Helping shape the conversation

Yesterday we saw that University College Cork is putting on the 25th annual Lesbian Lives Conference, and that the first Keynote Presenter is Susan Stryker, a man. It’s interesting to see how he presented himself as a visiting professor at Yale.

He looks a little bit…burly.

Susan Stryker - Wikipedia

Normally, of course, it’s obnoxious or worse to judge people on their appearances, but there is a genuine issue of male v female bodies here, along with issues of presentation and what one can get away with and so on. Stryker looks a bit like Steve Bannon. Very few women can get away with looking like Steve Bannon, and even fewer would feel 100% safe challenging him.

In other words why doesn’t it bother Susan Stryker that he looks intimidating? Why does he feel so okay with looking intimidating that he has a photo of himself with tatoos in a muscle shirt on his Yale faculty page?

I don’t know the answer to that.

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