DANGER

click on the titles to skip to those chapters Our En“gendered” Species - What Makes Gender So Dangerous? by Natalie Price (.doc) Call for (R)evolution! by Jasmine Shaw (.doc) Drafting a Species Survival Plan by Roseanne Wray Danger Zone: Trans–Aggression of the Feminine by Karen Roberts (.doc) If gender is becoming-woman, is the end of man at stake by Kristen Raizada (.doc) ____________________________________________________________________ Our En“gendered” Species - What Makes Gender So Dangerous? The concepts of “sex” and “gender” as precepts of Western culture are under attack. Everyone from scientists to Baptist ministers, from linguists to drag queens have come to fight in the battle. At stake are the historical underpinnings of our society, the biological mandate of reproduction, political power structures, and individuality itself. The battle fronts are cultural, political, religious and linguistic. Technology has emboldened humans as a species. Our quest for knowledge has superseded our need for order and structure. Our findings have brought into question the heretofore generally accepted concept that “sex” and “gender” are naturally binary constructs. As these two concepts are fundamental to each individual’s constructed identity, everyone becomes endangered through their redefinition. Throughout most of the history of humankind the concepts of “gender” and “sex” have been inextricably bonded, the latter defining the former. “Sex” amongst mammals has been demarcated as a definitive combination of chromosomes that are “reflective of the reproductive functions that an individual is capable of performing.”1 In other words, if you have been codified in the zygote with the XY combination, you produce sperm. If you sport the XX combination, then you produce an ovum. Science has only recently begun to identify and codify persons who are “intersexed”—persons with “ambiguous genitalia”. 2 Intersexed persons, sometimes referred to as hermaphrodites or chimera, often have a mixed or multiple chromosomal heritage. As these anomalous individuals are often surgically forced from birth to assume single sex characteristics, or are lacking explicit, outward, defining sexual characteristics of either sex, their numbers are uncertain. Some estimates of intersexed persons in the United States range between 3 million (approximately .1% of the population) and 50,000 (.018%).3 Their acknowledged existence undermines the construct of a binary sexed humanity. “Gender” has historically referred to corresponding concepts of masculinity or femininity, characteristics that resulted to a greater or lesser extent from the disparate sizes and strengths of the male and female. Dominance was the predominant masculine trait, submission being its feminine counterpart. This yin/yang combination was seen as a fundamental and natural necessity to reproduction of the species. Feminist theoreticians and others have long fought to redefine “gender” as being a socially constructed set of performative behaviours. Rebellious persons who have historically chosen not to enact their proscribed gender role have created a catalogue of minority alternatives even amongst heterosexuals. Homosexuals and pansexuals, in choosing to ignore the reproductive mandate, have further confused the assimilation of the binary gender roles. Yet, when examining the role of gender as an expression within the complex equation that is “identity” (assigned sex + sexual identity + sexual orientation + gender=identity), gender itself unabashedly succumbs to the rigor of the binary gender definitions. Gender can be codified only as either masculine/feminine (regardless of assigned or chosen sexual identities), or through some other implicated binary such as dominant/submissive. The conceptual impression of gender being transitory or indeterminate results from the inherent difficulty of disentangling the single variable (gender) from the larger formula or “expanded field” (identity), which is dominated by “sex”.4 While sexual characteristics are not always obvious, being often easily hidden or altered, gender, being performative, is nearly always palpable. When gender is misaligned with the obvious sexual characteristics of an individual, societal reactions range from intense curiosity from the young and hip to aggressive repulsion from the staid and conservative. Gay/Lesbian/Transgendered and feminist political campaigning and social consciousness raising have at least broadened public awareness of and sensitivity to the untenability of the historical binary “gender” system. Each of these groups has attempted to construct a more varied and inclusive sense of identity based on a redefinition of the common terminology. The feminists seek to redefine “gender” as a social construction that can and should be dismantled. The Gay/Lesbian/Transgendered theorists prefer to redefine “sex” because “gender stands for feminism and its presumptive heterosexuality.”5 Even the two groups most closely associated with expanding the limitations of the system find themselves threatened by each other’s interpretations of the ever dangerous term “gender”. In a greater context, society itself is not yet accustomed to the burgeoning plethora of gender/sexual alternative combinations that are more or less openly emerging in our midst. Conservatives, for their part, in their attempts to recapture an illusory, antediluvian ‘status quo’, are fighting a demagogic war using every political, financial and moral tool in their arsenal. Sensing the burgeoning public support for the dismantling of the binary system, conservatives have begun to perceive their belief systems and social constructs as an endangered species in need of federal protection. Both the United States government and various religious groups have launched aggressive campaigns in the past twenty years to protect the sanctity of the more manageable binary gender and binary sexed systems. The nature of the attacks range from governmental censorship in artistic productions that intermingle sex and gender issues, to well-publicized diatribes by various religious organizations. Beyond the heavily litigated tribulations of the gay/lesbian/transgendered communities to successfully gain full equal rights, including the right to marry and adopt children (which would presume the dismantling of gender stereotypes), there lays the innate issue of being allowed public self-definition. American religious groups, whose views and beliefs deny the public expression of sexuality, support a great many often highly visible showcases that enable them to publicly define and tout their cultural identity. Hollywood production company Cloud Ten Pictures develops films such as “Judgment” about the persecution of Christians in a fictitious future, procuring stars such as Corbin Berensen and Mr. T and recruiting a network of “Church Cinemas” to distribute their work. Co-CEOs Paul and Peter Lalonde are aggressively creating an alternative distribution network (3,200 screens and counting). Feeling constrained and underrepresented by Hollywood’s focus on consumer culture, Peter Lalonde is attempting to save endangered Christian values: “…we're engaged in a titanic battle for our culture, and hopefully, we're just getting started." 