Oh those rigid definitions
How embarrassing. A grown-up museum is doing this.
Challenging rigid definitions and binary narratives, Gender Stories dives deep into the intricate connections between sex, gender, sexuality, and identity. Discover how these fluid, and multifaceted ideas have been mythologised, stereotyped, expressed – and sometimes concealed – through art, history, politics, and daily life over time.
Blah blah blah. It’s so rigid and binary and last Tuesday to know that men are not women. Do you want to be your grandmother?? Do you???!
Featuring works by David Hockney, Rene Matić, Zanele Muholi, Catherine Opie, Grayson Perry, and Del LaGrace Volcano, this ground-breaking exhibition invites visitors to delve into the multifaceted world of gender. It challenges traditional binary narratives and explores how gender intersects with sex, identity, and sexuality across cultures and history.
That’s the ticket! Traditional and binary=wrong and stupid, so do the opposite of them at all times. It’s traditional and binary to think gravity is real, so walk off the top deck of tall buildings every chance you get. It’s traditional and binary to think people need to eat food to survive, so go ahead and starve yourself until you reach peak enlightenment.
We don’t have all the answers, but we’re excited to explore these complex questions together. Whether you’re beginning, continuing, or seeking to understand a gender journey – your own or someone else’s – this exhibition offers a meaningful space for reflection and discovery.
You mean there’s somewhere quiet to sit down?
Good grief, I’m going to be SO glad when this fascination with “gender” finally runs its course. I was introduced to someone at an event recently and the very first thing they said to me (after exchanging names) was their gender identity. Like, seriously, I don’t care. I DO NOT CARE. There was a time when we just called it narcissism instead of worshiping at some special Identity Altar. My grandmother, who lived through the Depression and raised six children without electricity in her home, would have snorted derisively. My other grandmother, who fled for her very life from Soviet oppression during WWII, was far too busy trying to rebuild a life at the age of 45 from nothing, before she died in pain from breast cancer. The egomaniacal self-obsession of these people is off the scales.
I’ll just go sit on my porch rocker and shake my fist at passersby, now.
You mean you’re NOT excited to explore these complex questions together???
I’m shocked, shocked.
I’m not even excited about exploring these complex questions by myself. They’re as compelling (and rage inducing) as people who take astrology and “crystal energy” seriously. Thankfully the former is not as prevalent as it used to be, but just try to go to a craft or gem & mineral show without coming across several vendors with displays of attractive mineral specimens, all named and listed with their “healing properties”, with promises of improved moods, inner peace, and boosted immune systems*. Genderism’s forced teaming with concepts of sex and sexuality, is like these older pseudoscientific beliefs having glommed onto the actual sciences of astronomy** and minerology. Like religion, genderism has been able to wield the organs of the state to extend its power and influence far beyond what astrologers and crystal mongers could dream of.
At this point, no exhibition would be allowed to examine sex and sexuality without having “gender” and “gender identity” forcefully grafted onto it, and tagging along like some kind of wannabe conjoined twin, anachronistically claiming to have been there all along. This despite the inherent homophobia of “transing away the gay”, and the refusal of trans identified males to accept the fact that they cannot be lesbians, and their all-too-successful efforts to shut down any and all lesbian spaces that refuse to “include” them. But I doubt that this exhibit will look at that part of the ‘intersection”.
Gender is the toxic fruit of reified, patriarchal sex stereotypes, rather than some eternal, human essence. We would all be better off and freer without it. The same cannot be said of sex and sexuality. The mystery is not how these ideas have been blended together into an incoherent, self-contradictory mess, but how to filter out the delusional bullshit and get back to dealing with things that are real. Even in art exhibits.
*By this standard, purveyors of crystal woo should be the healthiest, most well-adjusted people in the whole world, surrounded as they are by all of these beneficial rocks. Somebody should look into that, right?
**Technically astronomy arose from astrology, but they both still use of same sky. Genderism’s attachment to sex and sexuality is more by parasitic fiat than any history or tradition.
I know, it’s unexpected, weird, and wrong. Can we still go have sandwiches together, O?