A Personal Navigation Through the Politics of Touch
This monologue is a record of my navigations through Erin Manning’s essay Engenderings: Gender, Politics, Individuation. The following words are my reflections on the politics of touch, and how I implement — or sometimes fail to implement — this body politic in my everyday life.
This is my introduction.
I’m a cisgender white female and I acknowledge my privilege, but I often feel out of control of my gendered body. When I’m on public transit or walking down the street, sometimes I feel like my body isn’t my own, but instead belongs to the heteronormative gaze of others — particularly those who perform in the guise of the stereotypical hetero-male. This extends into cyberspace too but doesn’t have the same intensity. On social media, the gaze is still ever present but the reaching toward or “touch” associated with this feels less threatening to my body, reduced to pixels on a screen that acts as almost a third-bodied mediator. The screen is my protective shield from this kind of touch.
Beyond the screen, I’m less in control of my body.
Manning explains stereotypical “feminine” traits as having a “sexy demeanor” or a “fairy-like lightness.” These traits may codify my body whether I want them to or not. My body emits what I cannot control under the influence of the male heterosexual gaze that reaches toward. My body escapes me as it becomes an object to another. In this context, when I am the one being reached toward, the toucher aims to touch a girl, a woman, an object that they perceive me to be. The toucher is man-spreading in my direction, eyes fixated on this skin, this body of which I sometimes wish I could shed. In response to their reaching toward, I shrivel. I fail to improvise. I feel trapped. If I don’t make eye contact maybe they won’t see me. Why am I letting this happen?
How am I implementing the politics of touch?
The Argentinian Tango, as noted by Manning, is an example of the politics of touch in action. Subverting stereotypical gender roles, the two-person dance challenges typically strict boundaries of heterosexuality. In this particular tango, male leads male, female leads male, female leads female, etc. The leader touches the follower, who becomes in response to their reaching toward. The one being touched improvises upon touching. Roles are subverted, reimagined, resisted, challenged, improvised. Aggressions are possible as both parties venture into the unknown.
Who do I become in response to their reaching toward? If I allow myself to be subject to frothy-mouthed male gaze, I am not engaging in the politics of touch. I allow the toucher to take my body from me because I fail to improvise. For example, something kind of ridiculous happened to me recently: it takes only a minute-and-a-half to walk from the bus stop to my house, yet in that short instance I was catcalled two times by two different male parties. In those moments, I ignored their verbal and peculiar reaching toward, but a failure to engage is also a failure to participate in the politics of touch.
But what if I improvised? Like in the Argentinian Tango, roles could have been subverted — in response to their touch I would take the lead of their follow. They would no longer identify as the physical incorporation of masculinity. Thus, as Manning says, there would then be the chance of moving together toward engaging in a body politic that transcends, that subverts. I need to challenge the status quo in this way.
But it’s only a politics of touch if it both supports the political and challenges it. Though, with improvisation, can I not transform a catcall interaction into an Argentinian Tango-like subversion? Initially shying away because of the chance of aggressions, instances like these contribute to my overall process of constant becoming.
So how am I becoming?
It’s known that we never see the entirety of our bodies in reality; only through mirrors or through others’ perceptions of us do we ever piece together our perpetually fragmented selves. For me, for example, I’ve always been insecure about my self because of how young I look, because of the projections that have been placed on to me by others. I am the youngest in my family, I look much younger than my age (and am reminded constantly), and I have been taken less seriously in professional positions before because apparently my age — or the age that others perceive me to be — indicates my lack of “experience” and “understanding.”
But for Manning, there is no actual static “self” — instead, engendering foregrounds the multiplicities that we are continually becoming. Our bodies are in a constant state of change. The skin, our largest and oldest organ, continually regenerates itself through cells and never quite remains the same. Two weeks ago I was so anxious that I accidentally scratched a patch of skin off of my left wrist. Today, a small pink patch of shiny regeneration fills what was a very minor wound, a small reminder of the constant becoming of our skin, of our physical bodies. I may look young, but like my skin, this is a layer (albeit a virtual one) that I shed continually in favour of the multiplicities I become: a grad student, an ex-girlfriend, a teacher, a roommate — always in flux, always individuating. My improvisations in response to touch contribute to the multiplicities that I become — I need to remember that.
In this present moment I am as follows: I’m from the eastern-most point of Scarborough, in Toronto, Ontario, Canada, and I acknowledge that my home neighbourhood is situated on Indigenous land, as well as the current apartment in which I live in downtown. I’m in my first year of graduate studies at OCAD University, in the Contemporary Art, Design, and New Media Art Histories program, where my research interests involve situating contemporary Canadian painting into the context of the digital age. As well being a writer and researcher, I’m also a painter, though I haven’t picked up a brush in about a year. I am different this week than I was the week before.
My name is Emily Lawrence, and this was my introduction.
I may be still navigating my way through the politics of touch and ways of becoming, but I’m getting there.
Listen here: https://soundcloud.com/user-801527030/a-personal-navigation-through-the-politics-of-touch