6 Other groups seek solely to project and protect their own identity without succumbing to aggressive postures in the face of their culture’s diminishment. Christians in the Visual Arts, with a membership of 6800 artists, art historians, critics and curators in twenty countries, functions as both a support group for Christians in the visual arts and as a developer of touring exhibitions of members’ works.7 A recent (2003) juried exhibition entitled “Body Images” featured works by seventeen artists, only two of whom appropriated Christian images (Christ on the crucifix and the Madonna and Child) to represent the body. Highly stylized representations of both genders figure prominently, with only one artist relying on the nude female form to carry the composition. In most instances, the artists’ spiritual concerns only became apparent in reading the accompanying artists’ statements.8 CIVA, in its curatorial capacity, functions largely as an alternative venue for artists who might otherwise feel pressured to diminish latent or blatant spirituality in their work in order to be commercially successful. On the surface, the development and existence of these organizations mirrors the American ideal: freedom of the individual, freedom of the press, freedom of religion. The flip side of this is a plethora of Christian activist groups who sponsor organized persecution of all other cultural identities in the United States, most notably the gay/lesbian/transgendered population whose culture to some extent includes a need to celebrate the human body and its intrinsic sexuality in all its variations. Christian organizations such as “Focus on the Family,” which appropriates the cultural and artistic icon of the “family portrait” to construct an idealized Christian identity and culture in all of its publications, has become a global media phenomena as well as a well-funded, influential lobbying group. This organization distributes a monthly newsletter to over two million homes (as of 1999) calling on American Christians to pressure their politicians to deny fundamental American freedoms to persons and groups who do not otherwise represent normative Christian gender roles and traditional family values. 9 The aggressive campaigning of the Christian Action Network in the early 1990s led to the overhaul of the National Endowment of the Arts and the instituting of a “decency oath” that the organization forced all participating artists to sign.10 The “NEA Four” (Karen Finley, John Fleck, Tim Miller and Holly Hughes) as well as much maligned photographers Robert Mapplethorpe, Joel Peter Witkin and Andre Serrano, whose works push the boundaries or completely rewrite traditional forms of artistic expression were politically, publicly and financially punished for their “attack on revered icons.”11 In the press the “NEA Four” were derisively labeled “Karen Finley and the three homosexuals,”12 the public and the press ignoring the satirical nature of the performance artists’ work in which they aggressively confront and deconstruct our post-modern society, preferring to focus on (and blame) the artists’ gender and/or sexual identities for their fate. Is there an alternative to organized duality (the binary system) vs. managed chaos (the “expanded field”)? Once the ricochet effect dissipates, will we be returned to the same baseline, the same binary gendered system? Or will the bouncing ball itself have changed in its travels? Various writers have posited two alternatives to the binary gendered system, both bordering on science fiction. Although originally a synonym for hermaphrodite, an androgyne has alternately been defined as either a combination of both sexes or asexual, bi-gendered or gender-neutral.13 Gender neutrality was one of the goals of the generally failed global communist revolution.14 Arguably, nowhere on the planet has gender inequality and intolerance become more apparent than in the former member states of the U.S.S.R. Is this then our paradigm, our predictor of the future of gender? The second proposed solution seems more tenable only because it is yet untested. Authors such as Donna Haraway have posited that our societal obsession with new technologies will eventually breed an alternative race of cyborgs—a mixture of organic and mechanical parts.15 Beyond their inherent durability, cyborgs bring another benefit to the table: cyborgs can be replicated, rather than born. They are not necessarily confined from birth to struggle against or accept an assigned sex or gender role. Must we lose our humanity in order to overcome our humanity? One of the unique characteristics of humanity is our ability to produce and appreciate “art.” Art holds a unique role in society, at once an arbiter, avatar, diplomat and revolutionary. As Herbert Marcuse once posited, “It ‘challenges the monopoly of established reality’ by creating ‘fictitious worlds’ in which one can see mirrored that range of human emotion and experience that does not find an outlet in the present reality. In this sense the fabricated world, becomes ‘more real than reality itself.’”16 In one recent example, art has actually predicted life as Mathieu Kassovitz's 1995 film “Hate” mirrors the 2005 French social uprisings. A large percentage of contemporary artworks produced by persons of every gender and race deals with the greater concept of identity. The fluidity of identity posited in these “fabricated world(s)” often aggressively explores the parameters of the “expanded field,” generating “What if?” scenarios from the formula’s constituent parts. The artists participating in the En“gendered” Species exhibition are presenting a small sampling of contemporary work addressing the theme of gender complexity. Their voices overlap, intermingle, and rise in conflict, symbolic of current cultural discourse on the dangers of gender mutation. Is the solution to our societal gender “dysphoria” right in front of us? ____________________________________________________________________ Call for (R)evolution “The possibilities are numerous once we decide to act and not react." 1 This is a call for (r)evolution! 