Eliza Steinbock
Generations of Bananas – Essay for the Exhibition "Gender as a Performance" (Chris Rijksen)
– International gay and lesbian information, archive, and documentation center
professional writing 2013

About

The exhibition “Gender as a Performance” has a title that is commonplace nowadays. Who among us has heard this slogan before? Yes? Anyone? And where does it come from? Butler! Right. The series being exhibited stages the complications that arise when performing everyday gender: to quote Rijksen “One is a woman or a man because people say one is.” But, who gets to speak, to name, or define one’s gender – yourself, your parent, doctor, or the stranger in the street? Butler, and many generations of feminists before and after her, tell us that we must pay attention to who has the authority to make these gender declarations true. Basically, we should be wary of so-called “gender experts” and the truth claims they make about us.

↳ http://www.ihlia.nl/dutch/ihlia_amsterdam/Exposities/Performance