U zadnjih tridesetak godina svjedočimo krizi koja je ozbiljno uzdrmala heteronormativni ustroj svijeta. Iako je očito da više ništa nije kao prije… I da su rodne, spolne i seksualne prakse rastočile svoje heteronormativne definicije – barem se to desilo na Zapadu… Neki i dalje ustraju na konzervativnim iluzijama, koje datiraju, ne biste vjerovali, iz druge polovine 19 stoljeća.
U svijetu se mnogo toga promijenilo. Živimo u nestabilnoj ekonomiji koja učestalo niže uspone i padove. Živimo u svijetu ubrzanog i naizgled beskrajnog napretka informatičkih tehnologija. U svijetu nevjerojatnih medicinskih dostignuća, izrazite globalne mobilnosti, novih socijalnih kontakata te sveprisutnih društvenih mreža. Pa i ekspanzije video nadzora te novih oblika socijalne kontrole. Premda su svi uvjeti tu da bez oklijevanja iskoračimo iz heteronormativnosti, da prekinemo heteronorativnu iluziju kojoj stvarnost sve više okreće leđa. Svijet još uvijek stare pravice – stare privilegije te stare rodne, spolne i seksualne pojmove, pa i zastarjela shvaćanja braka i obitelji – svim silama pokušava ugraditi u sasvim novi, neodgovarajući i sasvim izvitopereni društveni okoliš.
Kako bi se što bolje snašli u svijetu ubrzanih promjena koji, zanimljivo, ne trpi baš najbolje dopune i izmjene roda, spola i seksualnosti, uhvatit ćemo se u koštac s gaga feminizmom. Kao predložak za temu poslužit će nam knjiga Gaga Feminism: Sex, Gender, and the End of Normal. Knjigu potpisuje Jack Halberstem, profesor rodnih studija i engleskog jezika i književnosti sa Sveučilišta Columbia, koji je nekada bio poznatiji kao Judith Halberstem. Svojim koncipiranjem gaga feminizma on nastoji podariti smisao velikim promjenama, pa i otvoriti nam oči kako ne bi ustuknuli pred velikim prilikama koje nam se pružaju.
It seemed to me, and continues to seem, that feminism ought to be careful not to idealize certain expressions of gender that, in turn, produce new forms of hierarchy and exclusion. In particular, I opposed those regimes of truth that stipulated that certain kinds of gendered expressions were found to be false or derivative, and others, true and original. The point was not to prescribe a new gendered way of life that might then serve as a model for readers of the text. Rather, the aim of the text was to open up the field of possibility for gender without dictating which kinds of possibilities ought to be realized.
Gaga feminizam je zapravo feminizam velike krize u kojoj se našla heteronormativnost. U kojoj je došlo do velikih transformacija roda i seksualnosti, odnosa te intimnosti. Krize koja je znatno izmijenila rodne i seksualne politike. Zahvaliti možemo jednim dijelom i feminizmu trećeg vala, koji je ženama donio bolje mogućnosti u pogledu obrazovanja i rada. Veći obol od 90-tih naovamo ipak su dali novi trendovi kao što su pad dominacije monogamnog braka… Veliki skok broja razvoda. I širenje kućanstava u kojima ne žive nuklearne obitelji. Pored toga, zapadni svijet bilježi pojavu vidljivosti transrodnih zajednica. A dolazi i do institucionalizacije gay braka. U svijetu u kojem rodna i svaka druga binarnost više ne drže dominantne pozicije, pomalja se prostor novih mogućnosti – improvizacija, prilagodbi i inovacija. Halberstemovim riječima, pomalja se prostor za gaga feminizam.
Gaga feminizam svoje ime duguje globalno popularnoj Lady Gagi, koju Halberstem uzima kao simbol novog doba. Ona simbolizira odumiranje starih modela želje, roda i seksualnosti. A istovremeno predstavlja uzor novog feminizma koji privilegira spolnu, rodnu i seksualnu fluidnost. Drugim riječima, Halberstem želi reći da nam ne trebaju nam nove kategorije i podjele, nego da možemo, ako hoćemo postati gaga. A da bi nam njegova razmišljanja bila jasnija, donosimo citat iz knjige.