2 With the urgency of manifestos past, we reject the current authoritarian master discourse, phallocentric modes of thinking, and the two sex male/female binary on the basis of their insufficient explanatory power with regards to the complex system of gender. Yet, as Trinh T. Minh-Ha reminds us, "there can be no social-political r-evolution without a r-evolution of subjects.” 3 How then does one begin this voyage, traveling beyond the boundaries of the two sex system towards the development of a new discourse in which gender avoids fixations? In the realm of science, a revolution constitutes one set of ideas replacing another, a change in points of view and definitions of truth. The world itself has not changed, but rather the frame of reference, or historical context, has. Science does not exist in a vacuum and is as much a product of its times as any other discipline. As the Enlightenment philosopher Descartes already foresaw in his Discourse on Method, since one cannot change either the experimental results or environment, the basis of the scientific method is changing how one looks at things. 4 Science, however, has at times preferred to downplay these changes in thought, making its history seem like a linear progression of connecting the dots from Aristotle to Newton to Einstein. From such a “progressive” perspective, any experiment that has ever been done has led us up to precisely where we are now, and current scientific practice is simply adding more bricks to the same building that has stood for centuries. In other words, ideas that are irreconcilable in theory, such as the two major branches of physics, Newtonian and quantum physics, are somehow made out to be pieces of the same puzzle. This positivist approach to science, in which the vast body of knowledge is becoming more certain with the passage of time, is often coupled with the premise that in scientific practice one must have a hypothesis, or be able to predict the outcome, before one even begins the experiment. 5 Such is the safety net from which scientists prefer to work. What happens, though, when the unexpected or unforeseen occurs? If something does not fit, should one try to force it into its designated peg hole or rethink the shape of the peg hole itself? According to the philosopher Thomas Kuhn, an “anomaly” in science is a particular case that cannot be explained using the rules of the current system. An isolated anomaly in itself represents a danger, or threat, to the system, but the situation can quickly escalate to the level of “crisis” when there is an increase in both the number of the anomaly’s visible cases and in the number of scholars who agree upon the nature of the anomaly as unsolvable (within the current system). If the anomaly persists, it will ultimately have to lead to the adoption of a new paradigm; however, this new paradigm is neither better nor worse with respect to that which it replaces – it simply leads to new and different forms of knowledge. No paradigm addresses the same set of questions; therefore, its validity is only with respect to itself and depends on what are considered to be the most important questions worth asking at the moment. 6 If one were to buy into the idea of science as a sort of puzzle-solving endeavor, then yes, there must be an ultimate truth, a finished building, a completed puzzle, which humankind is striving towards. However, in view of the relativistic nature of paradigm shifts in which bodies of knowledge replace one another, we cannot define “truth” from the perspective of science. To illustrate: up until very recently, modern scientists universally accepted atoms – or, to get technical, the atomic nucleus – as the smallest level of existence, but prior to Einstein's 1905 dissertation on Brownian motion, atoms were not considered to be part of our reality. This is not to say atoms did not exist before, have not always existed, but rather that until Einstein their reality was not made readily apparent or perhaps was always explained in alternative ways. Today String Theory has pushed past the atom to quarks, made up of superstrings in a complex system played out by the dynamics of interrelating vibrations rather than elements. 7 Scientific fact keeps shifting, thus, the anxiety implicit behind the idea that science is a human-made constructed truth contributes to why the questioning of the two sex binary system, the current state of gender, is considered dangerous. The intersex person problematizes gender in the same way the atom problematized the mechanistic Newtonian view of the universe. It is not that intersexuality is a phenomenon of the twentieth century; in fact, it is documented as far back as the ancient Greek civilization, but like the atom it was not “readily apparent,” particularly in the last century. It is estimated that roughly 1.7% of all births in this country result in intersex babies, which, as a point of comparison, is more frequent than albinoism. 8 And yet, despite the frequency of intersex births that do not fit into the normative standards of the body for male or female, within a population large enough to statistically constitute a scientific “crisis,” intersex persons remain outside the system as the “other,” an “anomaly.” In our current gender paradigm, this transgression of the binary is still considered a pathology, a sickness, or a birth defect. Something as simple and necessary as a trip to the public restroom is a troublesome and dangerous event for the intersex person. 9 Intersexuality is the strongest case for the need for a (r)evolution, a development of a new system in which gender can be redefined beyond a binary. But there are certain assumptions that will prove very difficult to escape: Isaac Newton, seeking to challenge the Aristotelian universe, ended up becoming just as strong a master discourse as his predecessor, and even quantum physics falls back on the Greek philosopher’s assumptions that the fundamental reality of the world lies in its mathematical relationships. This is hardly a case for good science; the more pure way to do science would be to approach it without such preconceived notions in mind. Thus, although paradigms help to explain the world around us, they are dangerous: they limit us, fit us into a box, and determine the context from which we work. Who is to say nature is constant? That it can be stuffed in a box? It is not truly a revolution when all one has done is swap norms or paradigms, because one immediately becomes fixed and rigid once again. This is the latent danger in every form of research: the closure of the very discursive space upon which one is trying to expand. It takes a "serious historical effort" to get to the place Donna Haraway terms as “elsewhere.”10 The admonition is to always remember that things need not be this way, that the current system is not the necessary way of defining the world. Classification systems and paradigms are useful to an extent, but only so long as their infrastructures are transparent, and we keep in mind that "there are always more things going on than you thought … maybe less than there should be, but more than you thought.” 