Monstrous Femininity

Werewolf Woman of Academia: Freak on Display

I haven’t been on faculty too long and this is one of the first meetings I’ve attended. In my naivety I thought it was incredibly progressive that the department would start the new academic year by having a series of talks on “diversity.” Little did I know that these talks were not based in any kind of ethics for social justice; rather they were mandated by the university because of some “bad behaviors” that had occurred prior to my arrival. As I listen to the first talk, presented by a White woman colleague, I find myself shaking my head in agreement with many of the points she has made. She offers a critical race perspective that connects to larger structural histories of inequity. I appreciate her perspective. The next speaker is my formal mentor in the department, the only other person of color in the department. I look forward to hearing him speak. Unlike the first speaker he argues for a move to understand “diversity” beyond identities. While I don’t agree with his argument, I listen to the rest of his discussion. He makes the point that we should also embrace Other types of research that defy our dominant ways of knowing in the academy. Given my experiences with gatekeeping in the academy I could not agree more. I am already on the border in this space. I hope this nudge might create a little more space for me.

But then it happens.

I became the focus of his talk. All eyes are on me. As if my Otherness in this space wasn’t already apparent, it is once again marked. My “mentor” argues that colleagues should welcome the kind of work I do in performance studies: “If Bernadette wants to stand naked in a cage in front of the building and call that research we should accept that.” My face flushes red, my hands sweat, and I avert eye contact. I sit horrified and ashamed. Am I actually hearing this? Is this really supposed to happen at a faculty meeting? Suddenly the transformation has begun. No one will ever take me seriously again. I will always be marked by this monstrosity; the image of me naked in a cage. I’m trying to process everything all at once. I question everything that is happening to me and my place in it. I feel the weight of everyone’s stare. I want to retreat as everything is laid bare and I move from subject to object through his words. I become a “freak” or oddity whose only merit comes in sexual display of my Otherness. The display of women of color as sexual oddities or freaks is not new. ⁴ Women of colors’ bodies are constantly on display because of their constructed Otherness and hypersexuality.

I keep looking at my watch hoping time will pass quickly and I can just go teach my class. Yes, I have to keep it together and teach after this. I have to escape.

Not only has this man embarrassed, humiliated, and sexualized me, undermining my credibility in this department but he also has done it in the name of “diversity.” He has also mischaracterized and trivialized my research. As a queer Chicana feminist performance scholar my work is about performance and everyday life. It is about resistance, agency, and performance. It is about performance on the page through performative writing. I am not a performance artist, or even a performance scholar who frequently stages performance. Where did this all come from? He has misrepresented and transformed me in so many ways and represented me as a stereotypical Hollywood spitfire Latina who is overly sexual. All of this happens in front of my new colleagues and graduate students.

Finally, the meeting is over, and I rush out to teach my class. I do not make eye contact with anyone. I keep my eyes down at my book hoping somehow my colleagues do not recognize my monstrosity or agree with him. At the end of the day almost every faculty member in my department has come to apologize to me for what happened. Did my “mentor” think of this ridiculous example ahead of time, or was it made up on the spot? I am too humiliated to go to work the next day. I do not want to show my face in the office. Yolanda Flores Niemann (1999) argues that shame disciplines women of color in the academy into assuming that they are the problem and leads them to question whether they belong. This certainly is the case for me.

When I finally return to work after a few days of hiding out at home and speak to my department chair about the incident, he doesn’t get it. He asks me not to pursue this matter because my “mentor” is in the process of going up for tenure, and this could hurt his case. He instead suggests that I talk to my “mentor” myself. Not sure what to do, I speak with my “mentor.” He doesn’t want to get it. Instead he tells me if he doesn’t get tenure it will be my fault. I feel conflicted and split into different selves. As a queer woman of color I am violated by his racist and sexist representation of me, yet he is the only other person of color in the department.

