Pariah (2015) and Female Masculinity

     Pariah (2015) was not my favorite of the movies we've seen so far. I didn't dislike it, but it didn't resonate or hit as hard as some of the others and I think that's just because I related more to the gender exploration than to the sexuality exploration seen in the film, so my story was different from Alike's. 

    My favorite part of this movie was the sort of climax scenes, starting with Alike's rage in her room after Bina's rejection, and after that during the argument with her parents when she comes out. I was so invested and curious about it that I went back and watched it twice. One thing that particularly stood out to me was the undressing of Alike in her room after smashing and breaking things and tearing her curtain down. She is in a frenzy of emotion, the frustration of getting close to an identity that felt right with Bina and finally feeling some form of understanding and acceptance from someone other than Laura, only to have that be rejected by someone who's "not 'gay' gay". In her fury, she trashes her room, of course, but after tearing her curtain down she struggles, silhouetted by the light coming in, to tear her clothes off down to her underwear, before collapsing into a psuedo-fetal position on her floor.

At first, it seemed part of the heat of the moment, but upon second watch this undressing seemed to signify something more. Maybe the undressing of both feminine and masculine clothes, both the expectations of her heteronormative mom and her own attempts to be as masculine as possible, suggest returning to whatever root identity is inside of her. While I appreciate butchness as an identity, all gendered expression to me is performance, a way to be perceived and validated externally by the way one feels internally. It seems to me that Alike is not totally like Laura or like Bina, that she is queer but struggling to find where on the spectrum she falls, and this undressing to the root, the core of herself, and the symbolism of the fetal position suggest trying to find what that root is. I think it would have been more effective if she was fully naked, not in underwear, but that's just me. Maybe one of you guys saw something significant in the fact that she keeps her feminine underwear on. 

    From the readings for this week, one quote I wanted to bring out was this: "As soon as the tomboy or butch locates herself in an other gender, trouble begins, and science, psychology, family, and other social norms are all applied to reinforce binary gender laws" (Halberstam 192-193). We talked a little bit about this in class, how gender diversion is only acceptable as a child until one hits puberty or gets to a certain age and it stops being a tomboy "phase" and starts becoming a reality, an adult identity. I want to be really clear here that I'm not equating gender identity with sexuality. But I also want to be clear that every queer person's experience differs. The butches in this article are primarily masculine women and masculine lesbian/queer typed women who still are primarily cis (Halberstam does call it "Female Masculinity" and not GNC masculinity). This shows an incredibly broad and wonderful spectrum of possibilities for how someone can be a woman. I, personally, have toyed with gender expression to toy with my gender identity, and I just want to include that in the conversation. I'm not sure I even really have a point with this, I'm just excited to explore gender on as big a spectrum as we explore sexuality. 

    I kind of also wanted to talk about the description of Lianna (1982) on page 44 of the Looking Butch reading which said "Like Lianna's husband, Ruth is a teacher" (Halberstam 218). This passage compared the use of a butch (or "barely butch") lesbian teacher for a woman exploring her sexuality to the use of a man as a teacher. I had a conversation with my partner the other day where we were realizing that in films, men tend to act as the stronger, more informed teachers to women (Maui in Moana, Flynn in Tangled, Mulder in the X Files). The fact that at least semi-butch Ruth in that film analysis also played a teaching role to the more feminine Lianna made me think about whether we need masculinity to be a teaching force for femininity. I was curious about how this may be connected to Laura's role in Alike's life, and what placing a butch in the role of "teacher" means for lesbian representation. Does it invalidate butchness? Does it uplift butchness? What about heteronormativity? I don't think I have the energy to finish this thought today so if you're curious about this or have any thoughts maybe that's what y'all can talk about in the comments.  

Happy Saturday,

Madeleine