We’re Born Naked & the Rest is Drag

Reading Paris is Burning Through Judith Butler:

The “reading” of  a performing body (specifically in relation to the less explicit “shade”) whether that performance is compulsory or hyperbolic, aspirational or parodic, or anywhere in between feels like a vital act of bodily acknowledgement within a gender-transgressive community. I found the recontextualization of socially loaded words like real, work, reading, and shade within the ball space where meta-definitions reflect a collective awareness of the performative reality of identity, specifically ways in which gender, sexuality, race and socioeconomic standing implicate, or require some level of performativity in order to “pass” in the public environments loaded with panicked white heterosexual aggression. Reading and shade feel like mediating strategies to express differentiation within subcategories; a type of judgement that implies a certain level of acceptance into a collective otherness. 

In the context of Butler, I think it is important not only to differentiate the “compulsory performance” of gender [cis-het without acknowleging panic] and the (sometimes) joyfully hyperbolic performance of drag, but to also acknowledge nuanced differences within the categories themselves [is the performance aspirational?] The most powerful aspect of watching this film among the reading we have been doing is recognizing the relief that seems to flood ballrooms and queer spaces as a result of the collective acknowledgement that society’s relationship to gender presentation is rooted in hysteria, and that all who are present at the ball are here to play with the absurdity and respect the realness that can be established in lieu of this transcendent realization that gender presentation is inherently performative. We realized that we have a choice, now lets play.  

Butler talks about the performative nature of gender as though it is a secret fact that some are perceptive enough to see and play with, while others perform a compulsory version of their gender presentation without desiring to control this performance, or considering that one may have any say in the nature of their own gender performance.

It seems almost as though this panicked, relentless cis-het strain to differentiate; to uphold the illusory claim of originality is what (if anything) is actually being satirized, or played with in the drag ballrooms. The performances strive for realness, a term whose meaning seems simultaneously context dependent and absolute. The goal of achieving “realness” dictates the performative layers upon layers of meaning in play between the performing bodies and their fully-immersed spectator bodies. “Realness” seems to refer to a certain type of meta-authenticity that feels dependent not only on the ability to acknowledge the pervasiveness of gender panic, but also on the subsequent decision to transcend that cishet-driven gender hysteria and reclaim one’s autonomy as performer. This authenticity seems to be unrelated to temporal consistency in gender presentation (or being cis and happy about it), instead valuing authenticity in context “does this presentation pass here?” can you walk down the street and drop your little brother off at school without triggering the ever-present heterosexual panic [“gay-panic” or “trans-panic”] that constantly puts non-cishet lives in danger?

“If you have captured the great white way of living or looking or dressing or speaking, you is a marvel” -Pepper LaBeija

Rambling and Questions-

Is CISHET gender presentation a form of drag?

Playing your cards versus playing with your cards 

Can CISHET individuals feel gender euphoria if they never experience any form of gender dysphoria?- Thank you Avery

Got To Be Real - Cheryl Lynn

“Work” - hetero-panic makes emloyment empossible for nonbinary individuals who present as nonbinary

stealing outfits, 

work your body because that’s what you have 

the discourse in Paris is burning particularly surrounding the concept of having a body versus being a body, or being in a body. Did you get the one you wanted?

this differentiation between having originally or having from acquiring or stealing the difference between having and being is of utmost importance at the ball performances as one mentions in response to a discussion of outfits an extension of the body skin you can tell by how the body is held whether they have it in possession from acquiring or whether they bought it a more legitimate form of a corporation is also implies the financial security what's tonight in real life

The frequent expression of an  intense, almost frantic drive to become famous made me think back to Diotima’s insistence that all mortal beings desperately desire to immortalize some part of themselves in the symposium

“Look, if you will, at how human beings seek honor. You’d be amazed at their irrationality, if you didn't have in mind what I spoke about and you hadn't pondered the awful state of love they're in, wanting to become famous and ‘to lay up glory immortal forever,’ and how they’re ready to brave any danger for the sake of this, much more than they are for their children; and they're prepared to spend money, suffer through all sorts of ordeals, and even die for the sake of glory.” 208c 208d pg 55 symposium