Gaga feminism, I will demonstrate, is a form of political expression that masquerades as naive nonsense but that actually participates in big and meaningful forms of critique. It finds inspiration in the silly and the marginal, the childish and the outlandish. Gaga feminism grapples with what cannot yet be pronounced and what still takes the form of gibberish, as we wait for new social forms to give our gaga babbling meaning.
Sad ćemo se malo osvrnuti na neke promjene i krize koje su zadesile binarni i heteronormativni svijet. Prva i nezaobilazna stvar u toj priči – svakako je faza djetinjstva. To je vrijeme kada nam se usađuju rodne uloge, koje baš nemaju veze sa svijetom odraslih.
…we live in a world that still controls girls and girl sexualities within a rigid system of blocks, taboos, and prohibitions. And we still expect boys to punish each other into “normal” forms of masculinity and then compete and agitate for female attention in ways that make women into killjoys, moral arbiters, and passive bystanders at the prom, still waiting to be asked to dance.
Kako tvrdi Halberstem, takva pretjerana obuka kojom dječake i djevojčice iz anarhičnih i nerodnih čahura preobražavamo u rodne automate, zapravo je opasna, nepotrebna i nije usklađena s onih što ih čeka u svijetu odraslih.
In fact, gendered adulthood nowadays often represents a total reversal of the gender roles that have been drummed into children, and this is true across ethnic groups and classes.
Dakle, očito smo zapetljani u mreži zastarjelih shvaćanja… I kao da ne želimo sebi priznati što se to s nama i drugima odvija na dnevnoj bazi. O čemu se zapravo radi? Premda se ustraje na navodno uvriježenim rodnim ulogama… Činjenica je da je monogamni brak postao stvar prošlosti… Te više očito ne dominira scenom… Osim toga, razvod braka više nije nikakva sramota i gotovo da je svakodnevna pojava. A tu su još i kućanstva u kojima ne žive samo mama, tata i djeca… Jer primjetne su svakojake kombinacije ljudi pod istim krovom.
U takvom svijetu žena također zarađuje za život, a muškarac više ne igra istu rolu. Nerijetko se događa da je nezaposlen, te nije u stanju ispunjavati autoritativnu i hraniteljsku ulogu. Kako nije u stanju biti pater familias, postaje liječina, parazit koji preživljava tako što se zakači za pametniju i sposobniju ženu. Ovaj novi tip parazitskog makuliniteta neupitno narušava heteronormativni ideal.
…the shifts that have created underemployment for men and a sense of the redundancy of maleness have also changed completely the structure of gender within which “male” and “female” once made sense.
Nastavljamo s medicinom, odnosno s pričom o naprednim reproduktivnim tehnologijama koje bi u perspektivi mogle dokinuti tiraniju biološke obitelji. Naime, prema marksističkom pogledu radikalne feministkinje Sulamith Firestone, žena je podjarmljena (podčinjena) u obitelji – zbog svoje reproduktivne uloge. Promijenimo li status te uloge pa i obitelji koja toj ulozi daje značenje, možemo promijeniti društvo u cjelini.
Firestone predicted that when reproductive technologies became available to all women, many women would choose not to bear babies but would happily cede that privilege to the medical lab. And when that day came, according to Firestone, a feminist revolution would occur, because women would be freed from the old adage that “anatomy is destiny,” and the equality of the sexes would finally be possible.
Where reproduction becomes artificial, male and female distinctions and mother and father roles wither away, leaving in their place only parents; and if we create machines to do our labor for us too, then we rid ourselves of gendered and economic divisions of labor, and we lose the rationale for the biological family completely.
But prophetic as she may have been, she couldn’t have foreseen the way that so much could change and yet remain the same. Here we are living in an age of artificial reproduction, a time when many women seek and receive medical assistance in becoming pregnant or finding a surrogate mother to carry their embryos; a time when shopping at a sperm bank is common enough to give rise to anxieties about incest occurring between babies born of anonymous fathers. And yet, the pull of those gender divisions that were supposed to wither away remains strong, as does the gender binary that supposedly depends upon reproductive function.
