Let the gender flow

 

 

“You are sissy.”

Someone notified me.

 

I have a sharp voice，

Emotional tears，

And overdeveloped breasts (caused by fatness).

These constitute my not masculine figure.

 

Yes, I am sissy.

I have heard it frequently in my growth, even my mother agrees with it, though I no longer care about it.

 

Until one day, I miserably found that there was a loathing in me for the boys who were overly refined in appearance or behavior because they were not "masculine" enough. I was scared of myself.

 

I realized that I already playing and thinking in the"man" role, and being incorporated into that system.

 

Guy Debord evaluated modem society: One does not buy commodities, one buys the spectacle. So, I claim that this society is an arrogant shop, and gender is also a commodity for sale. However, people do not buy gender itself, people buy gender fantasy, which is a gender or identity success conveyed in the shop's advertisements

 

This power system dictates how people should perform binary gender. Yes, gender is performative. Chinese opera could be the example, in which gender could be a character. All the female characters are called “Dan”, however, the Dan roles were only played by men in the past (because women were prohibited from this industry). They wear feminine makeup, sharpen their voice, soften their waists, raise their orchid fingers, performing the women image in the power system’s perception on stage. The audience sees them as real women and praises them. As Judith Butler claimed: acts, traits, and desires create the illusion of gender.

 

In this aesthetic system, rules and taboos are endowed, which constitute our body boundaries. Julia Kristeva proposed the concept of abjection, which is the fear when boundaries are broken. Fluidity is not allowed, and shame comes after blurring gender. Gender purity is polluted, and sick diseases permeate into our bodies. An unhealthy body is always despised. 

 

It means that the brand loses its consumers’ trust when the binary gender concept is cast off. The power system fears the future of collapse, so it stigmatizes the rebels as immoral and polluted, consolidating its culturally hegemonic identities by expulsing them.

 

This rigid machine repulsed my identity and gender and even shaped me from a victim to a perpetrator. 

 

Therefore, I celebrate the fluidity, and I appreciate the flowing souls, which comfort the little boy suffered in the past.