gender

                                 Claiming the Stare: Jes Sachse and the Transformative Potential of Seeing

  We all love to look. While staring is most commonly thought of as an act to be avoided or ashamed of, Disability and Women’s Studies Scholar Rosemarie Garland-Thomson argues that the stare at its best actually has the potential to create new meanings and more open societies.  The stare as Thomson defines it, has the potential to help us redefine the language we use to describe each other and ourselves, create space for the often-excluded in communities, and craft our own identities. The stare is most dynamic and productive when the subject of the stare, the staree, is able to wield some control over the interaction and in doing so present their story to the starer.

"I think being invisible is the only superpower that doesn't have a downside."

Someone said this to me as I was working on this webpaper, trying to construct an argument about queer invisibility and and the invisibilities of disabilities. My thought process crashed to a halt--she hadn't even seen my brainstorming.

"What makes you say that?"

She told me that flight can lead to motion sickness, mind reading can be overwhelming, super strength can cause someone to break another person's bones when simply trying to give them a hug. As far as this goes, I can see how invisibility doesn't have any downfalls.

Except for the fact that you don't exist.

Most of the discourse about human communication is centered on the importance of the spoken word.  Although verbal communication tells us a lot about our society, body language can portray our true intentions. The individual body is always constrained by the social body because every action the individual does has been imprinted in their minds by culture. People are raised and socialized to interpret each other’s bodies as a series of symbols.  Almost every movement an individual does, whether it is crying, laughing, winking, smiling, or shrugging their shoulders is socially constructed.  Without following the example of other people, these movements would have no social significance.  The social significance of types of body languages in not a cultural universal and it is not portrayed and understood by all people.  One given signal cannot be interpreted the same way across cultures.  What social conditions occur when certain symbols are assumed to be universal, even though they cannot be universally expressed?

The topic of women as artists is one that has been discussed many times throughout history. Linda Nochlin, art historian, once wrote an article entitled “Why have there been no great women artists?” which explored this very subject. The Guerrilla Girls added to this topic by pointing out that when most women are featured in a museum, it is for being a nude subject in a painting rather than for being the creator of the masterpiece. Picasso’s Les Demoiselles d’Avignon, Ingres’ The Grand Odalisque, and Valie Export’s GenitalPanik are all works featuring a female nude subject. A uniting theme among them is the portrayal of the nude women as “freaks”. When a woman, especially a nude woman, is portrayed as a freak, her sexuality and her gender are seen differently.