Slijedi Halberstemovi citati o institucionalizaciji gej braka. I o tome kako je to zapravo sjelo samoj LGBTIQ zajednici.
The participation of LGBT couples in state-sanctioned marriages lends credibility to the very institution that has acquired meaning precisely through excluding gays and lesbians, among others, from marriage in the first place. In other words, marriage has been an exclusionary system rather than an inclusionary one; it has functioned precisely by drawing lines between those who can and those who cannot legally marry.
The hallmark of post-World War II LGBT social movements has tended to be the attempt to change society, to model a different way of relating, of cohabiting, of desiring. So how did we arrive at this historical juncture where an assimilationist politics of marriage now stands in for all queer political aspiration? Many queers today still believe in social movements far less focused on marriage equality and far more interested in changing the structures of intimate modes of relating, belonging, and cohabiting altogether. (…) …radical queers still hold on to the idea that something lies “beyond marriage” (as one group calls itself), and, moreover, that human difference should flourish not in the rounding out of existing structures but in the creative invention of new ones.
Kako predlaže Halberstem, gaga feminizmom bi se trebala nastaviti duga tradicija feminizma koji je ovakav kakav je – na rubu socijalnog sloma… Naime, u dobrano izmjenjenom svijetu razvijaju se nove forme intimnosti, društvenosti i politika… Pa nije vrijeme da ostanemo pasivni, nego se trebamo trgnuti… I to zbog prilika koje nam se nude… I dati svoj obol kaosu. Moramo imati na umu da institucije, koje su očito izgubile kredibilitet, ne mogu emancipirati ni jednu jedinu osobu. Te nije potrebno u legalizaciji naših života i odnosa tražiti izlaz iz krize u kojoj se nalaze spol, rod i seksualnosti.
A gaga feminism does not need to know and name the political outcome of its efforts. More important is to identify the form that transformative struggle should take. In this book I have named these forms variously as: making peace with the anarchy of childishness, entering into new forms of relation and family, resisting the legitimizing structures of marriage and kinship, and finding creative spaces within which to go gaga and in the process catching a glimpse of the something else that we call the (queer) future.
…gaga feminism proposes to be a new kind of gender politics for a new generation, a generation less bound to the romance of permanence (in the form of marriage, for example), more committed to the potential of flexibility (in the form of desire, for example), more tuned in to the fixity of power relations (in the form of capitalism), and less likely to buy the broken ideologies of uniqueness, American dreams, inclusivity, and respectability. The gaga generation, made up of men, women, and everyone else, knows that the future is now, greed (think Hummers) is crass, mutation is possible, and insurrection is here, and it is you, and we are altrady singing the crazy songs of the future world. And when you decide you are ready to go well and truly gaga, to leave behind the seeming rationality of contemporary life and love, when you are prepared to see through the lies of romance, the coercion of love and marriage, the fiction of equality and unity, when you are open to a new feminism, a gaga feminism that joins forces with the oppositional movements sweeping the globe, you will finally realize that we are already living in the future that we have always tried to imagine, a time and a place where the many say no to the few, the queer counsel the straight, the children teach their parents, and the lunatics, as the saying goes, have taken over the asylum.
Nadamo se da su stvari vezane za gaga feminizam postale jasnije. I da ste shvatili koliko su vremena u kojima živimo zapravo vrlo uzbudljiva. Bilo kako bilo, najvažnije je da zapamtite da gaga feminist može postati ama baš svatko. Ali samo ako to zaista želi.
Tekst je nastao kolaborativno u okviru čitateljskog kluba qRUŽOK, a poslužio je kao koncept radijske emisije Queer u Eteru koja se emtirala 1. ožujka 2021. Emisija Queer u eteru realizira se uz financijsku podršku Zaklade Kultura nova i Ministarstva kulture i medija RH. Mišljenja izražena u emisiji mišljenja su autora/ica i ne odražavaju stavove donatora.