11 The danger in leaving categories behind; however, is that it is not a way of thinking we are used to; it is a thought process altogether paradoxical, uncomfortable, and challenging. Furthermore, as long as we are convinced we are all “endangered species (suffering from [the same] pathetic loss of authenticity),” we are kept “comfortably content with the state of things.” 12 The purpose in this discussion in which gender is foregrounded is precisely to problematize and complexify it, point out its dangers and its endangerment – not necessarily to “solve” it. Indeed, there is a utility to having it remain unsolved. "Movement 'beyond' gender [may be] unsettling," but there is an "inadequacy [inherent] of binaries like male/female or masculine/feminine to characterize the full play of difference and identity" that defines personhood. 13 As it is, the two sex system is exclusive and unfair to us all, considering the incredible site of potential that gender is. Once one begins to reject its possibilities, one limits not only being able to define one’s existence on one’s own terms, but also what constitutes a livable life. If we are to truly challenge the Enlightenment’s analytical mode of thinking, the so-called scientific method, the path of change must come from within as well as from without, through a collaboration of voices, an interdisciplinary action. ____________________________________________________________________ Drafting a Species Survival Plan “We should not underestimate what the thought of the possible does for those who experience survival itself as a burning issue.” 1 A groundbreaking moment of the American government was in 1973 when the U.S. Congress passed the Endangered Species Act [ESA] in order to preserve native plants and animals that wildlife experts had noticed were beginning to disappear. Essential to the prevention of extinct species is the ecosystem in which it thrives. All species of plants and animals except pest insects are eligible to be protected if experts decide the species population is dangerously low or depleting at a rapid rate. In fact, the purpose of the ESA is to conserve “the ecosystems upon which endangered and threatened species depend.”2 If a species is declared endangered or threatened, a recovery plan is developed that details the steps needed to bring the species population up. The first and most essential part of any species recovery plan is a designated “critical habitat.” The critical habitat may or may not be the original geographic area of the species, but is an area set up to mimic the original habitat in order to manage and control the perpetuation of the species. If a plant or animal is protected under the ESA, the habitat is under as equal protection as the species. Under the law it is illegal to, “…harass, harm, pursue, hunt, shoot, wound, kill, trap, capture, collect, or attempt to engage in any such conduct… Such an act may include significant habitat modification or degradation where it actually kills or injures wildlife by significantly impairing essential behavioral patterns, including, breeding, feeding, or sheltering… 3 The second crucial concern to a species recovery plan has to do with habitat and the criticality of multiple genetic codes. One species cannot exist without diversity. Intrinsic to the survival of any form of life is the way in which it forms relationships to the life around it. Donna Haraway describes the pressing need for companion species to ensure the survival of one co-habiting life form to be “of organic, organizational, and technological kinds.”4 Private organizations, zoos, scientists, and specialized software programs, in short, the natural and organic must be fused with the technological to ensure that any species survives. Indeed, to be able to know if a species is reproducing, migrating, or feeding, a tracking device monitored by satellites must be attached to the animal. Haraway would say we are all becoming cyborgs. We are hybrids of the natural and the technological; we have become both/and. One cannot survive without the other; we are dependant upon relationships.5 The ESA is also in danger of becoming extinct. The legislation needed to continue the authorization of funds to protect endangered species has not been renewed since 1993. Funds have continued to be appropriated, but could be stopped at any time because Congress has not reauthorized the Act.6 The constructed genders of male and female are under close scrutiny. It is a stressed system unable to sustain human life. In any complex system, a strained system is in danger of collapse; conversely an equal system is in danger of collapse. In this way, it can be argued that the two-gender system is an endangered species. It needs a survival plan; it is stressed because it strives for equilibrium and has closed itself off. The system is quiet; there is no noise allowed inside. Interactions are linear. The first step to the preservation of a species is the habitat. The environment in which the two-gender system exists is in need of modifications. It needs an eco-system in which to thrive. This means multiple genetic codes, technology and their offspring. Not only are these to be present, they must interact and carry on relationships and allow themselves to be influenced by other constituents or other genders. If the male and female genders desire life, then an embrace of all genders, even the unconceivable, must be enacted. A breeding ground for relationships by which similarities are the means of definition rather than by differences is essential.7 Some may wonder why we seek to save gender. They would say let it die. However, is androgyny, or a world without gender the answer when so many possibilities exist for gender? Androgyny would continue to limit, exclude, and fix. There would be no variance, no possibilities with which to become “otherwise.” Like the two gender binary, the androgynous would be an estranged system in danger of collapse. We are not given an alternate, safe, “critical habitat” in which to thrive. We live in the danger zone, and there is no alternate place in which to mimic a natural habitat, so we must burn dead and no longer relevant systems in order to rebuild an environment in which all species can thrive. We cannot simply add on or modify the existing