Barbican Masculinities Exhibition

[CircleofWillis]

There is an exhibition on at the Barbican at the moment on masculinity. Reading through the publicity material there is not a single overt mention of trans men.

They also are able to use the words 'men' 'man' and 'male' freely and discussions of gender and queerness focus on gay males.

I feel that a similar attempt to have an exhibition about femininity would have to centre male bodies and specifically mention trans women in order to be accepted.

This uneven treatment is just blatant nowadays. I'm not calling for the exhibition to be wokified. I'm just angry that women have somehow lost the right to examine and talk about themselves in the same manner.

sites.barbican.org.uk/masculinitiesguide/?_ga=2.30531961.756586518.1597447489-1108563132.1597447489

Did you get to the glossary bit at the end... definition of patriarchy (male dominance over women and other genders)... shoe horned in.

Barbican -the one with unisex loos?

Gender Identity refers to what, who, and how someone or something is, both in the way this is understood as selfhood by an individual, and also the self as it is shaped and positioned by the world. Gender identity can be a surprisingly difficult term to pin down and is perhaps best understood as the stated truth of a person’s gender (or lack of gender), which is in itself the sum of many different factors.

Well, give them their due at least they had a go.

@PumbaasCucumbas

Did you get to the glossary bit at the end... definition of patriarchy (male dominance over women and other genders)... shoe horned in.

Here is another gem from the glossary.

Gender identity Identity refers to what, who, and how someone or something is, both in the way this is understood as selfhood by an individual, and also the self as it is shaped and positioned by the world. Gender identity can be a surprisingly difficult term to pin down and is perhaps best understood as the stated truth of a person’s gender (or lack of gender), which is in itself the sum of many different factors.

We should all rock up and complain loudly that we aren’t represented.

Cross post Imnobody4!

But we need en to examine masculinity critically, emotionally, intellectually & artistically. So I think something like this exhibition is important.

Too often (pretty much all the time) masculinity is seen as the default, the norm.

It's about time men examined their complicity with patriarchy.

But yes, I can't imagine that at the moment, an exhibition on "Femininity" could be set up without - transwomen, drag queens, and men.

I think it sounds like a good exhibition
If I lived in London I'd go and see it
And I'd be commenting (maybe even loudly in person) how great it is that men get to examine masculinity AS MEN without having to include 'people who identify as men' . Maybe they could have another exhibition, I'd wonder aloud, where women could examine femininity AS WOMEN without having to include 'people who identify as women'

I think it sounds like a great exhibition as well. My problem isn't with the exhibition itself. I would like to go to it especially after reading the extended exhibition notes which are quite moving.

My objection is to the people who would be all over this if it were centering women rather than men. Women in this country have lost the ability to speak of and about ourselves and explore our own issues in the same way.

This exuberant freedom to celebrate and critically examine aspects of our own sex has been stolen from us as women. We are now only allowed to self reference in terms of 'gender'.

Once you see the blatant asymmetry between how people behave around the category of women (up for grabs for anyone, budge up everyone #be kind) and the category of men (don’t be ridiculous, you have to be born a man) you can’t unsee it.

I’m happy from a GC perspective that GNC men were well represented in this show illustrating the many ways men look and are. Stupid of them to write all that kowtowing waffle about gender identity too tho.

As PP have said they should have included transmen if it was an identity based show. Yet the Barbican required there to be actual maleness for inclusion evidently... the Barbican could have been explicit about that which would have been a very powerful important statement in arts culture at this particular moment in time. Think back to that Hayward Gallery exhibition (was it last year?)

Instead they look institutionally sexist, as though they believe in gender identity rights but only for men. And they don’t care how that affects women, nor how it affects transmen.

www.thetimes.co.uk/article/masculinities-liberation-through-photography-at-barbican-art-gallery-097dswxf3

I don’t actually know how to do a share token but will do one if someone can tell me how.

This was an annoying article from the Times that I was irritated by a few weeks back. I haven’t seen the exhibition. But the writer is at pains to distance himself from the damaging elements of masculinity because he’s gay. He also objects to the trans man perspectives on masculinity because these are ‘tangential’. In other words not truly valid. Imagine being a female writer and saying that about womanhood and TW. Imagine the wrath that would fall down upon her head.

He also objects to the trans man perspectives on masculinity because these are ‘tangential’. In other words not truly valid. Imagine being a female writer and saying that about womanhood and TW. Imagine the wrath that would fall down upon her head

Indeed, @Mollscroll

Nothing wrong with this exhibition - we need to stop seeing masculinity as something that's not open to critique.

But if a woman wrote that about an exhibition on femininity ... Well, I doubt it would be published in the first place.

We really are starting to live in 1984