I’ll Show You Mine by Doran George

Jay — Mon, 16 Apr 2007 15:34:24 +0000

This piece is a version of an ongoing conversation between two cultural producers who are close, long?erm friends. Each is seeking to expose to the other something of his own understanding of his complicated and evolving sense of himself as a gendered, sexual, thinking human being. There is no attempt to solidify a position or come to agreement since the underlying proposition is that, while individual integrity is of utmost importance, there is no singularly solid position to take and no right way to be a person.

Jordy Jones (J.J.) What is a man?
Doran George (D.G.) Help!

I suppose the easiest way to answer this would be to say he is a highly contested phenomenon. I? like to say that what a man is depends entirely on self?dentity. Anyone who says, ? am a man is one. Defining sex by individual choice would be the most democratic solution and, intuitively, would be the use of the term that would result in the greatest happiness. (pgs. 123-124)

Doran George is an artist, dancer, writer, and curator. His “live art” work has been staged across Europe and the United States and has ranged from him being encased in brick for a working day to having a sexual relationship as an art practice. He has been supported by the London Arts Board; The Arts Council of England; The British Council; Chisenhale Dance Space; Arnolfini, Artsadmin; The Finnish Arts Council; The Arts Council of North Savo (Finland); Stichting Fonds De Trut (The Netherlands); and others. He has curated for ?he International Transgender Film Video Festival (U.K. and The Netherlands), ?ital Signs Festival (U.K.) (interfaces between disability politics and contemporary art), and Chisenhale Dance Space. He regularly contributes to symposia and is published in print and on the web in dance, film, and performance art journals and art publications. Doran has a B.A. in experimental dance and choreography and an M.A. in Feminist Performance. He teaches in universities in he United States, Britain, and Central Europe.

Trans? Butch? Man?: On the Political Necessities of Trans In-coherence by Bobby Noble

Jay — Mon, 16 Apr 2007 13:26:53 +0000

The essay, like my life, body, and sexuality, calls for a practice of what I’m calling in-coherence for trans men, white trans men in particular. These spaces of identity in which we live-whether they be boi, lesbian, butch, trans man, invert, and so forth- are historically shaped (what is practiced now may not have been thinkable thirty years ago), intersectional (informed by many discourses such as race, class, ability, nation, ethnicity, age, sexual orientation), but neither are any one of these reducible to the other in terms of definition (to be a trans man of colour means facing very different issues than a white trans man, even inside of our home communities).

In order to move beyond lip service to difference amongst us, I suggest we instead seek out in-coherence, which is the productive failure to cohere as a self, as a gender, as a race, as a community. This sense of failure need not be dangerous. It can be one very important way of challenging assumptions that somehow we have enough in common to form a we to begin with. Before we can be posited, we must first seek after an elaboration of the ways that we as trans peoples are not only different from each other but, to echo Audre Lorde, are the very site of difference itself.Lorde’s imperative reminds us, especially white trans men, that instead of assuming that our political work is over once we arrive in our chosen genders, we rethink our relation to power. We must, instead, posit that our political work, as whatever kind of men we may find ourselves becoming, is only just beginning. (pgs. 149-150)

Bobby Noble (Ph.D., York University) is an Assistant Professor of sexuality and gender studies in the School of Women’s Studies at York University (Toronto, Canada). Bobby is the author of the recently published Sons of the Movement: FtMs Risking In-Coherence in a Post-Queer Cultural Landscape (2006, Toronto: Women? Press) and Masculinities Without Men?: Female Masculinity in Twentieth Century Fiction (University of British Columbia Press, Winter 2004) and is co-editor of The Drag King Anthology, a 2004 Lambda Literary Finalist (Haworth Press, 2003). Bobby is currently working on a new book project,
Boy Kings: Canada’s Drag Kings & Masculinities in Performance.

Self-Organizing Men » Stupid Masculinity

I’ll Show You Mine by Doran George

Trans? Butch? Man?: On the Political Necessities of Trans In-coherence by Bobby Noble