binary. A paradigm shift is not enough. Gender must quickly move away from the terms of a noun into the action of a verb. 8 Judith Butler writes that we must, “expose realities to which we thought we were confined as open to transformation.”9 Gender needs to be transformed; it must be in order for all life to have a chance to live. We must start a (r)evolution to prevent extinction of life. ____________________________________________________________________ Danger Zone: Trans–Aggression of the Feminine “Femininity is not the natural condition of female persons. It is a historically variable ideological construction of meanings for a sign W*O*M*A*N, which is produced by and for another social group, which derives its identity and imagined superiority by manufacturing the specter of this fantastic Other.” -- Griselda Pollock 2 The category of woman and the characterization of women as feminine is a culturally constructed phenomena and relative to other categories. In addition, dualistic categories reinforce essential qualities that are presumed to be ‘natural.’ An essential quality long associated with ‘woman’ is the feminine. The Concise Oxford Dictionary defines feminine as having woman qualities or being effeminate. Effeminate, in turn, is defined as unmasculine. The female is typically defined as “of the sex that can give birth or produce eggs,” a definition that includes humans, animals, and/or plants. Post-structuralists have engaged social and political constructions of gender as they have sought to provide new linguistic structures to address systems of power founded on binary opposition and unquestioned hierarchical values. Susan Stanford Friedman calls for a new geographics that is not static but “performs a kind of dialectic that reflects opposing movements in the world today revolving around the issue of identity.”3 Questioning the normative, dualistic categories of gender (male/female) creates a danger zone because it is unsettling and transgresses master narratives of western culture. Judith Butler discusses the perils of undoing gender and, hence, unmaking the normative. “If there are norms of recognition by which the ‘human’ is constituted, and these norms encode operations of power, then it follows that the contest over the future of the ‘human’ will be a contest over the power that works in and through such norms.”4 As a result, gender roles become so embedded within the norm that the predacious quality of power is subsumed, but smolders just enough to render compliance to the binary male/female system. Furthermore, gender is codified under that power structure and, as a result, women engage in compulsory behavior enacting self-conscious codes of femininity. Reproduction, mothering, fashion, dieting, and relationships are some of the examples of putative women’s interests. In art and literature, flowers have long been metaphors for the feminine and used to reinforce the dualistic identification of gender and assert the essential nature of the feminine. For example, Georgia O’Keeffe’s large flower paintings have been subjected to interpretations that embrace the feminine. The writings of Alfred Stieglitz and others confirm they clearly saw O’Keeffe’s work as intricately related to her body. Stieglitz promoted O’Keeffe’s work as “a visualization of female sexual nature.”5 He proclaimed that “Woman feels the world differently than Man feels it . . . The Woman receives the World through her Womb. That is the seat of her deepest feeling.”6 These statements reveal the predominant thinking of the early twentieth century, put forth by psycho-analyst Sigmund Freud and other well-known evolutionary biologists who were publishing their results based on studies of the sexes, which locate our perception of gender in anatomical difference. Some feminists argue that this serves to establish the breast, and I would argue, the womb as institutions sustained by patriarchal power, which then serve to promote patriarchal power in the public sphere.7 Stieglitz believed that a woman’s art was weak because she was afraid. “She had her secret. Man’s Sphinx!” The sphinx in Greek mythology was a winged monster with a woman’s head, a lion’s body, and the claws of an eagle whose riddle Oedipus guessed correctly, and instead of being devoured by the sphinx (as many before him had been), he married Queen Jocasta, his mother. A large reproduction of a painting entitled The Sphinx’s Kiss (1895) by Franz Stuck, the German Secessionist painter, hung on the wall in Stieglitz’s home on Madison Avenue as documented by Edward Steichen, in his memoir, A Life in Photography. The scene depicts a nude woman emerging from the body of a sphinx to embrace the kneeling figure of a nude man who is limp and helpless. Her lion claws drip blood as they dig into the flesh of his back. The sphinx is cast as the monster, the predator, and in this case, a feminine evil that consumes the vital essence of man. Stieglitz exhibited his photographs in 1920 at Anderson Galleries, his first exhibit in seven years. About one third of the images were of Georgia O’Keeffe; “every conceivable aspect of O’Keeffe.”8 The photographs were not only a sensation, but O’Keeffe became known as a newspaper personality. The critic Paul Rosenfield wrote about the exhibit: “Sphinxes look out over the world again,” and “these arrested movements are nothing but every woman speaking to every man.”9 The existence of a predator, a malignant force, hateful and devouring is dangerous to those it would prey upon. In the early twentieth century, the same time period as O’Keeffe’s large flower paintings, one form of the predator was depicted as a “man-eating flower.” The concept of the “flower of evil” has served to pair the feminine with nature for the purpose of degrading female sexuality. The flower as feminine and the concept of the “flower of evil” as monstrous and threatening would suggest the feminine as both victim and predator. A story titled “The Malignant Flower” appeared in the 1927 issue of the science fiction adventure pulp magazine Amazing Stories. In this story, an overgrown field of gigantic flowers has been discovered by a British explorer who is devoured by one of the flowers, disappearing “slowly into the calyx of the atrocious, malignant flower . . . In this way Sir George celebrated a symbolic marriage with nature . . . "10 This story of fiction where large mutant flowers both seduce and repel is clearly of the imagination, hence the feminine and masculine metaphors are easily dismissed. Cultural historian, Bram Dijkstra, asserts that “O’Keeffe’s flowers were designed to . . . make the public recognize the inherent absurdity of any comparisons between women and flowers - malignant or otherwise.”11 He reveals the problem inherent in Stieglitz’s symbolic (and farcical) equations between nature, the feminine, and evil destruction, that it is egocentric to personify and anthropomorphize inanimate objects. In fact, Stieglitz’s theories regarding O’Keeffe’s work became central to the critics’ response to her work in the late 1920's. Barbara Buhler Lynes states, “It is a fact, however, that critics writing in the late twenties continued to enshroud her art in theories that had originated within the Stieglitz circle and, thus, perpetuated the image of O’Keeffe as an exotic and erotic woman.” O’Keeffe resisted these comments by making it clear to Blanche Matthias, art critic for the Chicago Evening Post Magazine of the Art World, that she did not want her work promoted as morbid, exotic, or erotic. 