Content of Midterm Portfolio
The midterm portfolio containts the second drafts of two essays:
The first essay is investigating the cyberculture of Drag Queens and the group's affect on our culture.
The second essay is a critical analysis of the meme series "Did u assume my gender?"
The first essay is investigating the cyberculture of Drag Queens and the group's affect on our culture.
The second essay is a critical analysis of the meme series "Did u assume my gender?"
Gender in a GIF
In a world where writing letters, having phone calls, and traveling are seen as novelties, we must consider what other aspects of our society are becoming archaic. A current conversation in both the physical and digital realm, that most likely includes a GIF of a man in a wig, is about gender. Thanks to the expansion of the internet, more people are connecting to investigate and critic how the discourse of sex in our society is outdated. A large reason this conversation is happening is thanks to the formation of cybercultures. As media scholar Pramod Nayar writes in her book, An Introduction to New Media and Cyberculutres, a cyberculture is a formation shaped by social, ideological, economic, and political elements (3). For the purpose of this essay, the cyberculture we are using are members of the Queer community affiliated with the subculture group of drag queens. The understanding of a cyberculture is critical because cybercultures are not only reflections of, but unique variants, of the cultures in our physical realm. In this essay, the cyberculture we explore is the drag queen community. Recognizing the presence of drag culture in cyberspace reveals how the queer community is not only seeking representative power, but also how in the 21st century the two sex-gender system and categories of sexuality is becoming an archaic ideology.
In order to understand and recognize drag queen subculture in cyberspace, one must first understand what defines the drag community. Drag queens are a subculture of the mainstream LGBT community distinguished by men who take the social standards of being female, and apply them to themselves to be depicted as woman. As Tom Bartolomei writes in his Huffington “10 Myths About Drag Queens” Bartolomei reveals that not only are drag queens not all gay, but they are also different from transgender people. While drag king culture also exists, this paper will focus on drag queens. As Emmy award winning entertainer RuPaul Charles said in an interview, “[Drag queens] come from the school of I will do whatever I want to do, at any time, and change – whatever!” In drag culture, men construct costumes, sediment on makeup, and style wigs in order look like women, but also parody expectations of femininity.
Drag queens perform in bars in nights full of kicks, spins, and laughs. However, they also create intimate supportive communities for their fellow queens who are not welcome in mainstream LGBT culture. The reason drag culture is important to the conversation of cyberspace is because of the influence drag culture is having on pop culture digitally.
If you were to open your social media accounts, regardless of the app or site you use, a wave of memes, GIFS, or repeating quotes would saturate your screen. No doubt, a reference to drag culture would appear in the midst of this all. To the left is a screen cap of a RuPaul GIF.
The importance of this picture is the malleability of this artifact. No person needs context as to who this is, where it is from, or who RuPaul was speaking to, all one needs to know is that they use it for almost anything. In daily communication, this GIF can be used to emphasize the seriousness or playful nature of the situation. Due to the bold colors of the image, the centered text, and the questionable sex of the speaker, the average person would remember this GIF long after it was sent. The reason I discuss this image in general is because of the plethora of examples of drag queen artifacts in cyberspace. These are bits which are not only used by drag queens, but by the larger LGBT community, and also in the larger heteronormative society. While not everyone knows a drag queen, everyone has come across an image of or line from a queen.
Drag queens recognize the power of social media both for its political stake, but also for the sake of entertainment and so have begun to use this platform to promote themselves and their niche in the LGBT community. As mentioned, images and artifacts of drag queen culture float in cyberspace but queens are also creating accounts and using the reach of cyberspace to bring light to their community. On sites like Instagram queens have accounts promoting their performances and their drag, on Twitter queens can share catchphrases they have created, and on Facebook events can be shared to promote to a larger audience. For example, over 14,000 people attended RuPaul’s Drag Con between May 16-17, and as reported in a Huffington Post article. The impact of this real world convention is that the popularity of drag queen culture has been nurtured has been thanks to the networks of cyberspace. Queens who have been ostracized, men who question their sexuality, or even people who seek to erase gender norms can find drag queen artifacts and find refugee in knowing there are others like them. More importantly, chat room conversations, direct messages, or posting pictures for likes has been translated into the real world. A physical space, in this case in San Diego, has been cultivated due to the communities formed online. Drag queen’s presence in cyber space is one small example of how subcultures can find power online and translate into the real world.
