Fashioning the Body: Versions of the Citizen, the Self, and the Subject

(with a little Bertolt Brecht)

Through two very different modes of teaching Bornstein and Schofield discuss issues of gender, identity, and power in an interesting and involved manner. In order to better understand why each chose to fashion their lesson plan the way they did I created an exercise similar to ones in My Gender Work Book and I built a fort! Each had created difficulties within my analysis because of time constraints but in the end enriched my understanding of the reasons behind their decision to utilize their chosen medium.

Schofield's approach was to bring his audience into a space that was comfortable enough to discuss sensitive issues in a humurous way by inviting the audience to participate in the experience. By means of building a fort in which to perform Schofield took control of our general expectations for the performance's outcome. By inviting his audience to participate in the action he added a little bit of unpredictability. In building my own fort I learned that when you invite others to join you it only adds to the experience and brings up things you may have never thought up on your own. On the other hand, you are inviting them into a space that you own because you created it. That ownership gives you license to guide the discussion any way you see fit. Schofield's detailed examination of his own gender offers up a unique understanding of gender and identity. In an interview on the topic of his performance he says: "Transbodies can do things that other bodies can't...When I take off my clothes...I go from being this cute young man to an adult female to both of those things and more in a single moment. To me it's the moment of beholding a human body that contains so many complexities that really drives it home. Of course not every queer theorist wants to get naked to prove thier point!(homofactuspress.com). His comfort or willingness to put himself into a pretty vulnerable situation is assuring to the audience and creates a sense of intimacy while shocking them into thoughtful consideration of his story. From my own experience with fort building I found that the structure of the fort became something of a conductor in the sense that it allowed conversation and ideas to pass through. In view of this experience Schofield's performance becomes the tangible version of this particular type of conductor.

Something I have neglected to explore further as of yet is the way in which the audience is encouraged to participate in the performance. The audience is given several objects of importance to seperate portions of the performance, otherwise known as props. Because these props are important to the performance the bearer of the prop becomes just as essential. People seated in the right areas are asked to help Schofield in the construction of his fort. This also gives the audience value because they have been able to assist him in his purpose. In addition to all of this audience participation the audience is given the opportunity to guide his performance by calling out numbers that correspond to one of his 127 Easy Steps to Becoming a Man. Subsequently Schofield becomes a conductor allowing different concepts of gender and identity to pass through him in the form of his life stories as he is differently labeled, double labeled and sometimes even triple labeled. In his workshop for our class he had the class come up with different names for gender or identity such as male/female, trans, hetero, homo and so on and so forth. All of these labels seemed to be included in his performance and were combined to create an alternative identity unique in its creation.

In order to understand exactly how he does this I turned to Bertolt Brecht. I wrestled with choosing whether or not Schofield's performance was epic theatre or dramatic theatre. I ended up realizing that in doing so I had created a binary out of his performance. Through this realization I have come to think that perhaps his performance lies somewhere in the middle. His performance includes attributes of both forms of theatre as defined by Brecht. With regards to the dramatic theatre Schofield's performance: implicates the spectator in a stage situation, provides him with sensations experience, the spectator is involved in something, the spectator shares the experience." Concerning the epic thetre his performance is more of a, "narrative, turns the reader into an observer, she is made to face something, brought to the point of recognition, the human being is the object of the enquiry, she is alterable and able to alter, montage, jumps, social being determines thought." In the end Schofield's  performance was a sort of epically dramatic or dramatically epic theatre. Whether he did so conciously or not Schofiled blended Brecht's well-defined and completely seperate forms of theatre to create a modern theatre to which we have not yet assigned a label. Perhaps this is something Brecht would even approve of, the idea of the theatre changing throughout time creating something considered other in respect to the more accepted forms of theatre.

Bornstein utilizes a much more subtle, conversational method of introducing the reader to different ideas about gender, identity, and power. Through phrasing the writing as a dialogue Bornstein draws the reader into the topic of discussion. Throughout this discussion she uses different visual aids, such as the gender/identity/power pyramid based on the basic food group pyramid, to build understanding. Another powerful tool she makes use of are the exercises through which the reader also learns about gender identities and the power that they wield, in a more generalized sense. Along-side that lesson the reader also learns about their own identity or gender and the power or powerlessness that accompany it. Choosing what kind of exercises to include must have been very difficult and time consuming. I had a great deal of trouble deciding what type of exercise to create on my own and figuring out how it would relate to to this program wasn't easy either. This process gave me a little perspective while thinking about the exercises Bornstein used and how they were used to better the reader's understanding of the topic. Bornstein's carefully chosen, deliberate and intriguing exercises can be difficult for the reader to work through but she always reassures them in keeping with the discursive nature of her writing. By using these exercises to compliment the reading Bornstein has created an interactive learning environment in which the reader is encouraged to grow. This is absolutely essential to the comfort and ease of the reader as they are working through some pretty difficult material. Bornstein even alerts the reader to the dangers of, "gender play,"  in the very beginning of this reading saying that, "...You need to know where you are, where your tools are, what they're capable of doing, how they're capable of hurting you if they are misused"(35). In her dealings with these controversial topics she creates and uses the pyramid of gender/identity/power through which she builds understanding much the same way that Schofield builds his forts. Her pyramid becomes a conductor through which an understanding of the gender/identity/power system passes. Below the pyramid she goes so far as to ask the reader to try and place themselves on the pyramid. This invests the reader in understanding how the pyramid functions and fosters an enriched understanding of how to operate the system in the context of the pyramid. This demonstrates the careful consideration both Bornstein and Schofield employed when deciding upon the materials or tools they would use with special attention to how useful or destructive each tool could be in the attempt to serve their purpose.

Another interesting concept that Bornstein works through via the pyramid is, "real men/women." She describes them as a social construct and explains a little later that some thoerists have even started to take the influence of sociological factors into consideration when talking about gender. She goes on to break up the gender pyramid as if it represented humanity as it is influenced by western cultures. The upper level of the pyramid would represent a function of power and the very top point would represent the perfect gender(39). This is an interesting thought to ponder, gender as a construct, for Schofield, "...becoming a man is less about equipment and more about attitude." So how does he and his "attitude" fit into Bornstein's concept of the perfect gender? This thought crossed my mind as I re-read Bornstein and it occured to me that there were few if any possibilities for Schofield to climb very far up the pyramid. This pyramid as a guiding general principal of the dynamics between gender/identity/power is quite effective in that it clearly depicts the construction of the perfect gender from many different angles while allowing the reader to explore any other angle they could possibly think of.

Throughout the reading the experience of this gender/identity/power dynamic I questioned are these the right means to the ends which Bornstein and Schofield sought? The answer I came up with is yes! They obviously put a lot of thought into exactly how the audience/reader would react not only to what they presented but how it was presented; the two were of equal importance. This means that although the performance of these ideas and the written work on these ideas may not reach out to the same people the people they reach and are able to teach are leaving with a genuinely bettered understanding.