Self-Identity in Gender

Paris is Burning (1990) is a documentary capturing the lives of many drag queens, mostly through their “balls” which are, in a way, celebrations of their sexuality. Butler states that “gender is in no way a stable identity or locus of agency from which various acts proceed; rather, it is an identity tenuously constituted in time—an identity, instituted through a stylized repetition of acts. Further, gender is instituted through the stylization of the body and, hence, must be understood as the mundane way in which bodily gestures, movements, and enactments of various kinds constitute the illusion of an abiding gendered self.” This of course separates gender from sex. Whereas gender would simply be fitting to a mold of expectation, sex is the physical aspect to being a male or female. Because I believe Butler would refer to the drag queens as women, I will refer to them as such. For most of the “girls” in the film, the performance of being a woman makes them a woman, and only a few of them take the step to actually have a sex change. For the rest, gender is an experience, just the same as race and class. Throughout the balls, they don’t only play the part of women; they play straight men and often white businessmen.

This all comes down to being accepted in society. While they are drag queens, most of them are black and of a lower socioeconomic status. While race is much harder to hide, which many of them still do, they play this life of riches and glamour, but really they are stealing their food and clothes because they can hardly afford to get by. This leads them to want the life they are acting. All of them want fame and money and many want a sex change. They want all of these things because they want to be looked up at instead of down, which is how they have lived their lives thus far. They are accustomed to scraping by and verbally arguing with those who don’t understand their way of life. The families that they create give them a sense of true family since many of them have been disowned.

While many strive to become a true female, one of the drag mothers, Pepper, points out how she believes getting a sex change is too far. She argues that the girls believe if they get a sex change they will be treated so much better, but women aren’t really treated great to begin with. This really shows when we first hear that Venus was murdered. She was working as an escort of sorts and was strangled. The act of the gender role has consequences either way, in this case the consequence being death. This is of course an exaggerated case, but women do face social and political consequences on a daily basis. Because the drag queens are either gay or transsexual, black, and likely poor, they must figure that no consequences can be worse than the ones they have faced. One of the queens that did get a sex change feels very free, yet her friend points out that the voice is still there, implying she still sounds like a man. This will likely lead to discrimination in her future seeing as transsexual men who undergo sex changes are treated very much differently than women are.

While identity is obviously a question of gender, the becoming of a woman is more of the experience than being a woman. This may be why Pepper will never have a sex change. She claims to have lived a wonderful life; this includes her previous life as a man and the self-realization that the role in life she wants to play is of a woman. To her, getting a sex change is taking that role too far, and in a way wipes that part of one’s identity from them. Many of the queens only go as far as getting breast implants and plastic surgery, adding to their identity and their personal process of becoming a woman, but taking away a part of your body is different. While the woman who underwent the sex change mentioned above literally gave up her penis for the act of gender, she still has the same body, and voice, as she did when she was still a male. Basically Pepper may be arguing that the penis is just one of the parts of the identity that will always remind one of their past as a man, so why cut it off unless you can literally get a new body… a female body.

Overall, the film raises some interesting questions about identity, of course relating to gender and sexuality. Gender in many ways is like playing a part in a movie. Often actors do play characters of opposite genders and are criticized. While it is an act, what is most true and often unclassifiable as far as gender is concerned, is the self-identity and the physical body. The rest is playing a role, molded by history and praised in a society where heterosexual reproduction is necessary.