Part one: from a girl to a doll On the reasons why we want to know… Bo.
We all want to know, we want to know before, everything has to be known before it’s out: What we want to know first is the sex.
Because it’s the sex that defines and will decide what it’s gonna be. Is it a girl? yes, it’s a girl !! The run for cuteness and pinkness can start, bedroom walls can be drapped with bubbelling roses and hearts. Ready to be fed with social conventions and projections. Don’t worry foetus-you, We have already chosen: the color of your penties, the toys you will soak with your dribble (lays on your bed), the name you will represent, the woman you will become. Born girl, born woman. We will hand you a doll at the age of 2 or 4 to be sure you know what destiny is yours so that you will be sure /and then you will be sure, I promised what destiny is yours and who you really are. My sweet babydoll.
Let me tell you my babydoll, that in my research I did find interesting kwnoledge and psychanalyses studies that will help you understand the reasons why boys are boys and girls are dolls. Everything is very clear and clearly divided, so you’ll see. In the end, it’s a question of penis. From what I’ve casually read, and after long hours of research on identifications in early ages what I’ve discovered is that boys have their own inner self to play with: their penis. The penis plays the role of his inner buddy, his inner self, his inner alter ego with who/which he can play with, to who/which he can identify and relate to. They see it as a tiny self, an independant living alter-ego. The thing is that it’s part of his body and in the same time it kind of live his own life. What Boy would see in his penis is an autonomous extension of himself. Ok… The great gap is that girls have no penis. Sorry girls nothing sticks out. Nothing for you to play with your mini-me. On the contrary, The Girl has no such member, her vagina isn’t obvious nore clearly identificable by her. She can’t see it as clearly as boy see there genital. The Girl will develop herself throught something/someone that is exterior to herself, as opposed to Boys.
Don’t worry girl, everything has been planned for you to identify with, for you to play with so you can perfectly identify yourself and play on your own: I give you a doll, there is your penis! Whereas The Girl will have a doll to play with, Boy will remain free from materialized and objectified ideals. Therefore it’s no wonder the woman develops needs to look like her doll. It’s her fisrt object of identification which is a superficial material ideal/model: plastic bodies don’t exist in real life. It’s absurd to try to reach this level of “perfection”. She’ll early integrate that she has to be careful with the way she dresses, her main goal as a kid being : to choose the perfect outfit for the doll and change it several times a day....
Part 2: from a girl to a woman Reason why femininity is femininity…
The first day in class they ask you to write your name over the coat rack. You choose your place, you name it, claims it yourself with your own name. It belongs to you now” “Finally! I have my private space. ” The Girl felt powerful now that she tasted the power of ownership. But what came after filled The Girl even more with delight. “This time we don’t put a name you will make a collage out of your own portrait.” Portraits of first day school were distribute to everyone where you could see our face paste on a graphical brush gradient background… She took great care of contouring her head and gave herself Body she deserved. Leaning on the side of a wall, little finger graciously standing, touching fine necklaces, one leg out of a jumper/dress that could be entirely open from top to bottom. YES. That was it. She was a woman.
The Girl: Bo...I wonder why I desperately need to look like a woman.
Bo: Little girls always do, don’t make a big fuss out of this. You’re not special. That’s the part they’ve been given to play and the model the mother reasonably gives in the best of world. “I’m a girl and I’ll become a woman” From girl to woman, you can read this in the eyes of your own family.
The Girl: What a common way to think. Wanting a woman body. How vulgarly simple and ordinary. What a generic way of looking at myself.
Bo: Could have been worst, you could have wanted Barbie’s flawless body. That twat who convert your soul to boobs adoration turning it into your ultimate goal. The final element that would open the door to femininity. Boobs,The Girl’s best friend. Boobs, The symbol of the woman, Boobs, the ultimate weapon to accomplish her biological destiny as women and human beings.
The Girl: Can you stop making fun of me now. Besides, I’m so over boobs.
Bo: A Woman needs to open like a flower. She will deploy all her artefact and attributes offered to her by mother nature to seduce, to provide, to nourish. She will have to display her body in certain ways in order to show her fertile qualities. Therefore breasts and hips will be welcome in a slinky satin dress with décolleté on top. Even though we see today that woman is also greatly invited to work and to reach the same status and position as man; their failure are excused as long as they don’t loose their femininity: She must at least also/always be a woman. As opposed to the Dahomey tribe you mentioned earlier…
The Girl: You think the Dahomey women refused to show any feminine attribute. They rejected femininity?
Bo: Well, some of them did cut their breast. This radical act is the complete opposition to the sublimation of woman’s body we can see today.