One of the most important reasons for analyzing drag queen culture and its effects on cyberspace is because of the underlying purpose of drag that is silently being shared. As Thomas Foster writes “Trapped by the Body: Telepresence Technologies and Transgendered Performance” of his book The Souls of Cyberfolk, “…gay performance [like] drag…reveal that sex and gender are not related as cause and effect and that sex and gender do not necessarily exist in a one-to-one expressive relation to one another” (116). As mentioned before, drag queen culture consists of not only recognizing standards of femininity, but also exaggerating them. Most queens will have abnormally large breasts, questionable make up arrangements, pompous hair, amongst other things. In normal society, women are expected to make their appearance their first priority and so while women are forced to consider make up, hair, and clothes, queens make a joke of the seriousness of these factors. In a sense, gender is a game with rules to follow in order to represent that said gender. Drag queens allude to how gender is merely a social construct in the way they “cheat” the game. Female illusion not only blurs the line, but also shows how superficial gender presentation is as a whole.
Drag queens are more than entertainers; they are also social critics as their attempts at female illusion show the power of cyberspace to unite people but also share larger social messages. In the case of drag queens, they are excluded from the larger LGBT community due to their nonconformity to larger social expectations of gender, and so they have found the augmentation of cyberspace to offer refugee. Drag culture is not only strongly evident in cyberspace, but it is also influencing the content on cyberspace. Everyime a GIF of a death drop, a shady quote, or queen’s song is shared, the archaic idea of gender is eroded down. If a man in a wig can portray a woman, and do it well, then gender as a whole can be cheated.
In order to understand and recognize drag queen subculture in cyberspace, one must first understand what defines the drag community. Drag queens are a subculture of the mainstream LGBT community distinguished by men who take the social standards of being female, and apply them to themselves to be depicted as woman. As Tom Bartolomei writes in his Huffington “10 Myths About Drag Queens” Bartolomei reveals that not only are drag queens not all gay, but they are also different from transgender people. While drag king culture also exists, this paper will focus on drag queens. As Emmy award winning entertainer RuPaul Charles said in an interview, “[Drag queens] come from the school of I will do whatever I want to do, at any time, and change – whatever!” In drag culture, men construct costumes, sediment on makeup, and style wigs in order look like women, but also parody expectations of femininity.
Drag queens perform in bars in nights full of kicks, spins, and laughs. However, they also create intimate supportive communities for their fellow queens who are not welcome in mainstream LGBT culture. The reason drag culture is important to the conversation of cyberspace is because of the influence drag culture is having on pop culture digitally.
If you were to open your social media accounts, regardless of the app or site you use, a wave of memes, GIFS, or repeating quotes would saturate your screen. No doubt, a reference to drag culture would appear in the midst of this all. To the left is a screen cap of a RuPaul GIF.
The importance of this picture is the malleability of this artifact. No person needs context as to who this is, where it is from, or who RuPaul was speaking to, all one needs to know is that they use it for almost anything. In daily communication, this GIF can be used to emphasize the seriousness or playful nature of the situation. Due to the bold colors of the image, the centered text, and the questionable sex of the speaker, the average person would remember this GIF long after it was sent. The reason I discuss this image in general is because of the plethora of examples of drag queen artifacts in cyberspace. These are bits which are not only used by drag queens, but by the larger LGBT community, and also in the larger heteronormative society. While not everyone knows a drag queen, everyone has come across an image of or line from a queen.
