Outing The Closet : Butler

1- First page (response to the readings) 275 words minimum

Respond to the attached readings from Butler and respond directly to them or one of them and what you understand. Use quotations from one or both of the readings and think along with the author and what she means.

2- Second page ( response to this person post) 275 words minimum response

Read this person post based on the same readings and continue with the conversation, give positive comments about what you like from this person’s post and use quotations from the readings.

-In a 2014 interview, trans artist and activist Juliana Huxtable disrobes while discussing the body and concepts of what is natural versus what is not natural. She remarks on how being a black woman in an urban environment subjects her to “any range of possible aggression that someone could project into a gendered idea.”( https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4OW7jDpXVrg )
What strikes me about this is how much gender is policed in this society. Your presentation can gain you privilege, allow you access to certain spaces, or close you off from those spaces and privileges. I am reminded of this when reading about Judith Butler’s concept of gender as something one is “doing” as opposed to “being”. 
Natalie Winn touches upon this concept many times in her work in relation to binary trans women. Often, to be able to live their lives with some degree of safety, trans women must outperform cis woman in femininity. Often gay men fetishize masculine performance, while simultaneously deriding a feminine performance.
It would seem that ones performance, and how well it is performed, dictates one’s place in society. Being a nonbinary person, I have no script of how to perform. This creates a degree of static as I am not sure how to relate to my body. Im also unsure of how to do my gender.
I understand that, to a degree, these complications are necessary. The binary systems established by a colonial society are there to imbue power to the male, to the cis, to the white, to the Christian, to the able-bodied, to the uncomplicated mind. We must continue to frustrate these systems, to problematize them. But that leaves those of us who do the frustrating to bear the brunt of the growing pains involved in a shifting society.
Queer allows space for that, and I am grateful. In the readings, the concepts are unfolding before me like a perfumed blossom. I await future discoveries.-