Who Are You? Research Strategies of the Unruly Feminine

My fascination with gendered identity – what is a man (Mick Jagger, Jimi Hendrix, Ziggy Stardust, Eminem, Morrissey?), what is a woman (Marianne Faithfull, Siouxie Sioux, Madonna, Skin, k.d. lang?) that blend of the real and the unreal that constitutes both the ‘imagined’ character and the performativity of gender (are they the same?) – has dominated much of my academic life. As Judith Butler observes, ‘for a woman to identify as a woman is a culturally enforced effect’. ¹ Moreover, the feminine is never constant. It shifts with the cultural norms surrounding sexuality, sometimes bounded by, sometimes transcending, both class and ethnicity. Becoming gendered involves impersonating an ideal, an archetype that nobody actually inhabits, so raising the question, ‘Who are you?’.