Drag queens recognize the power of social media both for its political stake, but also for the sake of entertainment and so have begun to use this platform to promote themselves and their niche in the LGBT community. As mentioned, images and artifacts of drag queen culture float in cyberspace but queens are also creating accounts and using the reach of cyberspace to bring light to their community. On sites like Instagram queens have accounts promoting their performances and their drag, on Twitter queens can share catchphrases they have created, and on Facebook events can be shared to promote to a larger audience. For example, over 14,000 people attended RuPaul’s Drag Con between May 16-17, and as reported in a Huffington Post article. The impact of this real world convention is that the popularity of drag queen culture has been nurtured has been thanks to the networks of cyberspace. Queens who have been ostracized, men who question their sexuality, or even people who seek to erase gender norms can find drag queen artifacts and find refugee in knowing there are others like them. More importantly, chat room conversations, direct messages, or posting pictures for likes has been translated into the real world. A physical space, in this case in San Diego, has been cultivated due to the communities formed online. Drag queen’s presence in cyber space is one small example of how subcultures can find power online and translate into the real world.
One of the most important reasons for analyzing drag queen culture and its effects on cyberspace is because of the underlying purpose of drag that is silently being shared. As Thomas Foster writes “Trapped by the Body: Telepresence Technologies and Transgendered Performance” of his book The Souls of Cyberfolk, “…gay performance [like] drag…reveal that sex and gender are not related as cause and effect and that sex and gender do not necessarily exist in a one-to-one expressive relation to one another” (116). As mentioned before, drag queen culture consists of not only recognizing standards of femininity, but also exaggerating them. Most queens will have abnormally large breasts, questionable make up arrangements, pompous hair, amongst other things. In normal society, women are expected to make their appearance their first priority and so while women are forced to consider make up, hair, and clothes, queens make a joke of the seriousness of these factors. In a sense, gender is a game with rules to follow in order to represent that said gender. Drag queens allude to how gender is merely a social construct in the way they “cheat” the game. Female illusion not only blurs the line, but also shows how superficial gender presentation is as a whole.
Drag queens are more than entertainers; they are also social critics as their attempts at female illusion show the power of cyberspace to unite people but also share larger social messages. In the case of drag queens, they are excluded from the larger LGBT community due to their nonconformity to larger social expectations of gender, and so they have found the augmentation of cyberspace to offer refugee. Drag culture is not only strongly evident in cyberspace, but it is also influencing the content on cyberspace. Everyime a GIF of a death drop, a shady quote, or queen’s song is shared, the archaic idea of gender is eroded down. If a man in a wig can portray a woman, and do it well, then gender as a whole can be cheated.
Works Cited
- Foster, Thomas. "Trapped by the Body: Telepresence Technologies and Transgendered Performance." The Souls of Cyberfolk: Posthumanism as Vernacular Theory. U of Minnesota, 2005. 115-36. Web.
- http://www.huffingtonpost.com/tom-bartolomei/10-myths-about-drag-queens_b_2979249.html
Did You Just Assume This Was a Literary Essay?
When I open my Instagram, I scroll past dozens of pictures, looking for posts that leave me in tears not because of the poor editing but because its’ a hilarious meme. The problem is not my avoidance of my friend’s attempts to seem important, but rather how I like many others skim through memes without understanding the social power these artifacts possess. Because of the abstract parameters of what defines a meme, I will use the definition provided by psychologist Susan Blackmore. As Blackmore writes in “The Power of Memes” a meme is a form of information that is “copied from person to person and vie[s] for survival in the limited space of human memories and cultures” (Blackmore 65-6). In this essay I will be analyzing the meme “Did u assume my gender.” The reason this meme, and internet memes in general, are worth analyzing is because of how these posts influence the discourses of our society. The “Did u assume my gender” meme is powerful because it sheds light on the contemporary rejection of the gender binary, and it also critiques the politics of older feminists in this age of identity politics.
Memes are interesting cultural artifacts to study because of the inability to clearly trace origins, because like our own biological genes, memes are born from other memes. The “Did u just assume my gender” is currently trending and it is calculated to have first appeared on May, 1 2016 on the image sharing site Imgur (Knowyourmeme). The first post composing this series is below:
In this first post, a police officer pulls over a woman. Dialogue bubbles come from each characters and the officers read “Madame can you please step out of the car” and the woman in the car replies “did u just assume my gender.” The use of a police officer, an authority figure, was a jab at the militant nature that feminists and queer activists have on the internet. These activists are seen as “policing” the internet and in this scene the officer is seen as the ignorant figure. The meme is cross listed with the genre of trigger, feminism, queer, and social justice warrior posts. The selection of this meme, meaning the reason this meme continued to replicate, is because of how quickly the meme mutated becoming a hybrid of trigger memes and using popular culture imagery.