His behavior continues and gives others permission to treat me in a similar fashion—so much that a university appointed White “feminist” advocate advises me that nothing can be done to stop what I am experiencing unless one of my colleagues rapes and murders me on the quad. She laughs as she says this, again shaming me and trying to discipline and control my Otherness in the process. A colleague who frequently brings his dog to the office comments to some of the other tenured men in the department, “If only I could control all bitches this easily.” Another day a different “feminist” advocate, this time another woman of color, reminds me that I aspire toward tenure so that I can be protected from these kinds of behaviors and until I have it I will just have to suck it up. They all seek to tame me, putting me on display in a symbolic cage similar to the one my “mentor” suggested. I understand now that my presence in this space is conditional. I must pass and tame my Otherness, showing only the side of my nature that they see themselves in. I must perfect a performance of obedience and become a model representative of my Otherness. My shapeshifting is permitted only under certain restrictions. My Otherness makes for pretty pictures for brochures and the webpage, but that is only when my monstrosity is controlled and at the service of those. Yet another form of being put on display. I understand what Agathangelou and Ling (2002) mean when they write, “non-mainstream faculty cannot presume instant solidarity along ethnic, gender, or class lines. Those deemed Others usually face exile from or marginalization in the academy on the grounds of ‘disloyalty,’ ‘inadequacy,’ or ‘incompatibility’” (p. 371).

Intertwined Histories of Shaming

Mexicanas and Chicanas have long been disciplined through the virgin/whore dichotomy which serves to regulate sexuality (Anzaldúa, 2007; Castillo, 1994; Moraga, 2000). These images are directly connected to Malintzin Tenepal, the translator of Hernan Cortes and the Virgin of Guadalupe, the patron saint of Mexico. Mexican philosopher Octavio Paz (1981) helped condemn Mexican women’s sexuality through his demonization of Malintzin Tenepal as La Chingada—“the fucked one.” These figures have been used to enforce patriarchal domination by creating stark contrasts that do not allow for any gray areas or complexity. The virgin/whore dichotomy has been translated many times over in mainstream films as Chicanas are often portrayed as highly sexualized and violent spitfires or as self-sacrificing and long suffering mother figures (Keller, 1994; Rodriguez, 2008). I have felt the weight of these images throughout my life. Amira De La Garza (2004) further articulates Malintzin Tenepal and the Virgin of Guadalupe as mother figures that shape her and other Chicanas’ experiences. In their juxtaposition, these maternal figures dictate proper roles for women’s sexuality. While each represents and connects to “nation” differently, their motherhood is clear. The figure of Malintzin, the symbolic and violated whore stands in as the ultimate symbol of abjection, demonstrating that women’s sexuality cannot be trusted because as a traitor figure she aided in colonialism and bastardized our race.

While I revel in and seek to rearticulate the story of Malintzin, the image of the whore, I feel the weight of abjection. The whore figure, the damned mother, overly sexual, is always put in her place. I am put in my place through public shaming. I become a monstrous freak Other who must be exiled and put on display in order to define what is proper in the academy. I am disciplined so that I might know my place. Phillip Bernhardt-House (2008) writes that “werewolves have often been used as symbols of the uncontrollable and dangerous nature of female (and especially teenage female) sexuality” (p. 168). Certainly we see this in images such as West’s werewolf woman, the character of teenager Ginger who embraces her heightened sexual difference after being bitten in Ginger Snaps (Fawcett, 2000), or the African American werewolf Mariana, who in The Howling II: Your Sister is a Werewolf (Mora, 1985) travels across the world to engage in a ménage à trois with the White werewolf queen Stirba and one of her minions. At this moment I feel the nexus of cultural disciplining and monstrosity in my public shaming.

These incidents of public shamings have transformed me. Years later the anger grows. But now I don’t avert eye contact. I meet the stares with defiance. My body still shutters with fear and frustration. I continue to shapeshift looking for a performance that best suits and protects me in this hostile space. Anzaldúa (2007) argues that this is part of our strength as Chicanas: our shapeshifting ability and our tolerance for ambiguity.

“Why is she so angry?”

This is what some of my “critically oriented” colleagues ask about me.

“What has she become?”

They speak of my “transformation,” individualizing my pain and experience rather than seeing it within a larger matrix of domination. I was made this way by the academy. My monstrosity was literally named as such the day my “mentor” figuratively put me on display, and it continued as those in positions of power felt the need to taunt me, hoping to either break me or see a full on self-destructive transformation. But everyone seems to forget that, as I am individually pathologized. Scholars note that the experiences of women of color in the academy can be lonely (Agathangelou & Ling, 2002). After being constructed as monstrous I feel the loneliness even more.