12 Stieglitz insisted that O’Keeffe’s work represented “the Woman unafraid – the child – finally actually producing art!”13 He infantilized her, associating her creativity with her sexuality because both child and woman, in his mind, were “irrevocably dependent on man for its realization.”14 O’Keeffe’s body was traced as anatomically female, therefore, her art was thought of as a constant embodiment of sex. In the 1970's, feminists tried to claim her large flower paintings as a way to emancipate and empower women, but for O’Keeffe, such gender classifying was a revival of the sexist rhetoric that had plagued her art and served to marginalize her in the 20's and 30's. O’Keeffe’s work has been submitted as an example of the inadequacy of binary interpretations and the possibility of shifting beyond a privileged focus of gender. This shift will move us away from the predacious and into the contentious dialectics of Friedman’s new geographics. There is no specific formula for how to enter a new terrain, but the binary system by which we define and identify gender is inherently predatory and, thus, dangerous. ____________________________________________________________________ If Gender is Becoming-woman, is the End of Man at Stake? “In the ‘Western’ sense, the end of man is at stake.”1 -- Donna Haraway In a post-structuralist world that is not fond of binary systems, the “end of man” insinuates a number of possibilities ranging from the paradigm shifts of feminism to intersex to cyborg, but what really makes man an endangered species in the 21st century? In her enlightening text, Sexing the Body, Anne Fausto-Sterling makes a cautionary argument regarding sexual determination and the possibilities that should not be predetermined during embryonic development in an effort to “correct” intersexuality, even before it happens.2 Taking a biological approach, she exposes gender as too complex to encase in a binary system, and adamantly opposes surgical alterations that perpetuate the two-sex system.3 According to Fausto-Sterling, if the general populous were to accept bodily differences and resist medical surveillance, the binary system could ultimately expand from two to three to five to infinite possibilities.4 This seems plausible regarding sexual differentiation, but how does it resolve the gender divide? What role should anatomy play if the question of gender identity is at stake? As she admitted in her text, her argument is limited by its reliance on anatomy and disregard of social behavior, thus, the variation of sexual difference to a five-sex system does not mean the concept of gender would disappear.5 My concern is that when gender simply propagates it still requires a label, and when we regress to labeling, we surrender to old systems. If the “end of man” is truly at stake, gender needs to be rethought from a perspective that resists taming, regulating and classifying, and allows gender to flow, mutate and crossover the boundaries of the body. Gender should be allowed to behave, or perhaps misbehave, in order to result in infinite convergences; thus, I suggest that gender supervene Deleuze and Guattari’s concept of becoming. Becomings do not result in a foreclosed state; they deny a holistic self. Becomings create an identity built of layers of actions, perceptions and variations cultivated by a constant flow of life.6 For the length of this essay, I would like to test the Deleuzian theory of becoming to determine if it is sufficient enough to rattle the two-sex system. The perceived danger of this approach is that Deleuze requires us to terminate our invested relationship with Freudian logic with man as a being bounded by death and life. Contrary to Freud, Deleuze and Guattari advocate a philosophical departure from phallocentric thinking that requires us to think other than being.7 Freud defined life and desire around pre-given forms that attribute becoming to some being, hence our long-standing perception that human bodies are stable points of identity ready for social organization and coding. The typical interpretation, or misinterpretation, is that a becoming is a series of actions and transformations in effort to reach an end goal. 8 In regards to gender, it is generally assumed that this predetermined destination is the “making of a man” with all actions pointed towards becoming a moral human being, with any deviation labeled perverse. Deleuze and Guattari propose a body without organs, by contrast, they argue that life exists apart from beings, which would make Freud’s oedipal journey towards the formation of man null and void.9 In terms of gender, Deleuze and Guatarri require us to think becoming-woman as an anti-oedipal approach that detaches itself from man, and signifies a transformation of consciousness. It is a theory beyond the body, hence, it prevents the body from social organization and coding. 