Originally this meme was a solitary event on the site Imgur, but when it mutated on Tumblr the meme gained a larger audience as popular culture was weaved in. It began to diverge from its original purpose of mocking online feminist and social justice warriors. The new form of “Did u assume my gender” does not have the context of feminist and queer activists’ agendas. “Did u assume my gender” in particular parodies a contemporary conversation that the realm of academia and everyday people are facilitating.
Memes are interesting cultural artifacts to study because of the inability to clearly trace origins, because like our own biological genes, memes are born from other memes. The “Did u just assume my gender” is currently trending and it is calculated to have first appeared on May, 1 2016 on the image sharing site Imgur (Knowyourmeme). The first post composing this series is below:
In this first post, a police officer pulls over a woman. Dialogue bubbles come from each characters and the officers read “Madame can you please step out of the car” and the woman in the car replies “did u just assume my gender.” The use of a police officer, an authority figure, was a jab at the militant nature that feminists and queer activists have on the internet. These activists are seen as “policing” the internet and in this scene the officer is seen as the ignorant figure. The meme is cross listed with the genre of trigger, feminism, queer, and social justice warrior posts. The selection of this meme, meaning the reason this meme continued to replicate, is because of how quickly the meme mutated becoming a hybrid of trigger memes and using popular culture imagery.
Originally this meme was a solitary event on the site Imgur, but when it mutated on Tumblr the meme gained a larger audience as popular culture was weaved in. It began to diverge from its original purpose of mocking online feminist and social justice warriors. The new form of “Did u assume my gender” does not have the context of feminist and queer activists’ agendas. “Did u assume my gender” in particular parodies a contemporary conversation that the realm of academia and everyday people are facilitating.
“Did u assume my gender” is a relevant meme because of how the gender binary in the internet is a phenomenon that scholars and everyday people are recognizing. In How the World Changed Social Media, several authors draw upon Donna Haroway’s work and write that the idea of the internet as being gender-neutral was short-lived as people incorporated our world’s identity expectations into the digital world. They write “Self-crafting on social media [has] a gendered aspect, as one part of an individual’s various intersecting identities, just as in everyday offline life” (Miller et al. 116). “Did u assume my gender” plays into this analysis of the gendered space of the internet because it directly reveals how on the internet there is a recognition of the gender binary in our society. This meme always assumes that one character is expecting the other person to be a male or female. The meme uses images of real people, cartoons, film and so much more, inviting the idea that many aspects of our society are gendered. While this meme does reveal a consciousness of the two sex gender system, it is still inherently offensive because of how it mocks trans bodies in both the real world and the internet.
The replication of this meme is dangerous as some of the mutations carry the widespread idea that the trans identity is a joke. In the same chapter cited previously, the scholars mention that cultural norms can be identified through a constant repetition of images on media (Miller et al. 119). Below is a mutation of the original meme where it has become a hybrid with the genre of SpongeBob memes:
The replication of this meme is dangerous as some of the mutations carry the widespread idea that the trans identity is a joke. In the same chapter cited previously, the scholars mention that cultural norms can be identified through a constant repetition of images on media (Miller et al. 119). Below is a mutation of the original meme where it has become a hybrid with the genre of SpongeBob memes:
This iteration of the meme points to how in the short time of its’ existence, it has become a weapon against trans, gender fluid, and a-gender bodies. Patrick Star is synonymous with foolishness, and in this meme he represents the trans body. As other versions of the meme show, the trans body is often associated with a symbol of foolishness. Since the beginning, this meme was meant to be undermining but in later iterations but the meme is a harassment to people who are constantly under attack both online and in our world. In an article published by Times over 80 percent of trans people report harassment at school when they were young. This data is taken from trans people in adulthood now, before the internet perverted every aspect of our life. Even though arguments are made that the internet offers power through representation, the reality is that replication of detrimental images undermine and strip people of any power they may possess. The replication of this meme incorporates mocking people outside the gender binary because the images and text associated with this meme represent non-conforming people as bodies simply seeking to annoy.