The Revengeful Curse of the Werewolf Woman

Prominent werewolf scholar Chantal Bourgault du Coudray (2002) writes of the ways werewolves come to be associated and stigmatized within constructions of class. When associated with middle-class values, “lycanthropy posed a threat from within the normative social collectivity, it tended to be formulated as an interiorized invisible presence, emanating from the psyche” (du Coudray, 2002, p. 9). While it is assumed to be natural for monsters to be male because of masochistic desires tied to constructions of hegemonic masculinity, Aviva Briefel (2005) notes that female werewolves are depicted in film as tending, “to commit acts of violence out of revenge for earlier abuse by parents, partners, rapists, and other offenders” (p. 20). Examples of this include Joanie in Cursed (Craven, 2005) who kills women with whom Jake, the male werewolf, who infected and spurned her, is interested in dating. When the female werewolf engages in masochistic acts, “she does so either by coercion from an outside force or as a way of terminating her monstrosity” (Briefel, 2005, p. 21). A prime example of this is the film Werewolf Woman (Silvestro, 1976) in which a rape victim imagines herself as a werewolf and seeks revenge, or Tara in Blood Moon (Fitzgerald, 2001) who kills a man who has bullied her. The construction of women within the frame of psychosis or mental illness is not new (Perkins Gilman, 2011). Irrationality is associated as an excessive trait of femininity that is further marked as Other when it intersects with race. Through putting these characteristics onto the body of women, women are further Othered, while larger structures of oppression remain unquestioned. The irrationality and Otherness associated with the bodies of women of color in academia further becomes dangerous when constructed through the lens of threat or contagion. The dangerousness of our presence is not simply that we exist, but that as teachers and mentors we have the opportunity to educate. Administrators fear that like werewolves, women of color “must ‘recruit’ and pass on their cursed state to others through various means” (Bernhardt-House, 2008, on werewolves p. 164). This they fear often is projected into the classroom . . . I’m infecting them. That’s what they say. I’m infecting too many of the women, particularly women of color, graduate students with ideas. Critical race, feminist, performance, queer, you name it, I’ve got it, and I’ve done it. I have to say it feels good to revel in these knowledges and it feels good to infect others. ⁵

Patriarchy

  Racism

   Sexism

    Homophobia

As one of my students remarks ironically, “Racism, sexism, classism, and homophobia cannot and should not be condoned under the motto ‘Life’s a bitch.’”

How is it that I am desired precisely because I am a critical scholar, yet when I connect it to lived experience, I’m dangerous? Evelyn Hu-DeHart (2000) writes, departments say they desire diversity and hire for it, but many refuse to change their chilly climates.

“Stay in the field of popular culture,” he says.

One administrator (town leader) gathers the students (villagers) together to rally against my presence and the White women faculty who have been infected by my “monstrosity.” The villagers are storming the castle. The angry mob is gathering to expel the beast in the dark forest. He exclaims to the crowd, “Those people that do the most things or are always in the drama are not necessarily the ones to go to. You’ve got to flip the pentad.” Flip the pentad? I don’t know what that means. But I know the students I’ve “infected” feel implicated and attacked by him as he further alienates and Others me. This is the danger of shapeshifters like myself to mainstream existence; they are mysterious Others, yet their monstrosity remains hidden. It sneaks up on you and it betrays you. The administrator tries to scare the students by reminding them that you cannot trust the shapeshifter, even the ones who preach “goodwill” and especially those who teach critical theory. ⁶

Unruly Bodies: The Beast Among

Agathangelou and Ling (2002) discuss the specific challenges women of color face in regards to teaching on the road to tenure. Women of color who teach classes that center Otherness are put in a complex and difficult position as they are often perceived to have an agenda and cannot be taken seriously on the subject as their White male colleagues who are deemed “objective” (Agathangelou & Ling, 2002). Even if a woman of color may be an excellent teacher or mentor, evaluations of teaching by senior colleagues usually focus on “negative evaluations for one particular course. . . The lynchpin argument to undermine any explanation is that the candidate abused her students in the classroom” (Agathangelou & Ling, p. 376). I have witnessed some of my White colleagues scream at students, yet they go unnoticed or unmarked. They are not monsters. They are having a bad day. I, however, am always on guard because as an assertive woman of color who knows the power of my voice, I am already pathologized and viewed as angry before I even speak. I cannot afford to lose my cool or transform myself the way they do. Nor, do I want to.

