Writings on the subject of Genderfuck

Lisa Forsyth's Genderfuck project

PostModernism and the Sacred Genderfuck

Where as the sacred androg forms the union of masculine and feminine form and expression the genderfuck serves to explode it—to tear it apart. The disruption of form. The dissonance of two very common forms of expression and thought like a minor second interval in western music beating in the wind. The tension produced has energy and vigor that proclaims itself as never resolved, only transformed.

Genderfuck does not distill it's cliché forms into a new merged, and blended expression. It highlights two common expressions and places them on display for all to see their superficiality, their ridiculous nature.

Only when the forms are exposed for fallacy, projection, and convention are they malleable to play. Sweet childlike play.

Like the minor second chord (press any black and white keys next to each other on a piano) the freakish clash is easy to detect. It is also understandable that many recoil from it's nature leaving just a few odd fish to enjoy it's beauty. It is beautiful, joyous and liberating. It is also ugly, fearful and a trap at the same time with a balance that screams for resolution that never comes. If it does, it ceases to be genderfuck, it is no longer post modern, it becomes "Drag". The androg is not Drag. The androg is balance via melding or merging seamlessly. Genderfuck is Drag, the meeting of societal opposite symbols, with the sacred expression of two pervasive forms of human expression. The androg hides the lie while Genderfuck shows the false deities for the toys they are and are not.

There is balance in Genderfuck. That is to say the form can be refined and developed, perfected. Here one can find process—an evolution. Genderfuck again like a dissonant interval or chord can lead somewhere. It can create a journey where none appeared to be. It can bring light to the shadow and vice versa. Learning lead by questions as subtle as will.  Have no doubt that it is sacred and profane. It manifests divinity and dances in silence. It is as sacred of an art as any that has come before and has been with us, staring at us all along. It is nothing new. Our sights had yet to be calibrated or perhaps we forgot, or perhaps some never forgot. It appears to not be for the masses at all times. The football team wearing dresses only happens on a Holy day such as Halloween. Never the less it is there in the bedrooms, in the porn shops, in the clubs every week. Sometimes it is subtle and amongst friends one moment and enemies the other but usually both at the same time.

The human quality is at it's core which lies beyond Genderfuck itself. Genderfuck presents the forms as beats clashing against each other but the human expression is revealed beneath the cracks that form in the surface lifting the mask from female, male and all between those poles of biology. Woman and Man cease to be accepted as nature when presented as obvious theater of false duality. Feminism as a discussion of Man and Woman is not postmodern, it is archaic. An old clock clicking to the same old beat that it opposes. Many Feminists appear to not notice that it is not Womanism and assume that it is Femin-I-nine-ism and have still yet to understand that it must be, for lack of more common term, Female-ism. Or Male-ism for that matter that is a far more rich territory. If you want a movement to discuss only constructs and not biology, Feminism remains an academic discourse that need not leave the class room. If it is an evolution of humanity, moving forward, genderfuck can be it's jester, it's painted gigolo, its trouser'd whore dancing in the flames of creation.

Genderfuck is now recognized because of third-wave Feminism, a Feminism that has deconstructed and reconstructed Freud via Lacan, S&M, fetish, etc…and found in them the path of liberation. By redefining the cultural constructs via analysis,  S&M ceases to be about mastery and resulting other, the slave. It becomes a tool for breaking down and reassigning cultural forms of expression and I-dentity. Feminism now understands the nature of the Master and how to slide sideways out of the non-productive and repetitive nature of revolution—mastery over mastery. The dominatrix has, for the past 8 years, become the model of feminism. The medusa with a head full of vipers (phallus?) tattooed on the arms of bull-dykes that like to fuck men. It has taken on so many new forms. The dominatrix tho' has to be given her credit above all the others. She is the mother who gave birth to genderfuck. Genderfuck is a thread in her, the phallus becomes real and therefore unnatural with her. The whip, the dildo, the sharp tone in her voice wields the power of the pre-modern ruler with his staff of office. By seeing these things in the dominatrix, and in S&M/Fetish, feminism provided fertile ground for the newly born genderfuck, as well as the classic forms of genderfuck, to grow-in.

S/He now roams the clubs, conventions, religions, and streets of the world. S/He's a comical farce that is very real and serious. This genderfuck smiles with a peace inside, a balance. The gender masks cease to be tools of defense and definition. These faces have become the playground of the fool, the jester, that reflects back to the culture reminding it that biology and psychology are not fixed, and that by its very nature is transcending and transformitive.

9/9/98

Kalib

Genderfuck Cafe

The slick gloss black wall of Zoom Zooms reflects the neon glare of the Genderfuck Cafe logo. Customers shift restlessly. Max wipes a beer glass clean. This is the cleanest place on earth. Everyone is preened and in presentation mode--artists. The place suddenly explodes with the sound of a belt sander hitting steel. Showers of little flaming toungues lick patent boots. Customers shift on latex stools to get a better look--some grin, but most wear an "I've seen it all before" blank stare. One skin head has gone to the altar with arms outstreched to bathe in the fireflies. Most of the Goths retreat to protect sheer skirts and draped strands of hair. Johnny once saw a goth go up like match; human hair is not nice to smell burning.

Kalib is going to do a show tonight. His new project "Genderfuck" was inspired by this mixed crowd of fetish fashion, goth and industrial. He has always mixed techno and industrial in a strange way. Some come for the music, some the show, others just to show off their new image. I suppose some come to hawk their old image to new emotion suckers. It's been rumoured that Kalib has whipped up a latex Theremin and is going to unveil it tonight.

The sander has stopped and a slow low bass grind is starting to pump out of the PA. "Whirr, whirrr" The Theremin has kicked in. The lights come up. Kalib is standing trance-like in platform black and red patent industrial boots, his hands outstreched. His red latex legs form a firm stance as he works the antennae. Two dancers have slinked out and are grooving to the grind. The video projector kicks in with scenes of a school girl bound with a teddy bear between her legs.

This must be the title track. Kalib's voice kicks in, a smooth thin growl. "Genderfuck time my darlin'..." A man who has his balls hanging out and bloated with saline to impress the crowd begins to strut about and grind his hips. "Patent priestess I confess my sins, 'purple hearts', stories of men...."

to be continued...


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