10 Instead of being a stable point of identity, the body is torn away from the organism, which organizes the organs, and the body becomes a receptacle through which gender passes, thus, making gender nomadic.11 Becomings do not desire a foreclosed state, but instead are on a quest for new lines of flight that send us spinning and spiraling in unexpected directions without fixing.12 A body without organs creates a “thousand tiny” genders that flow across boundaries, which means we have entered the world of Matthew Barney.13 Through his cinematic visions, Barney presents a world of becoming that quickly endangers the binary system. Cremaster, the title of Barney’s film series, is also the anatomical word for the muscle that controls the elevation and descension of the testicles. By foregrounding such a loaded term, Barney has been criticized for advocating a Freudian world drenched in masculinity, but the title is deceptive. Critics have interpreted Barney’s work as a reinstatement of the male artist-hero for its high-budget excess and eroticized concepts of masculinity, and why not? By all accounts, Barney fits the status of “real man” with a biographical score that includes super model, Yale alum, Guggenheim star and romantic coupling with Icelandic pop star Bjork. Ostensibly, he has ushered in the return of the male heroic model at the close of the 20th century, but to analyze his work from this perspective is to surrender to old systems and socially code Barney’s cinematic visions, leaving us to precariously rely on the binary. So how can the heroic male artist return without being perceived as a threat? On the heels of feminism, queer theory and post-colonial studies, how does a white male artist like Barney even begin to investigate gender? I believe the concept of masculinity simply becomes a platform that Barney uses to launch an investigation into gender. The five-segment Cremaster series maps five stages of embryonic development with the descent towards sexual differentiation as the conceived goal, but upon closer inspection Barney’s embryonic mapping closely mirrors Deleuze’s theory of becoming. Cremaster is a complex flow of actions, perceptions and gender variations. Neither the character zones nor the creation of the films follows a sequential plot or logical order, but takes off in “lines of flight” creating multiplicitous encounters; therefore, any emphasis on the “making of a man” dissolves away as the viewer witnesses the characters’ struggle to resist their anatomical destiny. This is made visually evident throughout the films and is best seen in the concluding segment, Cremaster 5. The main character, the Magician Houdini, can no longer escape his biological destiny, and, thus, ultimately descends as male, but the scene is not emancipatory. It is not a celebration, but a visual sequence soaked in sorrow that closes with Houdini shackled in chains, symbolically harnessed in a fixed identity that restricts him from further moments of becoming. Throughout the series, individual moments of potential override the audience’s natural inclination to organize the becomings into the “making of a man,” placing the viewer on a Deleuzian trajectory as opposed to the Freudian. The critical moments in Barney’s films do not create a logical sequence leading the viewer to the fixed term, but rather the crux centers on the individual scenes of struggle and transformation that the characters endure. For instance, Cremaster 4 opens with the Loughton Candidate, a red-haired, yet-to be-gendered satyr dressed in a white Edwardian suit – in his description alone this is a world freed from binate traps – who is anticipating four curved horns that represent his full maturity. The fixed term is the set of horns symbolizing manhood, which serve as a physical receptacle for the becoming, but their acquisition is not Barney’s primary focus. The viewer is denied the opportunity to see the horns develop to fruition, but instead witnesses a journey – the becoming – that begins with tap dancing and so the flow begins. Housed off the coast of the Isle of Man in the Queen’s Pier, the Candidate begins to endlessly tap dance in the same spot on the floor until he creates an erosion large enough to send him plunging into the ocean water below [hitting “bottom]. Once submerged under water, he traverses the ocean floor until he reaches land, at which point he burrows into a narrow, viscous tunnel. He, then, maneuvers through the tunnel towards the center of the island where he will reach full maturity. 14 By using time-based film, Barney makes the audience privy to the idea of becoming as the camera traces the nodular walls of the canal and his traversal over each protuberance. He does not diminish the time involved in the struggle, but allows the audience to experience every tortuous moment of contortion. The viewer becomes invested in the process of transformation, with the end result neither a matter of making the becoming a reality, nor an evolution towards becoming male. In A Thousand Plateaus, Deleuze and Guattari write, “Becoming produces nothing other than itself….What is real is the becoming itself, the block of becoming, not the supposedly fixed terms through which that which becomes passes.” 15 Barney creates a series of obstacles that deny total resolution, and the screen goes blank, thus leaving the Candidate and audience with only the becoming.16 In a Deleuzian manner, the Loughton Candidate’s body is torn away from organism, and instead explores a transformation of consciousness that is averse to signifiers that bind the body. In the Cremaster series, gender is nomadic. The trajectory of sexual development hovers in a realm of potential before sexual differentiation occurs; what surfaces as important is not the “making of a man,” but the in-between stages of becoming – the struggles and movements that take us to an elsewhere near a transformation of consciousness. 17 He illustrates a system that resists taming, regulation, and classifying and allows gender to pass through the body without articulation. As seen with the Loughton Candidate, if the becoming is the reality and cannot be organized to create a socially coded organism, is the end of man at stake? If gender is a flow of becomings, a continual state of transformations that pass through the body without fixing, can the concepts of masculinity and femininity overlap so completely as to unravel the binary system? 18 Would this overlap result in differences within difference? Thinking Deleuze is to think: “The body is the body. Alone it stands. And is in no need of organs,” to which he adds: “…how can we unhook ourselves from the points of subjectification that secure us?”19 The danger is not that the end of man is at stake; the true danger lies in the end of becomings. __________________________________________________________________ __________________________________________________________________ FOOTNOTES Our En“gendered” Species - What Makes Gender So Dangerous? 1. Sex, Wikipedia, Last modified November 25, 2005, Accessed November 26, 2005, <http://en.wikipedia.com/wiki/sex> 2. Intersexuality, Wikipedia, Last modified November 19, 2005, Accessed November 27, 2005, <http://en.wikipedia.com/wiki/intersex> 3. Ibid. 4. In imitation of Rosalind Krauss’s diagrammatic expatiation of the patrimony of post-modern sculpture, the following structure details to some extent the “expanded field” of the binary sex/gender construct. 5. Judith Butler, Undoing Gender, (New York: Routledge, 2004), 184. 