How do body stereotypes glitch through digital and physical realms?

[AuthenticMeNow] : Mhysa started a live video. Watch it before it ends!

“?…Who Can Tell What Magic Spells We’ll Be Doin’ For Us?

And I’m Givin’ All My Love To This World

Only To Be Told

I Can’t See, I Can’t Breathe

No More Will We Be

And Nothing’s Gonna Change The Way We Live …?

Glitch_Feminist

@Mhysa, you’re an inspiration! I adore the love you’re bringing to this world “I am fascinated by the journey of E. Jane’s toward Mhysa, first as an avatar and then as an AFK (Away From Keyboard) extension of themselves. I remember how your two selves began as relatively distinct entities, with allowing E. Jane to be a part of themselves that white institutions tried to smother, serving as an alter-ego first on Instagram. Then Mhysa released an LP titled Fantasii, marking the moment when “the slippage between IRL (In Real Life) and URL”.⁽¹⁾
#Multiplicity_is_Liberty.”

_JudithButler

@Mhysa This is so courageous, I think the virtual world could be a safe place for expression and exploration away from all kinds of stereotypes imposed by society. Bringing that expansion to the real world will definitely make an impact in breaking down the stereotypes that repress societies.

AuthenticMeNow_

@_JudithButler Do you really think that stereotyping is not sliding to the virtual world?!

?…“Whoa, It’s A Crazy World We’re Livin’ In

And I Just Can’t See That Half Of Us Immersed In Sin

Is All We Have To Give These

Futures Made Of Virtual Insanity, Now”…?

ZackTimelessTruths

@Mhysa virtual Avatars are for the weak. For those who are too insecure to accept their real life. GOD HAS MADE YOU IN A CERTAIN WAY! YOU SHOULD BE PROUD TO BE HIS CREATION. #MHYSA, stop with this fake fame in the name of virtual avatars. It’s a hoax!

OpenMind

@_JudithButler Here you have some stereotyping at its best.

_JudithButler

@ZackTimeless Truths that’s nonsense! Is God also responsible for “the creation” in the virtual world??

AuthenticMeNow_

@ZackTimelessTruths with all the respect I have faced haters like you all the time while documenting my transition journey over Instagram. How can you refer to GOD creation if in fact “there are not two sexes, but a multiplicity of genetic, hormonal, chromosomal, genital, sexual and sensual configurations.” ⁽²⁾

?…“If I Could Slip The Sickly Ties That Earthly Man Has Made

And Now Every Mother Can Choose The Colour Of Her Child,

That’s Not Nature’s Way Well, That’s What They Said Yesterday

There’s Nothin’ Left To Do But Pray”…?

OpenMind

So, having multiple bodies sounds like a good idea to you?

AuthenticMeNow_

@OpenMind I think, having your virtual body does not mean anything unless you embody it! If you don’t change your physical body, your identity remains the same.

Glitch_Feminist

@AuthenticMeNow_ I must disagree with you – “IRL, my prepubescent body was exhausted by social mores, tired of being told to take up less space, being seen and not heard, systematically erased, edited out, ignored. All I wanted to do was move. But in the light of daytime, AFK felt trapped, always shifting uneasily under the weight of incessant white heteronormative observation”. ⁽³⁾

_JudithButler

@Glitch_Feminist I agree that we live in a world constructed with rules made of outdated dichotomies that don’t allow people to express themselves, we are more complex than a simple binary ruled entity. There are multiple identities in a person (for example I understand myself as a woman, but also as an American, as a Jew…) and all of them are part of the subject that is me. Assuming only one of them oppresses the multiple subjects that we are. There is no need to establish an identity, but we must accept that we are in an endless process of self-determination.

OpenMind

@_JudithButler that’s a very interesting approach to deconstructing the idea of ‘’me’’, it’s kind of a relief to understand that I’m not forced to be one thing or another. @Glitch_Feminist, I’m interested to know how you’ve dealt with this “offensive gaze”?

Glitch_Feminist

@OpenMind, well, when I was 12 years old I created an avatar – LuvPunk12, who as a chatroom handle was an exploration of my future self. I was a young body: Black, female-identifying, femme, queer. There was no pressing pause, no reprieve; the world around me never let me forget these identifiers. Yet online I could be whatever I wanted. And so my twelve-year-old self became sixteen, became twenty, became seventy. I aged. I died. Through this storytelling and shapeshifting, I was resurrected. I claimed my range._⁽⁴⁾

?…“Always seem to be governed by this love we have

For useless twisting of our new technology

Oh, now there is no sound

For we all live underground, whoa

Now there is no sound

If we all live underground”…?