Considering the scrutiny under which women of color in the academy are placed, Agathangelou and Ling (2002) “surmise that senior faculty tend to pathologize the faculty of color by labeling her teaching as ‘bad’ or ‘intimidating,’ with rumor, innuendo, and lies mixed in to strengthen the bias” (p. 380). Dr. Smith thinks you’re too emotional or get upset too easily. . . . When I sent out the announcement that you would be taking over as graduate director two students let me know they were concerned about you being in this position. I listen to rumors wondering how I might get them to see things for once from an Other perspective. That seems impossible as, “It’s much easier to individualize what is otherwise a structure problem and blame the faculty of color” (Agathangelou & Ling, 2002, p. 380).

Sorry I can’t disembody my difference and the affect it creates.

A White male colleague comes to my office after a meeting with a White male graduate student. He shares, “He asked me if the rumors are true . . . that White men don’t get funded in our department?!” My colleague, who I consider an ally, is astonished. Sadly, I’m not surprised. It’s more of the same, as my presence and my assumed agenda spark fear and mayhem.

“All faculty operate within structures ridden with stereotypes, prejudices, and misperceptions about people of color, women, and working class people” and “underlying prejudices about race-gender-class may remain unchecked and unexposed” (Agathangelou & Ling, 2002, p. 375). These unchecked assumptions inform how faculty outside the “mainstream” are viewed. As they ask questions such as, “Should I conform or speak out? Should I teach mainstream or dissident material? Should I address a colleague’s or a student’s racism/sexism/classism publicly, privately, or not at all?” they may be further viewed through unrecognized stereotypes by senior colleagues (Agathangelou & Ling, 2002, p. 375). The identities and commitments of women of color may place them in direct opposition to an academy that values “civility” and “getting along”—code words that squash difference. In horror films werewolves have often been “portrayed as outlaws, not only because they transgress the laws of society and stand outside of its boundaries, but because the ordered logic of society is unable to even account for, classify, or assimilate their existence” (Bernhardt-House, 2008, p. 179).

A Case of “Civil” Disobedience

Every time my course meets, I am continually disturbed that the professor who uses the classroom before me cuts into my class time. My students are frustrated and annoyed. On this particular day, I see her and one of her colleagues in the room. This is another faculty who has done the same thing to me before. In this break between classes I use this opportunity to express my frustration with the situation. As I am speaking to her colleague, she interrupts me. The professor who has just finished teaching becomes defensive, arguing her right to be there. She eventually leaves and the class starts. It is later revealed this is all a misunderstanding because of bad scheduling. I email the faculty member to express my apologies for the misunderstanding with her, though the problem continues to persist with other faculty in her department. Later, a friend, a fellow shapeshifter who is another cultural Other in her department, tells me that the faculty member has had several “breakdowns” over her interaction with me and she tells everyone that she was scared of me. She cries as she says that her students felt they might have to come back into the classroom to “protect” her.

As a woman of color critical educator and researcher I am no stranger to the tactic of White women crying. In fact, I and other feminists of color have written about it before (Calafell, 2010b; Hooks, 1990) as we experienced this many times over in our lives as graduate students, untenured faculty, and tenured faculty. This strategy, often used by White women both in the classroom and in other professional settings against antiracist women of color, deflects blame and guilt, “victimizing” the White woman while centering Whiteness and reaffirming the savage Otherness of women of color. It also often functions as an opportunity for White women to reinforce the bonds of their privilege with White men through the role of innocent victim who must be protected from Otherness. Historically, as we have seen, White womanhood must be protected at all costs (Hill Collins, 2000).

