Towards a New Sissiography: The Sissy in Body, Abuse and Space in Performance Practice

213 Pages·2011·23.02 MB·English

Towards a New Sissiography: The Sissy in Body, Abuse
and Space in Performance Practice

by Luiz Fernando Fernandes Messias
Submitted in fulfilment of requirements of the degree of MPhil/PhD

The Central School of Speech and Drama
University of London
2011
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Declaration of Originality

I, Luiz Fernando Fernandes Messias, declare that the submission presented here is my
own work. Information derived from published or unpublished work of others has
been acknowledged in the text and a list of references is given in the bibliography.

Luiz Fernando Fernandes Messias.
London, 10th of June 2011.

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Abstract
Along with the live performance of Sissy!, the present document constitutes research
centred on the figure of the ‘sissy,’ defined in relation to the effeminate homosexual.
The practice-based study proposes ‘sissiography’ as an original concept, conceived of
as a negotiation between the three elements of body, abuse and space. Bodily traits
are investigated under the coin ‘negotiable markers’ to include mannerisms,
behaviours and sartorial choices commonly regarded as characteristic of the sissy.
Abuse is studied in reference to Butler’s notion of ‘words that wound’ as well as to
incidents of hate crime in London. Thirdly, sissy space is analysed in relation to safe
and hostile urban zones. The study concludes that the unifying principle at the heart
of sissiography is the concept of failure.

In examining the writing of sissiness, the thesis considers existing scholarship on
sissies and positions itself against the diagnostic concept of so-called Gender Identity
Disorder. The argument developed here is underpinned by autobiographical
elements. Historical discourses of male effeminacy are presented to challenge the
notion of fixity in perceptions of the sissy.

While offering a written investigation of the concept of sissiography, the study also
develops an analysis through the researcher’s body in a series of studio
experimentations and live performances. Practice is the central instrument of the
enquiry, facilitating the writing of new sissy discourses. A cyclical mode of research
leads from practice to theory and back to practice. The sissiography is thereby shown
to be a form of inscription on the body, a form of writing space, of writing movement,
of reinscribing history, of describing possible sissy futures.
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Table of contents:

Title page………………………………………………………………….………... 01
Declaration of originality……………………………...…………………..………... 02
Abstract……………………………………………..……………………......……... 03
Table of contents……………………………………………….…………………… 04
Dedication..…………………………………………………….…………………… 05
Acknowledgments……………………………………………….…………………...06
How to read the present thesis…………………………………..……………………07
Introduction…………………………………………………….…………………….08
Notes on methodology…….…………………………………….………………….. 26
Chapter one—Sissy Canon………………………………………….………............ 35
Chapter two—Sissy Body…………………………………………….…………….. 66
Chapter three—Sissiphobia…………………………………………….……........... 97
Chapter four—Sissy Space…………………………………………….…………...123
Chapter five—Sissy!................................................................................................. 155
Final notes towards a new sissiography...………….………………….……...........179
Bibliography…………………………………………………………….………. ...187
List of appendices.……………………………………………………….…........... 195
Appendices……………………………………………………………..…............. 196

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Dedication
To my mother, Iara, whose high-heeled shoes, make-up and perfume served as
fabulous props for my childhood rehearsal of a life of sissy performance. Thank you
for being so special and unique in allowing me space to be a sissy.

To Lawrence, the love of my life, without whom I would never have finished this.
Thank you for your companionship, love and patience.

To Bruce, without whom I would never have started this. Thank you for providing
unconditional support to the development of this project. Thank you for believing in
me.

To all sissies around the world: past, present and future. Thank you.
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Acknowledgments
My incredible supervisor, Stephen Farrier, for being one of the most sensitive and
intelligent teachers I have ever met; Experience Bryon, my second supervisor, for all
the advice and creative incentive; my dance partner and artistic soul mate, Biño
Sauitzvy, for all the input, inspiration and endless hours of rehearsal; my fellow PhD
student, Jessica Hartley, for not allowing me to give this journey up, for all the chats
and the support; my good friends, Bebel Domingues, Hari Marini and Helen Noir;
Martin Welton at QMUL; my lighting designer, friend and collaborator, Marc
Antonio Cifre; Darrell Berry, for the amazing photos; my fellow queer performers,
Scottee (and the whole of the Eat Your Heart Out collective) and Theo Adams (and
all Theo Adams Company members); Anna Terry, Tony Fisher, Andy Lavender and
Simon Shepherd at the Central School of Speech and Drama. Thank you.
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How to read the present thesis
The document you are reading follows the submission of the performance Sissy! on
11th October 2010. The show was the fourth in a series of performances that
constitute much of the research. At every stage in the process, reading, reflection,
studio experimentation, live presentation and writing alternated, each informing the
other.

The documentation of the performances is to be found in the appendices, and you
might prefer to view them all after reading the thesis as a whole. Meanwhile I will
refer to specific passages of the performances, which can be accessed as distinct clips
of the relevant DVDs (appendix E) or as still photographs (appendix D).

There will also be reference to performance undertaken outside the academic setting.
Once more, images can be accessed in the appendices as well as in the DVDs.
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Introduction
In the summer of 2005, I was attacked by a gang of about eight young men. The
attack took place at the top end of the street where I live in East London. It started
out as verbal harassment. I especially remember the remark ‘make way for the gay’1
being hurled at me at the same time as my way was being blocked so as to stop me
from escaping. This quickly progressed into physical violence: punches, kicks, and a
shove to the ground followed by spitting.2 I was bruised badly, my knee was injured
and I was so overwhelmed by fear that it took me weeks to be able to go out again.3 I
have never fully regained the confidence to occupy the streets of London without fear.

