\u201cAt first I felt horribly silly, like a man who had put on women\u2019s clothing for sheer sport and had forgotten to remove the outfit after the allotted period of fun. I felt flat-footed and clumsy. Not a man and not ever able to be a woman, suspended nameless in the limbo state between existence and nonexistence\u201d (Mootoo 77).<\/p>\n
At this point in the novel, Cereus Blooms at Night<\/em>, Tyler tries on a nurse\u2019s dress that Mala stole for him. Unable to explicitly articulate their gender identity, Tyler reflects on how wearing the dress makes them feel. In describing these feelings, Tyler states that they feel \u201csilly,\u201d \u201cflat-footed,\u201d \u201cclumsy\u201d and \u201csuspended\u201d while wearing the dress, suggesting a sense of discomfort and uneasiness. Combined with the phrase, \u201cnot a man and not ever able to be a woman,\u201d it becomes apparent that the perceived femininity of the dress makes Tyler feel as though their gender does not properly align with the gender binary of man\/woman. According to the societal \u201crules\u201d of gender, Tyler\u2019s thin, flat-chested body seems to not fill the dress in the \u201cproper\u201d ways. Due to this discordance between biological anatomy and gender perception, Tyler feels that they cannot wear the dress in accordance with prescribed concepts of feminine womanhood.<\/p>\n In the introduction to The Queer Art o Failure<\/em>, Judith Halberstam outlines how failure can be interpreted as a positive aspect of queer life as it \u201callows us to escape the punishing norms that discipline behavior and manage human development\u2026\u201d (3). Within the passage of Cereus Blooms at Night<\/em>, Tyler\u2019s language of discomfort and nonexistence suggest that they have \u201cfailed\u201d at navigating the \u201crules\u201d of gender, and particularly femininity. Interestingly, Halberstam notes that \u201cWhere feminine success is always measured by male standards, and gender failure often means being relieve of the pressure to measure up to patriarchal ideals, not succeeding at womanhood can offer unexpected pleasures\u201d (4). Although this idea may resonate with cisgender women, it does not seem to align with Tyler\u2019s experiences. When Tyler fails at measuring up to feminine success, they do not feel pleasure or relief. Through Tyler\u2019s experiences, it is evident that although gender failure may be liberating alternative for some, transgender or nonbinary people often have to live<\/em> gender failure, creating a feeling of discomfort and isolation in a society that delegitimizes their existence.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" \u201cAt first I felt horribly silly, like a man who had put on women\u2019s clothing for sheer sport and had forgotten to remove the outfit after the allotted period of fun. I felt flat-footed and clumsy. Not a man and not ever able to be a woman, suspended nameless in the limbo state between existence … Continue reading The Complexities of Gender Failure<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2594,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[93618],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-595","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-2015-blog-post"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.dickinson.edu\/everythinginbetween\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/595","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\/2594"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.dickinson.edu\/everythinginbetween\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=595"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.dickinson.edu\/everythinginbetween\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/595\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.dickinson.edu\/everythinginbetween\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=595"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.dickinson.edu\/everythinginbetween\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=595"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.dickinson.edu\/everythinginbetween\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=595"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}