How to Build a Gender
WARNING!! Nudity!
2023 - 15 MINUTE VIDEO PERFORMANCE
“How to Build a Gender” (2023) is a 15 minute video performance, filmed and photographed by Fern Anfinson.
In January 2023, I went to a hairstylist to have my long, dark hair bleached and toned blonde (gender affirming care!). Upon introducing myself with my pronouns (they.them.theirs), the hairstylist launched into a “conversation” in which she said she was seeking to understand gender non-conforming identities, but really was trying to assert her own opinions and experience with the subject. She told me of her sister’s child, who is nonbinary, and how they express their gender wearing vampire teeth and various accessories. She proceeded to drill me, “Why do you people feel the need to do that?"
The anger, exhaustion, and sadness I carried from the interaction led to the creation of this piece.
What is gender? In what ways and why do we often equate one’s physical appearance to an assumption of gender identity?
Amongst many binary trans individuals (trans men and women), the push to “pass” as their gender in society is one of personal comfort, heteronormativity, as well as one of safety. Here, I strain my body to take a nonbinary form which can be consumed by others as distinctly neither man or woman. I smush paint upon my skin and plastic vampire teeth fill up my mouth; my makeup teeters between clown and breakdown. But what does it mean to “pass” acceptably in a cis-gender society when you’re not cis? What about trans individuals who are gender non-conforming?
Having “built” nonbinary gender, I stop speaking to the viewer, remove my costuming, and tend to my body without narration. I dress myself and accessorize into a true final form of sorts: myself in my nonbinary body.