Agathangelou and Ling (2002) argue that “the US academy devolves into embedded racial, sexual, and class stereotypes. For women faculty, an unspoken heteronormativity further requires their adherence to conventional definitions of ‘femininity’” (p. 370). As a queer Chicana feminist I do not conform to these ideal or conventional notions of femininity. I feel the excesses of my body in this space. I am Chicana. I am fat. I am short. I am queer. I cannot and will not perform the femininity desired in this space. My “madness” or “unruliness” is really my feminist awareness, which unfortunately gets connected to monstrosity. I am like a werewolf that “has been in most cases portrayed as schizophrenic . . . as a human divided against itself, unable to control its emotions or its body” (Bernhardt-House, 2008, p. 162). All of my excesses cast me as out of control, uncivil, and scary.

In contrast to my excesses, the other instructor who cries, playing into a heteronormative performance that desires protection from her White male colleagues in power (reinforcing patriarchy), is tall, straight, thin, fair haired, and White. We could not be more different. Her idealized performance of femininity both in regard to her appearance, demeanor, and heteronormativity make her the desired female professor in this space. While it would an astonishing and rare case to imagine her as a monster, for me it is the opposite. On screen werewolf women are often cast within a dark or Other trope. For example, in The Howling (Dante, 1981), Marsha Quist, a lead werewolf, adorns her body with tight black leather, wears a necklace garnished with teeth, heavy makeup, and seduces the main character Karen White’s husband Bill. Marsha’s dark and dangerous sexuality is further coded as primitive when she is seen laughing as she skins and cuts the head off a rabbit.

Against Marsha, Karen is blond, emotionally shaken, dressed in lighter colors, and cast throughout the narrative as the innocent victim who is continually subject to Marsha’s attacks. Marsha falls into the category of the Latina “dark lady” that is villainous, sexual, and often makes trouble for the poor innocent White woman (Keller, 1994). This same dichotomy frequently plays itself out in the academy as women of color are constructed as hyper aggressive or angry against while White women are constructed as innocents who can fall back on their White privilege (Calafell, 2010b).

I continue to be astonished at the working of Whiteness in the quick race to protect White womanhood. I am astonished by the inability of those involved to critically reflect on constructions of me as violent, the woman’s continual victimization of herself, and the supposed fear of her White students. None of these are critically understood through the lenses of sexism, racism, heterosexism, and classism that work against women of color who don’t conform to the expected performances of White middle-class civility and passive aggressiveness in the university. I share this with those involved, but no one seems to hear and my account of the situation is never desired.

The situation reeks of inferential racism, or “nonracist racism” which is most often exercised by “liberals with an explicitly anti-racist intent” (Fiske, cited in Owens Patton, 2004a, p. 61). Tracey Owens Patton (2004a) has tied inferential racism to hegemonic civility, which “refers to normalized or naturalized behavior—appropriate behavior—even as the action can be incivil or even silencing in order to uphold the hegemonic order” (p. 65). Raymie McKerrow (1993) elaborates on the oppressiveness of discourses of civility by arguing that “civil behavior may be more than politeness, but in its execution it may also serve to mask very real differences in power relations. In a word, civility may perpetuate servitude” (p. 9). Adding to this Owens Patton (2004a) writes, “‘getting along’ is inferentially racist because many important issues regarding diversity, racism, and White supremacy must be glossed over in favor of the greater common good—which happens to be the good of the White hegemonic order. In addition, laws that protect marginalized people are ignored” (p. 77).

The characterization of me as “violent” or “threatening” is also consistent with the ways women of color have traditionally been characterized in society. Women of color are often read as non-normative, threatening, or violent in their communication because they do not confirm to hegemonic standards of White femininity and passive aggressiveness that is so often favored in the academy. The need for protection of White femininity goes back to slavery and histories of racism in which White women could easily cry foul and the community rallied around them in lynching Black men who stood accused of rape (Davis, 1981).

