Courtney, Brett, Andrea, and Frank's gender bender

Gender Bender Project

Courtney: I was surprised by the warm reactions that I got and how many people seemed to recognize me, even when I was wearing extremely baggy men’s clothing. I also tried to go beyond my normal level of social comfort and really put myself out there several times, only to find that people were more accepting than I thought they would be.

Brett: Having no beard made me feel naked and made me self-conscious. But nobody else seemed to think it was a big deal. One guy we met on the street said he felt bad for me that I had to shave. I also scored free wings from some girls at the bar…that must have been from my charm and good looks.

Andrea: My perception of what “slutty” was apparently wasn’t in line with what most other downtowners perceived to be. I felt extremely uncomfortable wearing a tight skirt, high heels, and excessive makeup, but it turns out that many girls wear such ensembles without shame. I was expecting a more dramatic reaction from both men and women. From the men, I was hoping to get some blatant cat-calls or whistles. From the women, I was hoping to get some condescending looks (“Oh my gosh… look at that slut!”). However, my expectations weren’t exactly met. I received some feedback from a group of guys that I approached, and they told me that in order to be “slutty” I should have worn a much shorter skirt and bumped up the cleavage.

Frank: Through conducting this gender bender activity my main take-away is that people really hate cameras and are made uncomfortable by them.  While filming the girls doing their gender bender performance a group of strangers thought we were filming them and were made extremely uncomfortable by it and yelled at us to get us to stop using the camera.  Also most of us felt uncomfortable as well because we were dressed and acting different than what we do.   I dress up once in a while but actually taking time to do my hair and put nicer clothing on took longer than what I am use to.  Also being downtown and around the social scene I felt a little better about myself because I actually looked presentable for a change.  

Our night on the town proved to be an interesting adventure for the four of us. Although DeFrancisco and Palczewski state, “people do not get up each morning and consciously decide how they will perform their gender identity that day” (pg. 84), that is exactly what we did. We leapt headfirst into Judith Butler’s (2004) concept of gender performativity, which holds that “gender is a kind of doing” (pg. 84), meaning that we are constantly acting out our gender identities through our patterned behaviors. When we switched our gender identities, we had to force ourselves to play the part of an identity completely unlike ourselves. This included both verbal and nonverbal behaviors. Watch the movie below as these verbal and nonverbal behaviors are played out.