Archive for June, 2007

Gender Benders t-shirts : queer statements for casual portraits

Tuesday, June 5th, 2007
After my first t-shirts series, here is another one that I am prototyping. This series play with the lexicon from gender studies and queer political movements. They created new words to identify old and new behaviors that weren’t named. I used this lexicon, making labels that would at first be perceived as oxymorons, social impossibility - or at least revealing something very odd about the wearer.

Here is my plan : faced with such a statement, worn and attached to a person, you’ll try to get a clearer image of what that oxymoron could be, as a person. And then you’ll discover, that, yes, that kind of person may as well exist.

By placing the label as near to the collar as possible, I make sure that it will be carried along with any portrait of the wearer. Think about all these semi-drunk party photographs, or those group portrait during family events. Precisely, I want the gender benders labels to be recorded on these casual portraits, the ones that go directly in the friends and family album.

A french version of the shirts is coming… Anyone for another language?

First series, more labels to come…

MTF THEN FTMHETEROFLEXIBLE VIRGIN

MACHO-FEMINIST DRAG

MTF then FTM. Kind of cryptic, but it’s about transformation. A person may as well change (physically) to another sex, and why not, change again a few years or a few decades later.

Heteroflexible Virgin. Can you be heteroflexible only if you are sexually active? Or are you heteroflexible by definition when you never had sex with anybody?

Macho-feminist Drag. Machism and feminism are often interleaved in today’s people personality. So in drag persons too, queens or kings alike.

FAG WHO FUCKS GIRLS

HOMOPHOBIC GAY PORNSTAR


Fag Who Fucks Girls
. I tend to identify myself with this one. Or, more precisely, sometimes some people put me in the fag category. Last time, I was wearing a flower in my hair… This label is another way to state that the sexuality and gender appearence link is arbitrary.

Homophobic Gay Pornstar. Some of the gay pornstars are, in their private life, heterosexual. As there is a lot of homophobia in the heterosexual population, it’s statistically probable that we could find a good number of homophobic gay pornstars.

We want you !
As you can see, there is a few gender benders t-shirts worn at a few places around the world - Paris and Montréal, really. I’d like that to expand, so don’t hesitate to e-mail me if you want a nice unique t-shirt: I distribute them purely at cost.