Gender Dichotomies

 

The primary point of Gender Dichotomies is to play.

 

The other point of the Gender Dichotomies project is to illustrate that gender in humans is less of a a real biological and physical thing, but rather more of a cultural, learned thing.  More than you think.  And that there is masculine and feminine in all of us.  I want to encourage people to do the jobs and  activities that are dominated by other genders.  

 

Our culture is less accepting of people who are not heteronormative and I am inspired by other cultures that are different, such as I have seen in the Philippines, Thailand (see: “kathoey”) and native cultures in the U.S. (see “two-spirit”)  It seems the current culture in this country is becoming more accepting of people switching genders medically with insurance companies starting to cover this.  And all but three states allow a person to switch genders on their birth certificate.  But this only allows a person to switch to another set of rules and acceptable behaviors and styles of dress.  There is a lot of ground to clear for the unclear, androgynous and intersex people, and there need to be many genders recognized as well as recognition of people who identify as genderless.

 

I wish that everyone could be more free and gender fluid, and foremost to be themselves.  Boys should be encouraged to wear dresses and cook and sew and girls to fix things and play sports and not worry about their looks.

 

Capitalism benefits from the gender dichotomy by having a group of people that capitalists can pay less for their labor. Every transgender person I know who has transitioned from female to male has had their wages go up, and every transgender person I know who has transitioned from male to female has had their wages go down.” (Evidence this is true across the board.) “The gender wage gap is a divide and conquer tactic that capitalist use to keep all workers from uniting and fighting for better wages. It is a fact that when women start entering a field that was previously dominated by men, the wages of all the individuals in that field go down (mail carriers are an excellent example of this).”  -Michelle Tonneslan

 

The point is that anyone can be in this photo collection.  Because everyone has aspects of both genders.  My photo-shoots consist of very simple changes: in only clothing and posture.  Nothing is fake.  Photoshop was only used to splice the images together and I am not changing the models’ images at all.

 

Below this there is the sub-theme of narcisexualism. (dubbed by Jakey)  Trite as it sounds, it is really quite important for people to love themselves first and most as a prerequisite to make them strong enough to enter the world and interact with others.  In my experience, finding and loving oneself is best achieved by lots of alone time, reading and reflection, and by narcisexualism.

 

 

I am inspired by the great Mexican artist Frida Kahlo, who was bisexual and loved to switch wildly between gender presentations, and this back in a time (1930s) when gender presentations were immensely more strict than today.

 

I am also inspired by the panoply of beautiful transgendered and queer people in West Philly.  Thank you!

 

        in Solidarity,

               Eli Avenue