Performativitas Gender Dan Seksualitas Dalam Weblog Lesbian Di Indonesia

Abstract

This study is aimed to know how gender and sexuality are performed in weblogs belonging to Indonesian lesbians. This research is particularly purposed to identify the ideological meaning behind the performative identity of lesbian bloggers, and also to measure hir resistance against subordination. This is a multidis-ciplinary-based qualitative research using Foucault’s concepts of power relations and technology of the self (as elaborated in History of Sexuality) and Butler’s theory of performativity. This study then applies Fairclough’s analytical method of Critical Discourse Analysis (CDA). This research takes Fried Durian, an Indonesian lesbian weblog, as its corpus.The result of the research confirms that the identification of lesbian identity tends to be the combination of femininity and masculinity. Through the process of crisscrossing, a lesbian performs hirself by doing “stage performativity”, embedding the identification of feminine and masculine identity through hir appearance, clothing, gesture, and sexuality. Thus, a lesbian blogger is a creative producer in which zie transforms the heteronormative discourse.

Gender Performativity as Asserted on Kate Chopin’s A Respectable Woman

“…Gender works through practice in outer matter that will furtherly form inner identity of being a self (Butler, 1986;Fitriani, Sunggingwati, and Nasrullah, 2021). Gender is celebrating differences furthermore that any behavior could always change from time to time in its process (Setyorini, 2011;He, 2017). The last, the eighth, sex works through performance, but gender works in performative ways.…”

“…Performativity is otherwise by taking more effects in making responsive choices according to any situation. Performativity is not about being the main one, but about practicing gender as becoming in everyday life (Setyorini, 2011;Çınar, 2015). This performativity is greatly underlined by Butler and also the main emphasis in this article.…”

“…It does not mean that sexual differences are totally undermined, but gender enriches those by positioning more flexibilities. This is crucial since any identity is not fixed and monistic at all (Setyorini, 2011;Çınar, 2015). It walks together with human beings through every day interpretation and this also applies to gender.…”

“…It is more of a phenomenon that occurs and reproduces abundant meanings constantly (Diamond, 2000;Çınar, 2015). So to say that gender is performative implies that no one has a given gender from the outset, but that this happens during constant implementation, in example in the daily repetition of gender norms that tell us how to be or not to be a man, or, how to be or not to be a woman (Butler, 1988;Setyorini, 2011).…”

“…The first case refers to what we do introduce ourselves to the world under a genre label, usually binary (female or male), while the second term refers to the effect that performance produces in normative terms (to become the norm). Performance already states human as subject with its wholeness subjectivity (Setyorini, 2011;Kelz, 2016:47-48). There is nothing else different from what is seen on the stage.…”