Question

In Marlon Bailey's essay he identifies 6 specific categories of gender; choose one category and link it one character from the film, Paris is Burning; explain why you think this character represents this specific gender category identified by Bailey.

Answer 1

THE GENDER SYSTEM

The gender system is a Ballroom community creation that serves as the basis for its gender and sexually and kinship relations. This systemconsists of categories that reflect lived experiences and are fashioned and rehearsed through performaces at balls. The gender system is yet another woefully underanalyzed cultural practice of ballroom culture, and there is a great deal to be learned about gender and sexuality from this community. Butch queens and femme queens (MTF) and the strategies that they deploy to survive the dangers of largely heteronomative urban spaces. Gender system in the ballroom community reveals how race, class, gender, and sexual oppression shape members lives and perhaps most importantly, what these communities do to combat these convergent form of oppression. The gender system is a focused example of the role that culture plays in the construction , the revision, and the reconstruction of gender through performance.

• 6 specific categories of gender are:- ??

1. ?butch queens who are biologically born male who identify as bisexual men and are and can be masculine, hyper masculine, or feminine
2. femme queens who are transgender women or people at various stages of gender reassignment through hormonal and or surgical processes
3. butch queens up in drags, who are homosexual men who perform drag but who do not take hormones and who do not live as women
4. butch who are transgender men or people at various stages of gender reassignment or masculine lesbian or women appearing as men regardless of sexual orientation
5. women who are biologically born females who identify as lesbian, straight, or queer and
6. men/trade, who are biologically born males who are straight-identified men?

? Paris Is Burning Conceived by members of the ballroom community, along with filmaker Wolfgang Busch,as something of a follow up, How Do I Look was made to show what Paris Is Burning missed, from the history of voguing (which began among people of color imprisoned on Riker's Island), to lesbians in ball culture,to safer-sex education via the balls, to the career successes of some scene's most prominent members. At times,the film veers into comments and questions that feels transphobic; at others, it feels powerfully trans-celebratory; and on occasion, it offers visions and understandings of transgressing gender that are very different from the ones we typically see on screen today.