AuthenticMeNow_

@Glitch_Feminist It’s a shame that you had to rely on a virtual realm to find a safe place! There is definitely a glitch in our social structure. “I am not a man and I am not a woman and I am not heterosexual I am not homosexual I am not bisexual. I am a dissident of the sex-gender system.” ⁽⁵⁾

OpenMind

A glitch? Can you guys explain to me what it means?

Glitch_Feminist

@OpenMind a glitch is normally thought of as an error, however when I refer to glitch feminism, it is a means of renegotiating and subverting normative categories of sexuality, race, and gender. The “glitch” corrects the machine in order to eradicate violence on all bodies.

AuthenticMeNow_

In other words, “glitched bodies are those that do not align with the canon of white cisgender heteronormativity and pose a threat to social order.” ⁽⁶⁾

ZackTimelessTruths

Why do you guys keep going on and on about stereotypes, multiple genders, LGBT, , body positivity, etc ????? All this talking just to gain more sympathy???

It’s all FAKE!!

@Mhysa to stay hidden inside the virtual world and not show your natural you is an act of cowardice. SHOW YOUR REAL YOU E.JANE!!!

_JudithButler

@ZackTimelessTruths It’s so selfish trying to silence people in pain. Have you ever imagined how is it to be a black person in a racist country? A female worker in a patriarchal system? Or a great doctor but not being hired because you have tattoos? Do you know what it is to be fat in a society that idolizes skinny bodies? Are you even familiar with the word STEREOTYPE?

Glitch_Feminist

@ZackTimelessTruths Leave Mhysa out of it, she is in the middle of a live.

Lucky her she can’t see your comments anyway!

AuthenticMeNow_

@ZackTimelessTruths your surely are not the kind of person @Stelarc would chose to connect his third ear to… hahaha

OpenMind

@_JudithButler According to Britannica dictionary:

STEREOTYPE. [Count] : An Often Unfair And Untrue Belief That Many People Have

About All People Or Things With A Particular Characteristic.

_JudithButler

@OpenMind You’re Funny….((:

?…“And Now It’s Virtual Insanity

Forget Your Virtual Reality

Oh, There’s Nothin’ So Bad

As A Man-Made Man

Oh Yeah, I Know, Yeah ”…?

_JudithButler

People who don’t meet those stereotypes are oppressed because their bodies are not socially recognized, and they are condemned to the marginalization of their existence. ‘’If there is something right in beauvoir’s claim that one is born, but rather becomes a woman, It follows that woman itself is a term in process, a becoming, a construct that cannot rightfully be said to originate or to end. as an ongoing discursive practice, it is open to intervention and resignification.”⁽⁷⁾

OpenMind

So do you think that having an avatar can really release you from the real-world stereotypes?:

Glitch_Feminist

@OpenMind In my opinion, “glitched bodies are not considered in the process of programming new creative technologies. For instance ,Google’s image-recognition algorithm confused, Black users with gorillas. I think that the glith challenges us to consider how we can “penetrate … break … puncture … tear” the material of the institution, and, by extension, the institution of the body”.⁽⁸⁾

AuthenticMeNow_

@OpenMind I think that trying to shape our identities in a virtual world, believing it would be free from stereotypes is wrong. Instead one must change his physical body in order to be a whole

_JudithButler

If we can’t solve problems related to race, sex, gender, discrimination, etc., in real life; how could we guarantee that a virtual world will be free of those problems? On the contrary, a non-healed society might create new ones. I personally agree with @Glitch_Feminist we might have to find the outdated rules and dichotomies or the ‘’glitches’’ of our society. The virtual world might be a tool to operate within the spoiled system but shouldn’t be thought of as a solution to all of our problems.

?…“Yes, we do, oh

now, this life that we live in

(Virtual insanity) it’s all goin’ wrong

Out of the window (livin’ in), you know

(Virtual insanity) that there is nothing worse than

(Livin’ in) a man-made man

(Virtual insanity) there is nothing worse than

(Livin’ in) a foolish man (virtual insanity), hey!

Virtual insanity is what we’re livin’ in, yeah, yeah

Well, it’s alright

”…?

Song end

Bibliography

Mbembe, Achille. The Earthly Community: Reflections on the Last Utopia. V2 Publishers Rotterdam, 2022

Russell, Legacy. Glitch Feminism: A Manifesto. Verso Books, 2020.

Guattari , Deleuze . A Thousand Plateaus : Capitalism and Schizophrenia , University of Minnesota Press (English Translation), 1980.

Agamben , Georgio . Nudities. Stanford University Press, Stanford, California. 2010.

Preciado , Beatriz. Testo Junkie: Sex ,Drugs and Biopolitics in the Pharmacopornographic Era .Feminist Press , CUNY . 2013

Butler, Judith . Gender Trouble : Feminism and subversion of identity . New York , Routledge. 1990