Along with mocking non gender binary people, the meme derives from the critique of third wave feminists on second wave feminism. While there is much more scholarship surrounding this topic, the text I am using focuses on how third wave feminism was born in the 1908s with the goal of “address[ing] external forms of oppression [and] examining forms of oppression and discrimination that they themselves had internalized” (Mann and Huffman 60). The reason this context is needed is because “Did u assume my gender” enters this conversation by mocking second wave feminism and its lack of understanding intersectionality. Below is an example of this meme:
Along with mocking non gender binary people, the meme derives from the critique of third wave feminists on second wave feminism. While there is much more scholarship surrounding this topic, the text I am using focuses on how third wave feminism was born in the 1908s with the goal of “address[ing] external forms of oppression [and] examining forms of oppression and discrimination that they themselves had internalized” (Mann and Huffman 60). The reason this context is needed is because “Did u assume my gender” enters this conversation by mocking second wave feminism and its lack of understanding intersectionality. Below is an example of this meme:
The meme reflects the presumed idea that second wave feminism is about white woman being angry and telling narratives of people they hardly interact with. One theorists who makes this argument is bell hooks who rejects to let others speak her narrative as she must manage her own gray space and find power from it (hooks 84). While this may seem like a tangential point, this mutation of the meme proves to be important in the artifacts relevancy as identity politics are becoming part of our countries discourse. Intersectionality of identities is a concept that is becoming prevalent in how people build their political alliances and even in how policy makers consider what laws to pass and even rewrite. In 2016, as we enter the tactile age and augmented reality and all other technologies advance the idea of identity is becoming abstract. Third wave feminism seeks to also focus on the identity and make politics a personal thing. Despite the authors of this meme being anonymous, this piece substitutes direct conversation. This meme is a way of telling second wave feminists that their practice is obsolete and potentially even undermining to the progression we are having. “Did u assume my gender” meme proves to be a powerful meme because of how its’ mutations recognize and reflect contemporary dialogues happening in both the academic and informal realm.
As the internet social media continue to reshape the possibilities of communication we also have to consider how the pictures we post are also reshaping the discourses of our society. Unlike the effort needed to skim through scholarly sources, it takes mere seconds to find memes that amuse us. The accessibility to these texts proves to be an example of humanity’s advancement in technology, however it also showcases the lack of progression in recognizing all people as equal. From gender, to trans representation, and even the larger theoretical tensions between feminist waves, this one meme is attached to many contemporary discourses. “Did u assume my gender” is a meme that reminds us that comedy isn’t always playful, it can also be malicious.
As the internet social media continue to reshape the possibilities of communication we also have to consider how the pictures we post are also reshaping the discourses of our society. Unlike the effort needed to skim through scholarly sources, it takes mere seconds to find memes that amuse us. The accessibility to these texts proves to be an example of humanity’s advancement in technology, however it also showcases the lack of progression in recognizing all people as equal. From gender, to trans representation, and even the larger theoretical tensions between feminist waves, this one meme is attached to many contemporary discourses. “Did u assume my gender” is a meme that reminds us that comedy isn’t always playful, it can also be malicious.
Works Cited
- Blackmore, Susan. "The Power of Memes." Scientific American 283.4 (2000): 64-73. Web. 31 Oct. 2016. http://www.psy.cmu.edu/~rakison/memes.pdf.
- hooks, Bell. Teaching to Transgress: Education as the Practice of Freedom. New York: Routledge, 1994. Print.
- Miller, Daniel et al. “Gender.” How the World Changed Social Media, 1st ed., vol. 1, UCL Press, London, 2016, pp. 114–127, www.jstor.org/stable/j.ctt1g69z35.15.
- Mann, Susan Archer, and Douglas J. Huffman. “The Decentering of Second Wave Feminism and the Rise of the Third Wave.” Science &Amp; Society, vol. 69, no. 1, 2005, pp. 56–91. www.jstor.org/stable/40404229.
- http://time.com/3999348/transgender-murders-2015/