The Bitch is Back!: Even Tenure Won’t Tame Her

This is the third panel of the day for me. Or is the fourth? At this point, I don’t really know. All I do know is I am jet lagged and I’ve been up since an ungodly hour. Once this panel is over I get to spend some time with some of my former advisees who are now faculty. That will make this trip worthwhile. The panel consists of mostly “critical” scholars, including myself. I respect several of them, both personally and professionally. In the audience I see several colleagues from different universities and several of my graduate students. The room is packed. I have been asked to speak after another colleague, but before he even speaks, a well-respected White male scholar’s words make my blood boil. Discussing some of his work, which has been well received, he begins to describe the population of men he works with in ways that, whether he realizes it or not, positions them as noble savages. His language should be offensive to everyone in this room who calls themselves a critical scholar. His participants, who I understand to be mostly men of color based on statistics of the population, are described as animalistic, barbaric, and primitive men who can be “rehabilitated” through the ancient canonical texts. It is not so much his project that bothers me as it is the lack of reflexivity about his White masculinity and the language he uses to describe the men of color. I am one of two people of color on the panel. I look over to see the faces of my graduate students, including several women of color whom I have recruited. They look disgusted. A pain sharply moves through my body. I start to shake and sweat. I know I am not the only one bothered by his language. I make eye contact with Others, shapeshifters like myself, who are just as offended. But no one speaks. The transformation begins.

Prior to coming to this conference I told myself I was not going to lose my temper. I knew what to expect. But I didn’t expect it at this panel. I didn’t expect it in a “critical” space. I have painfully learned the lesson of talking back, both in university politics and in the politics of an academic conference. I have been disciplined multiple times. I should know better. But I can’t stop my bodily reaction; my transformation. I’m sick. I’m embarrassed and humiliated. All eyes are on me as one of the few people of color on the panel. How will she react after that statement? People wait for the freakshow to begin. I don’t want to be on stage, but I can’t help it. The shapeshifter takes over and I speak. In my mind I hear the words of rapper, Nicki Minaj, the only woman (of color) that speaks in Kanye West’s Monster: “But really, really, I don’t give an F U C K. . . . I’m a muthafucking monster!” (Bhasker, Carer, Maraj, Roberts, Vernon, and West, 2010).

“As a performance scholar I have to acknowledge that I am really shaken up by what I have heard. In fact I’m having a bodily reaction. I am actually really upset by the description of Other masculinities, particularly when those masculinities were created by a White supremacist, capitalist, patriarchy, and are now being tamed by the classics.” There is no recognition of power and this is history. I further mark the need for rhetorical reflexivity by researchers given that this scholar showed no reflexivity about his White male privilege. My words are ignored, until a White male ally in the audience marks the fact that I have been disciplined through silence. Then the audience starts clapping. The panelist who I called out for his language thinks I’m just upset with his project as do some others on the panel. He doesn’t get that I am upset with his performance of White male privilege, of neoliberal anti-racist White hero ⁷ as he remarks that he will not make an apology for his work. One person in the audience, another White man, stands up and claps for him. I sarcastically thank him for being so benevolent. The panel is over and I am besieged by people (other shapshifters/cultural Others) thanking me for my comments. I need to get out before it gets worse. My frustration, hurt, and betrayal is too much. I did not want to play this role again. Why didn’t these Others speak? I do understand I have tenure. I understand that I am on the front of the stage. I want to howl. I want to cry. The pain reverberates weeks after the conference, as the story is circulated, and stories of my monstrosity or checking of privilege (depending on who you ask) become lore. As much as I did not want to be vulnerable and on display again it happened.

Realizings

I end with the narrative of the conference panel because it brings me back to Madison’s (1999) discussion of the potential of performance. Madison (1999) sees performance as a space of radical creativity, accountability, and social justice. In performance and performative writing we have the potential to connect theory, performance, and lived experience. Performance provides the possibility to learn and unlearn. Performance implicates. Through these narratives connecting work on the lived experiences of women of color in the academy, literature on werewolves and monstrosity, and my narratives, I have taken heed of Madison’s (1999) words.

These “realizings” have been part of my understandings of how I am framed through the lens of monstrosity as a women of color in the academy in the post-racial era. I performatively and vulnerably ask readers to be implicated or intercede in hostile academic spaces that continue to Other women of color. du Coudray (2002) argues that,

While I am marked through the lens of monstrous femininity in the academy, I refuse to be marginalized. I name this space in order to disrupt it. I make this connection in order to disempower and disidentify with it. I name this space so that you might join the conversation and accept this invitational performance. Sarah Lawrence-Lightfoot (1999) writes, “Making oneself vulnerable is an act of trust and respect, as is receiving and honoring the vulnerability of others” (p. 93). I offer in my vulnerable self in the utmost respect to you.