, "sex" is no more stable a category than "gender." While "sex" is frequently differentiated from "gender" on the grounds that the former is a biological distinction while the latter is a cultural construct, "sex" is just as much an artifact of culture as is gender. Drawing on Foucault, Butler argues that the category of "sex" and the binary division between male and female on which it is predicated is a discursive construct and not simply a biological datum preexisting discourse. As she explains, it is culture that produces the concept of a "natural sex" as a "prediscursive" entity existing prior to culture. For Foucault, the body is not "sexed" in any significant sense prior to its determination within a discourse through which it becomes invested with an "idea" of natural or essential sex. The body gains meaning within discourse only in the context of power relations.
Sexuality is a historically specific organization of power, discourse, bodies, and desire. Once the constructed nature of gender and sex distinctions is acknowledged, then there is no reason to suppose that those designated as "male" will automatically take on masculine cultural characteristics, while those designated "female" will assume the culturally defined features of femininity, according to Butler. In theory, males could just as easily take on feminine characteristics and vice versa. Furthermore, there is no reason why gender categories should be limited to two, this being simply a product of cultural convention, having no necessary basis in fact. Butler concludes that the binary distinction between male and female is a politically oppressive construct predicated on the regulation of sexual desire in terms of a compulsory heterosexuality. Only in a system of heterosexuality, she argues, is there a necessity for a clear-cut, unambiguous distinction between male and female, where individuals are unequivocally one or the other. Institutional heterosexuality both requires and produces the univocity of each of the gendered terms that constitute the limit of gendered possibilities within an oppositional, binary gender system. It is predicated on the assumption that there is a mimetic, rather than an arbitrary, relation between sex and gender in which gender is determined by one's anatomical sex. As Butler writes, the "disciplinary production of gender effects a false stabilization of gender in the interests of the heterosexual construction and regulation of sexuality".
In seeking to expose the essentially contingent nature of the relation between sex and gender, Butler turns to the phenomenon of drag, where there is a disjunction between the anatomy of the performer and the gender that is being performed. With cross dressing, there emerge three distinct dimensions-anatomical sex, gender identity, and gender performance- between which there are no natural or necessary correspondences. In Butler's view, transvestism denaturalizes the body, since the transvestite's external appearance bears no relation to the body beneath. Unlike transsexuals who undergo anatomical alterations so that their "biological" body corresponds with their external appearance, transvestites refuse to ground their identity in their anatomical body. They define themselves rather through the various guises that they adopt, whose constructed nature is made evident. For the transvestite, the concept of "sex" as a biological datum is displaced by the notion of gender as performance. Furthermore, Butler interprets the practice of cross-dressing not simply as the parodic imitation of an original sexual identity conceived of as being "true," but rather, as involving a parody of the very notion of an original sexual identity. In her view, drag reveals that the original identity after which gender fashions itself, is itself an imitation without an origin.
That is, sex and gender are both arbitrary cultural constructs, neither having any priority over the other. According to her, it is a mistake to see one's anatomical sex as constituting one's "true" identity and regarding gender identifications that are at odds with one's anatomical sex as "false," since both "sex" and "gender" are cultural fabrications.
Our website is not responsible for the information contained by this article. Articleinput.com is a free articles resource thus practically any visitor can submit an article. However if you notice any copyrighted material, please contact us and we will remove the article(s) in discussion right away.
Note: This article was sent to us by: Lara C. at 12232009
1. About the nature of tatoos
All articles are property of their respective authors. Please read our Privacy Policy!
© 2009 ArticleInput.com.