6. Peter Lalonde quoted in “About Cloud Ten Pictures” on the Cloud Ten Pictures website, Accessed December 1, 2005, <http://www.cloudtenpictures.com/index.php?object=AboutCloudTenPictures> 7. Membership: CIVA Christians in the Visual Arts, Accessed December 1, 2005, <http://www.civa.org/membership.php> 8. “Body Images” Gallery on the CIVA website, Accessed December 1, 2005, <http://www.civa.org/gallery/body_images/index.php?page=98> 9. Ann Burlein, “Focus on the Family: Family Pictures and the Politics of the Religious Right” in The Familial Gaze, (Hanover: University Press, 1999), 312. 10. Douglas Davis, “Multicultural Wars”, Art in America v. 83 no. 2, February 1, 1995 11. Carol Becker, “When Cultures Come into Contention” from Zones of Contention: Essays on Art, Institutions, Gender and Anxiety. (Albany: State University Press, 1996), 21. 12. Holly Hughes in an interview with Ken Paulson, from “Holly Hughes ‘Speaking Freely’ Transcript” recorded August 1, 2000, <http://www.firstamendmentcenter.org/about.aspx?id=12530> 13. Androgyny, Wikipedia, Last Modified November 3, 2005, Accessed November 26, 2005, <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Androgyne> 14. Butler, 185. 15. Donna Haraway. The Haraway Reader. (New York: Routledge, 2004), 7-8. 16. Herbert Marcuse as quoted and paraphrased in Becker, 41. Call for (R)evolution 1. Gloria E. Anzaldúa, “La Consciencia de la Mestiza,” in Borderlands/La Frontera: The New Mestiza, Second Edition, (San Francisco: Aunt Lute Books, 1999), 101. 2. Ibid., 103. 3. Trinh T. Minh-Ha, “Difference: A Special Third World Women Issue,” in Woman, Native, Other:  Writing Post Postcoloniality and Feminism, (Bloomington: Indian University Press, 1989), 102. 4. See René Descartes, Discourse on Method: Meditations and Principles, translated by John Veitch, (London: Orion Publishing Group, 2001), 10-17. 5. Ibid. 6. See Thomas Kuhn, The Structure of Scientific Revolutions, Third Edition, (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1996), especially pp. 66-76. 7. Brian Greene, The Elegant Universe: Superstrings, Hidden Dimensions, and the Quest for the Ultimate Theory (New York: W.W. Norton and Company, 1999). 8. Anne Fausto-Sterling, Sexing the Body: Gender Politics and the Construction of Sexuality, (New York, NY: New York Basic Books, 2000), 51. 9. See Judith Halberstam, “The Art of Gender: Bathrooms, Butches, and the Aesthetics of Female Masculinity,” from Jennifer Blessing, ed., Rrose is a rrose is a rrose: Gender Performance in Photography, (New York: Solomon Guggenheim Museum, 1997). 10. Donna Haraway, “Introduction: A Kinship of Feminist Figurations,” in The Haraway Reader, (New York: Routledge, 2004), 1. 11. Donna Haraway, “Cyborgs, Coyotes, and Dogs, A Kinship of Feminist Figurations and There are Always More Things Going on Than You Thought! Methodologies as Thinking Technologies,” in The Haraway Reader, (New York: Routledge, 2004), 335. 12. Trinh T. Minh-Ha, “Difference: A Special Third World Women Issue,” in Woman, Native, Other:  Writing Post Postcoloniality and Feminism, (Bloomington: Indian University Press, 1989), 87-88. 13. Susan Stanford Friedman, “’Beyond’ Gender: The New Geography of Identity and the Future of Feminist Criticism” in Mappings: feminism and the Cultural Geographies of Encounter, (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1998), 17, 28. Drafting a Species Survival Plan 1. Judith Butler, Undoing Gender (New York: Routledge, 2004), 217. 2. http://www.fws.gov/endangered/ 3. Ibid. 4. Donna Haraway, The Haraway Reader (New York: Routledge, 2004), 312. 5. Ibid., 312-314. 6. http://www.fws.gov/endangered/ 7. Paul Cilliers, Complexity and Postmodernism: Understanding Complex Systems (New York: Routledge, 1998), 3-4. 8. Haraway, 328. 9. Butler, 217. Danger Zone: Trans–Aggression of the Feminine 1. Griselda Pollock, “Modernity and the Spaces of Femininity,” in The Expanding Discourse: Feminism and Art History, eds., Norma Broude and Mary D. Garrard (Boulder: Westview Press, 1992), 255. 2. Susan Stanford Friedman, “ ‘Beyond’ Gender: The New Geography of Identity and the Future of Feminist Criticism,” in Mappings: Feminism and the Cultural Geographies of Encounte (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1998), 18, 19. 3. Friedman,19. 4. Judith Butler, Undoing Gender” (New York: Routledge, 2004), 13. 5. Barbara Buhler Lynes, “Georgia O’Keeffe and Feminism, A Problem of Position,” in The Expanding Discourse: Feminism and Art History, eds., Norma Broude and Mary D. Garrard (Boulder: Westview Press, 1992), 439. 6. Alfred Stieglitz, quoted in Lynes, 440. 7. Coppélia Kahn, “The Hand that Rocks the Cradle: Recent Gender Theories and Their Implications,” in The (M)other Tongue, eds., Shirley Nelson Garner, Claire Kahane, Madelon Sprengnether (Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 1985), 73. 8. Barbara Buhler Lynes, O’Keeffe, Stieglitz and the Critics, 1916-1929 (London: UMI Research Press, 1989), 43. 9. Paul Rosenfield, quoted in Lynes, O’Keeffe, Stieglitz and the Critics, 45. 10. Bram Dijkstra, Georgia O’Keeffe and the Eros of Place (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1998), 225. 11. Ibid., 227. 12. Lynes, O’Keeffe, Stieglitz and the Critics, 118. 13. Stieglitz, quoted in Lynes, O’Keeffe, Stieglitz and the Critics, 34. 14. Lynes, O’Keeffe, Stieglitz and the Critics, 36. If Gender is Becoming-woman, is the End of Man at Stake? 1. Donna Haraway, The Haraway Reader (New York: Routledge, 2004), 20-21. 2. Anne Fausto-Sterling, Sexing the Body: Gender Politics and the Construction of Sexuality (New York: Basic Books, 2000), 54-63. 3. Ibid, 107-111. 4. Ibid., 110. 5. Ibid, 101. 6. Claire Colebrook, Gilles Deleuze (London: Routledge, 2002), 145. 7. Ibid., 140. 8. Ibid, 145. 9. Gilles Deleuze and Felix Guattari, A Thousand Plateaus: Capitalism and Schizophrenia. (Minneapolis: The University of Minnesota Press, 1987), 150. 10. Ibid, 141. 11. Ibid, 142. 12. Colebrook, 57. 13. Colebrook, 143. A “thousand tiny” is culled from Deleuze’s reference to “a thousand tiny sexes.” 14. Nancy Spector, Matthew Barney: The Cremaster Cycle. (New York: Guggenheim Museum Publications, 2002), 62-63. 15. Deleuze and Guattari, 238. 16. Spector, 63. 17. Haraway, 3. Haraway describes an “elsewhere” not as a utopian fantasy, but as born out of hard work for earthly survival. 18. Fausto-Sterling, 101. 19. Deleuze and Guattari, 158-160. __________________________________________________________________ __________________________________________________________________ BIBLIOGRAPHY Our En“gendered” Species - What Makes Gender So Dangerous? “About Cloud Ten Pictures”. Cloud Ten Pictures. Accessed December 1, 2005. <http://www.cloudtenpictures.com/index.php?object=AboutCloudTenPictures> Becker, Carol. Zones of Contention: Essays on Art, Institutions, Gender and Anxiety. 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