Our understanding of sexuality has historically established the existence of labels such as male, female, feminine, and masculine. These historical social constructions have implied the non-exigence of anything in between those two primary gender labels. According to Judith Butler, we consider gender as a “corporeal style, an act, as it were, which is both intentional and performative..where performative suggests dramatic and contingent construction of meaning” (Butler 139). We are historically constructed into a gender, an identity, which we have obeyed through historic time. Eventually, it has become a lifestyle, a sustained and repeated “corporeal project”. Individuals became accustomed to such labels and identities, however, from the beginning of the 20th century this labeled identities began to question who they identity as, or if their are any labels that will be able to identify them.<\/p>\n
Furthermore, author Shani Mootoo creates a novel that brings up the topic of unordinary gender identities. Mootoo presents characters that fit neither side of the gender binary, but rather presents us to the continuum of gender and sexual roles and behaviors. For example, Tyler, the narrator, is biologically male, has a sexual affinity for man, and engages in cross-dressing. Indeed, he felt that “there was something delicious about about the confinement of his hairy legs in stockings” (Mootoo 83). By using the character of Tyler, Mootoo is able to renegotiate gendered roles of and its impact of labour (jobs) based on ones gender. Not only does he like the stockings, but he also likes being a nurse and a caregiver. In my opinion, Tyler is a symbol of uniqueness, an unknown gender identity that he is able to portray but not identity. In my eyes, he embraces a man who breaks the constituted rule that only women ought to be nurses, caregivers, or any motherly symbol.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Our understanding of sexuality has historically established the existence of labels such as male, female, feminine, and masculine. These historical social constructions have implied the non-exigence of anything in between those two primary gender labels. According to Judith Butler, we consider gender as a “corporeal style, an act, as it were, which is both intentional … Continue reading The Unidentified Tyler!<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3008,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[123782],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-1091","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-2016-blog-post"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.dickinson.edu\/everythinginbetween\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1091","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.dickinson.edu\/everythinginbetween\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.dickinson.edu\/everythinginbetween\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.dickinson.edu\/everythinginbetween\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3008"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.dickinson.edu\/everythinginbetween\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1091"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.dickinson.edu\/everythinginbetween\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1091\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.dickinson.edu\/everythinginbetween\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1091"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.dickinson.edu\/everythinginbetween\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1091"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.dickinson.edu\/everythinginbetween\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1091"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}