The Girl: Then what, if you don’t show and value your boobs, you’re not feminine? I feel you mix up everything here. A woman’s femininity is eternal.
Bo: Or maybe femininity doesn’t exist… Maybe it’s all made up.
The Girl: Yeah… I wonder why do we even need a name. What if I want to be feminine and I don’t want to be feminine in the same time. How is it called then? Maybe I don’t want to give a name.
Bo: You know, in the very beginning when you were inside your mother, you had no sex. I mean no definitive sex until week 7.
The Girl: Sure we all went through an informal body phase. Your body is not male or female enough at the stage, it’s just a foetus. We all begin (with)hermaphrodites.
Bo: Right…and some of us won’t develop as a “complete female” or a “complete male” in the end. I don’t really like using these terms but if I refer to the binary division of the human species then I guess I can.
The Girl: Because when you say: “complete female” it seems like you imply female or men are absolute perfection. They seem to be like the perfect and final version of human species.
Bo: It’s going back to this sterile classification of the species. The one that puts Human kind at the last stage of Species evolution. Indeed it’s stupid because it’s denying variations.
The Girl: And in the end we all are variations. We see ourselves as equals and everyone wants to belong to a certain category: people wants to be associated, recognised and they need to be named. What if you don’t fit any categorisation.
Bo: The problem isn’t if you don’t fit any categorisation. It’s more about the fact that we do have categorisation system. The problem is that we need names, we need to create frames, we need to genderise, to divide.
The Girl: Hum, but in the same time if you don’t name anything then, it doesn’t exist. It’s the case for intersex people for instance.
Bo: Oh wow, you really want to go down there…
The Girl: Of course, I want to talk about it. Because it’s one of the example that can help understand human species not as fixed species and “ normalised ” species. I want to go against the norms, because the norms are wrong!
Bo: You’re talking about European and patriarchal “ norms ” made up by European patriarchal states/society. You mean that norms never existed in the beginning and that it’s a invention of man.
The Girl: It’s made up, yes, completely arbitrary and superficial. It’s a product of society and language.
Bo: But the intersex case, is really rare.
The Girl: Maybe it is…maybe not. I red that In 2000, a biologist produced one of the first estimates of the number of people with variations in sex characteristics. According to her research, 1.7% of people globally are born with a variation of sex characteristics. And still it is not so clear, because this variation wasn’t widely acknowledge by the medicine community. But in any case It doesn’t really matter. What matter is that it does exist and that until today/recently, no questions were raised. We called it deformity, anomaly, disorder…
Bo: The terminology is still used in the medical framework. They call it DSD as for Disorders of Sex Development. For sure this terminology can add to existing stigma and pathologization…
The Girl: People cannot blame that individuals with variations of sex characteristics view certain terms as stigmatising. It is really (stigmatising), because it implies that if you’re different, then you’re wrong.
Bo: Yeah but If you are not female or male enough then what are you?
The Girl: Hermaphrodites. But the very problem is that one cannot remain hermaphrodite, right. You have to choose. You have to choose weather you’re a boy or a girl, whether you like pink or you like blue, weather you’re a vagina or a penis.
Bo: But Intersex people are not the one to make that choice. The parents do.
The Girl: Because they are the one who can’t deal with it. They are the ones imprisoned by the norm. They want their children to fit in, and to fill up the expectation of society: acceptable sex leading to a rational sexuality.
Bo: Family is the instrument of normalisation.
Bo: It reminds me of what Michel* used to say using the term “medicalised family”. Of course he wrote his thesis in the 70s but the system didn’t changed much. What he claims is that the power of the law is intimately integrated to a far wider power: the norm. The norm being relay by the family, through its structure, sexuality and models. Which implies that the surveillance system of people’s behaviour is not written in the laws, it is staged in the family structure itself. The law I’m talking about is the law of the norm, and “ the Family ” is the tool that shapes the norm. The drama is that this law is visible 24/7, it’s a permanent classification, hierarchisation, qualification of individuals. Everybody has a precisely defined function.
Bo: There is no place for hermaphrodites in this world.
The Girl: The choice is simple.
Bo: Society made it simple Boy or girl, blue or pink, ken or barbie,
Bo: If you can’t afford a shrink you can always buy a Elle or Cosmo magazine
The Girl: Lucky enough, your family might put you to rehab. Get your identity problems and sexual disorder fixed.
Bo: Michel mentioned it as “ medicalised family ”.
The Girl: I’m being dramatic and you bring back philosophers from the 60’s back on the table.
Bo: Even though homosexuality, today, is not fixed with shock therapy or intersex, less and less hospitalised from birth. I think there is still some truth, family is still used by the government to surveil and control identities and sexuality.
The Girl: I share the paranoia.
