Gender Failure: A Multimedia Performance

This video shows a portion of the multimedia performance by Rae Spoon and Ivan Coyote about their experiences in attempting to generate an understanding of the self while navigating the gender binary. Both artists self-identify as trans and challenge the traditional notions of male and female through spoken word, music and video performances. I had the privilege of meeting these two amazing individuals and seeing them perform in Vancouver earlier this year as a part of the Verses Festival and was completely blown away; every aspect of the show contributed to opening a dialogue that was at once challenging and thought-provoking. I felt that the performance was moving and inspiring. It definitely brings intersectionality into the conversation about the construction of gender and gender binaries, challenging (almost desperate) need individuals have to compartmentalize every aspect of our identity.

The show starts with Rae Spoon describing the experience of constantly being bombarded with questions by people trying to determine gender through the narrow understanding that one can only be a man or a woman. Even in identifying as a man, it soon became clear that the slightest ambiguity still caused unease for others. This is when Rae Spoon decided to "retire from the gender binary." I loved this notion that an individual can remove themselves from such a deeply embedded cultural understanding of gender. I love that this conversation challenges how we understand the gender as a binary and encourages us to think of alternatives that don't necessarily fit the mould. Ivan Coyote furthers this discussion by stating that the "English language is sadly devoid of names for people like me." This acknowledges the power of words and the meanings that we assign to them in the construction of identity. Whether we like it or not, the words we use, and the words that others choose to assign to us have a huge impact on how we come to see ourselves.

Part of the performance addresses the fact that almost every public place we engage in contains gendered washrooms, which, for Ivan Coyote, are a site that pitches safety against comfort. The fact that gendered washrooms are a public phenomenon (because we don't ever see these in a home) highlights how gender is socially constructed and cannot be understood without addressing the cultural context within which it is situated. The division between men and women is a deeply social one which is perpetuated in the gender divisions that we see in our public spaces. During their performance in Vancouver, one of the important items on our to-do list as volunteers preparing the venue was to print signs that covered the gendered signs on the washrooms to state that all of them were gender-neutral spaces. It was a small and simple act that served to demonstrate that we were conscious of the message that the performance was sending. Although it did not change the way the venue was run following this event, at least for the evening, it created a space in which people thought more carefully about the divide and why it exists.