A Gendered Culture

I’ve been wanting to take a closer look at gender and identity issues ever since I discovered I might bend the other way. But being in a traditional Chinese AND conservative Christian household has prevented me from doing a lot of things the Bible finds “wrong”. All I really want to do is BE myself and brave the freedom of expression! After spending recent years in “discovery”, my eyes have opened… in a more liberal sense. I have become alarming aware of how gendered my mother is -and frankly, most of the adults in her generation are. The most frustrating part? They don’t realize it at all. The social construct and accepted understanding of what is a female and what is a male have been cemented in their lives that they don’t even question it. They’ve mistaken the gender norm as facts rather than societal expectations and trend. I think gender is fluid; and sex is purely biological. You are determined male or female most prominently by your physical features, and anything else materialistic that we put on top is what we acquire from the society later on.

I remember a while back, there was a news story about a Toronto couple raising their newborn “genderless”. Their two older kids can choose what they want to wear, what toys to play with, and the colours of their belongings. The couple’s choice to raise their kids this way has stirred up a small controversy, and they assure the public that it does not have an ill effect on the children. In fact, “their choice not to openly reveal the children’s sexes made those around them more aware and gave the children more liberties to decide what they wanted for themselves.” And more recently (like last week) Australia introduced a third gender option on passports! This is a big step towards breaking gender stereotypes in society. The binary opposition is so prevalent in society and innate in us (because we are symmetrical beings) that it’s hard to fight against it. We are raised a certain gender, after all, and certain expectations are in place for being an either-or in the binary… so what is the point I’m trying to make if this notion of gender is, indeed, so deeply-rooted in our world? I think a good start would be to educate yourself and those around you about gender. Heck, even I’m not informed enough to lecture…. just thought a change of expectations would be nice.

Queer Cinema

I was an hour late to my very early class on the first day of classes. The class, GSWS (Gender Studies and Women Studies) 431: Local Sex on Global Screen, started at 8:30am. It is a class where we’ll be examining “the globalization of sexual cultures and the emergence of queer cinema and screen culture outside of North America and Europe. We will analyze the impact of globalization on local expression of sexual practice and gender identity. In turn, we will also explore the various ways in which these mediatized expressions reframe our understanding of gay, lesbian, bisexual, and transgender issues from postcolonial, transcultural, and comparative perspectives.” (from the syllabus)

Sounds intriguing, right? As an introduction, the instructor got us thinking and writing down our answers for “what is queer cinema?”. I think to define that we have to first define the term “queer”. What is queer? What does it mean? Is it just an umbrella term for anyone who identifies as anything other than heterosexuals? Or is it more generic, used to mean “odd”,  “off”, or “strange”? For the purposes of this class, I think it is safe to say that “queer” is anything outside the gender binary norms. So, any films presenting ideas and notions outside the gender binary norms would be deemed as “queer cinema”.

I see it as a genre rather than a standalone style of filmmaking. It’s sort of like what my friend says about gay marriage. It’s what it is – marriage, and simply that! It’s a union between two people who happen to be of the same sex. We don’t take a gay shower, eat our gay breakfast, put on our gay clothes and go to our gay jobs! So why the term “gay marriage”!? (Well, I have an inkling… there’s this thing called the constitution. And in the constitution it states that a marriage is a union between two persons of the opposite sex. So “gay” was added in front of marriage to help the general public distinguish what was in question). Same could be applied to “queer cinema” in my opinion. It is just cinema, like any other style, genre, or conventions of filmmaking. It may contain themes, ideas, issues concerning or pertaining to the interest of the queer community, and could be made for or by people who identifies as queer. So I say “queer cinema” is a genre, such as western, horror, slapstick, etc.