Although a very personal account, the above incident has a specific role in the present
introduction. Firstly, it can be singled out as a shifting point for me. It has fomented
my desire to do something about the violence that has often been directed to my
genderqueer body throughout my life. This violence had, at this particular stage,
literally stopped me from going outdoors. To a certain extent, the research is of
personal cathartic value in that sense.4 Its function is not, however, limited to that
specific purpose. It is also empowering in that it gives me a certain agency. By
engaging with the research, I feel I am taking action in trying to change the brutal
reality of daily violence. At the same time, the research is also careful in negotiating
critical distance by situating such instances of personal narrative always in relation to
current discussions on the fields of the gendered body (Hennen 2008, Tucker 2009),
genderphobic violence (Butler 1997, 2004, Kosofsky Sedgwick 1994) and gendered
segregation (Halberstam 1998, Houlbrook 2005).

1 ‘Make way for the gay’ is an expression that bears relevance to my research in the sense that
it offers some interesting readings in terms of opening new space for discussion, for new
knowledge and for my later articulation of a sissy space (chapter four). I will go back to it
later in the thesis.
2 Being punched, kicked and shoved to the ground have all been incorporated in my
choreographic design in Sissy!
3 Here I speak in terms of confinement. I will go back to this in my later discussion of the
practice in chapter five.
4 In Cruising Utopia (2009), José Esteban Muñoz has also laid claim to the personal as a
valuable source of data in an academic enquiry. “My writing,” he has suggested, “brings in
my own personal experience as another way to ground historical queer sites with lived queer
experience” (Muñoz 2009: 03).
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Moreover, the above-mentioned incident is emblematic in the way it neatly contains
the core elements of the present study. The way in which this attack unfolded appears
to follow an identifiable pattern; a pattern I have come to understand as—and have
subsequently named—a ‘causational chain of injury.’ In more simple words, (a) the
body is recognised as existing outside normative rules of gender (in my case, as a
sissy body); (b) this body is subjected to oppressive violence (more commonly verbal
but often physical); and (c) through the action of violence, it is pushed to the social
and geographical margins of conviviality. This body is socially marginalised since
stigma is seen to be attached to it and it is geographically marginalised by being
pushed out of particular zones (the top end of my street, for example).

In sharing this instance of violence, my intention has not been to provoke a sense of
pathos but rather to expose and situate the origins, the trajectory and the purpose of
the present research. Consonant with Peter Hennen’s strategy, I too have used my
“own position in the field as a source of data” (2008: 24). The ‘personal is political’
approach—one of the foundational tenets of the feminist movement; a movement that
has also concerned itself with gender inequality and oppression—is also a precedent I
find within the academic tradition (Muñoz 2009, Butler 1990b: 273, Halberstam
1998: xiii). It is with the redemptive hope of this principle that I have embarked on
the present investigation; an investigation that stems from—but is not limited to—my
daily battle of being a sissy in the world.

I want to use this notion of the personal as a political tool and as a potential instigator
of critical thinking (and indeed change) in order to further consider the function of
autobiography in the present research. In doing so, I want to place it in relation to (a)
existing research in the field and (b) the act of creating performance. The slogan ‘the
personal is political’ is not only useful in academia; for Deirdre Heddon (2008) it is
also intimately related to the genesis of autobiographical performance. The
micropolitical (or the personal) and the macropolitical (the social), she has suggested,
are always related and closely connected (2008: 01). The role of autobiography in the
present study therefore has been to propose an engagement with what Lionnet has
identified as the productive movement of autobiographical performance; that is, “a
project that self-consciously moves from the general to the particular to the general”
(in Muñoz 1999: 81).
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Autobiographical performances are for Heddon “‘performance[s] of possibility’
where the possible suggests ‘a movement culminating in creation and change’” (2008:
02). In critically engaging with autobiography, the present research takes the position
that change is, in the words of Heddon, “necessary, desirable and within reach”
(2008: 02). Not only does my study accept that change is necessary but it seeks to
potentially initiate that process precisely through ‘creation’ in the act of performance.

This brings me to my second consideration in regards to autobiographical
performance: that is, the place the present research occupies in relation to existing
research on the field. Whilst it might be true to say that the practice submitted as part
of this study (Sissy!) has drawn from events that have happened in the ‘real world’ (to
use Heddon’s terms), it is also true that the performance practice is not, thereby,
attempting to re-stage or re-present the real world. Rather, as Heddon herself has
argued, “we should not forget that performance, where it is read as such, unavoidably
foregrounds its status as performance” (2008: 28, original emphasis). “Performance,”
she continues, “is not the real world (though it might very well prompt us to consider
whether and how the ‘real world’ is performance, or at least performative” (Heddon
2008: 28, original emphasis). I will return to this relationship between performance
and the performative and its productive possibilities in the conclusion to this thesis.
For now, however, suffice it say that Sissy! has offered a critical engagement with the
notion of sissy performativity through the means of performance.

In further situating the role of autobiography herein, I must add that its application in
my methodology should be understood as akin to the traditions established by the late
German choreographer Pina Bausch (Fernandes 2001, Hoghe 1989). In other words,
specific details of my daily (sissy) life (and here I am thinking about the damaging
effects of violence, for instance) have served as the driving force to create
choreographed movement. It differs, therefore, from most of the autobiographical
performance work investigated by Heddon (Carl Lavery, Phil Smith, Mike Pearson
and Bobby Baker, to cite a few) in the sense that the methods and the products of my
developed process are presented in a more strictly codified and rigidly choreographed
fashion (more on this in the section ‘notes on practice’ below). On the other hand, the
role of autobiography in my work might be seen as parallel to the aforementioned
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