Manifesto, manifesta, womanifesto, many fiesta.
May 3rd, 2009 | By Gina Leigh | Category: Political Pinions
Welcome, distinguished ladies and gents, and all others besides. My name is Gina Leigh. I am an experimental theatre artist and puppeteer out of Philly. Apparently I am Receiving Me?’s first female blogger, the pioneering bloggerette, the woman wordslinger around here. So I’m gonna start, appropriately enough, with a little shout about gender roles. Cock an ear.Throw ‘em down and spank ‘em — gender roles and life and theatre.
“Gender roles! Bad!”
Wha…? No.
I will speak up in defense of gender roles. Gender roles are awesome. More specifically, they are awesomely fun because we can spank ‘em, throw ‘em down and make ‘em call us Daddy. Or Mama. Whichever you prefer.
I have had male and female lovers. I hate the term “bisexual,” because, as Ani DiFranco put it, “it sounds like something you do to frogs in science class.” I really, really don’t give a shit about defining my proclivities or joining a group or labelling myself. I cared when I was fifteen. Now that I’m 25 (nearly!) I bristle at the thought.
There was some complaint in the PW articles that bisexuals weren’t welcome at Pride Fests and Gay Days and LGBQT events. “There’s nothing on the agenda for meeeeeee!” went the sorry, sad, excluded bi guy. Well, why would there be something for you? Bisexuality is not a label, it’s a lack of label. You’re pretty much defined by the fact that you can’t, won’t, or don’t join a group. If you’re gay, call yourself gay and join a group where the specifics of gay life can be discussed. If you’re straight, you’re straight. But if you’re bi, well, do whatever you want and quit your bitchin’. If you want a group, pick a side!
There’s a great scene in an episode of Roseanne, where Nancy, a lesbian, decides to date one of Dan’s poker buddies. Everyone is shocked- they thought she was gay. She shrugs, in all her leopard-print-spandexed glory, and goes, “Eh, I’m a people person.”
I always knew I was attracted to both sexes, and always will be. It’s been a few years, though, since I even thought about what that means for me. It was a source of fascination for my ex-boyfriend. It’s funny how jealous men can get over the fact that other men populate the planet, but you can say “Babe, isn’t she hot?” and start a whole philosophical discussion. Or… a physical one. I felt pretty secure in my last relationship, pretty sure I was going to be there for a while, and my bisexuality was barely an issue. We went to burlesque shows together. Couples therapy.
Now, kinda newly single (we broke up in August, and again in October, and again in April. Now we’re done.) I’ve thought about it again. (And the fact that I’m single just goes to show how wrong it is to label your life commitments before they’ve hatched.)
I’m open to a new relationship. So am I open to a relationship with a woman? I think about that not in terms of what people might think of me if I did, but in sensual, tactile terms.
There’s just something about men that gets me, that otherness, that scratchy-faced, deep-voiced, t-shirt wearin’ THING about the other half of the human race that makes me wobbly in the knees and makes me glad to be a straight woman. Women are sexy and strong and soft and smart, but they’re not men, for me. (Oh, and if a hot guy picks up a guitar, I’m his. Just sayin.) Ultimately, I see myself as settling down with a man one day. But for now? I don’t know that I’m so eager to reach for the ultimate. Love is a journey, anyway, and there is no ultimate. Where does that leave my love for women? I don’t know. Close to my heart. A piece of my heart. I don’t know. I like not knowing.
Back to gender roles, though, before we tumble off this Kinsey scale ass-over-rainbow.
I like gender roles, because I can use them when I want to, and throw them away when they bore me. How incredibly boring would our society be if there was nothing that was specifically male and nothing that was specifically female? How un-sexy would that be? I like gender roles because I like genders.
It wouldn’t be funny, or surprising, or sexy to bend the rules if the rules weren’t there in the first place. Now I’m thinking about theatre. Drag queens, Shakespearian heroines played by boys playing girls playing boys, where would you be without gender roles? Beloved burlesque, you wouldn’t have a kitten heel to stand on. Shaving my head in high school wouldn’t have been so much fun.
Gender roles are awesome, except in real life, where they often suck. I am in the process of creating a physical theatre play about Walt Whitman. I am writing and directing. I have had a satisfyingly well-met response to my audition notices- from women. Only women. I have the sneaking suspicion that people who don’t know me read my notice and think, “Woman director- poetry- stay away or she’ll have us all wearing petticoats and having tea parties.” Nothing could be further from the truth. I’m doing this show, in part, because Walt Whitman disregarded and rewrote gender rules his entire life, while singing to the heavens the praises of the male and of the female. The male aesthetic plays a vital part in this show, and I’m getting frustrated because I don’t have the men coming to audition. I have a male rocker writing the songs, but it can’t be all on him. It’s got to be down and dirty, athletic and powerful. If there’s a petticoat in the show, it’s going to be rolled around and torn and grass-stained. That’s fucking poetry, and it’s fucking beautiful.
Believe me, I’ve thought about casting it as all-female. Hell, I’m playing Walt. (In marionette form.) It brings a whole different level of meaning to the show. It might happen. It might have to happen. If it does happen, I’ll run with it and it will be fucking amazing.
But the songs will be in a different range. And I’ll be pissed if this keeps happening my whole career.
‘Course, maybe I haven’t had the turnout I wanted because I can’t pay my actors.
The lesson is always the same: quit yer bitchin’ and just do it. You can whine all day about how you’re excluded from all the reindeer games, but that does nothing, makes nothing happen. I am in the service of myself, and it’s funny but the harder I work and play at being true, the less control I have over who that self is. She just happens. She just is, this self, this is-ness of being, and I am living and spectating all at once. It’s humbling to be in possession of such a self. It’s laughable to think that any person could be defined by stupid tiny terms, but such is the work of being human. My work serves the play onstage (or in field, in this case) just as the stories of my relationships serve the story of my life. I do what I must.
So. Get to work. Play. Be loving. Make it your own.
-Gina
Baby, I like you. Let’s get together. I like women parts. Who is Walt Whitman?
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