Sex, Gender, Becoming - PULP

30 Rory du Plessis
Munoz’ statement, and Butler 52 who informs us that ‘those who fail
to do their gender right are regularly punished,’ the masculinity of the
spectators act as ‘border-police’ of gender performances and as
‘gate-keepers’ punishing Cohen for his incorrect gender performance
by preventing him access into masculinity and entrance into the
hypermasculine, homosocial event. 53 Thus, Cohen provides an
oppositional voice to the masculine as a guardian of gender roles in
that he represents a masculinity that advocates freedom from
heterosexual norms.
5. ‘Policing gender borders’ through scapegoating
In Patriotic drag (1998), Cohen attended a white right-wing
commemoration of the South African War at Fort Klapperkop, in
Pretoria as Princess Menorah. 54 As Princess Menorah, Cohen was
expelled from the event by the neo-Nazi Afrikaner Weerstandsbeweging
supporters at the rally, who stood ‘guarding the entrance
from pollution’. 55 Thus, the right-wingers unceremoniously ejected
Cohen, performing Nazi salutes and shouting ‘Heil Hitler’. 56 Cohen’s
expulsion from the event is discussed in terms of the ‘policing of
borders’ and René Girard’s notion of the ‘scapegoat’.
Rob Shields 57 points out that individuals organise their lives around
spatial and territorial divisions. These serve as the carriers of social
myths that are the cornerstones of the ideological divisions between
social groups such as race and gender. 58 The process of identification
with a place is an essential marker of cultural activity. This process of
identification takes on social functions with regard to the division and
differentiation of social groupings, which leads to Foucault’s 59 link
between surveillance and ‘discipline’ within social spatialisation. 60
52 J Butler in Huxley & Witts (n 3 above) 394.
53 In an opposing reading, it may be interesting to note that Cohen’s performance
and its ensuing violence may be the response of men denying the performity of
masculinity – the denial of its construction.
54 Cohen developed the persona of Princess Menorah in 1997. The name refers to
Cohen as a Jew and as a queer and represents a costumed identity for attending
‘polite’ social functions. Cohen defines this persona in articulating, ‘[t]he
Menorah is the many-armed candlestick of Judaism. My other name is Princess
Menorah. I got the name because I bring light and enlightenment’. See S de Waal
& R Sassen in Carman (n 7 above) 5.
55 R Grieg ‘Pretoria’s camp cowboys give a girl a nazi turn’ (1998) http://
www.terrorealism.net/GRIEG.htm (accessed 12 August 2005).
56 S de Waal & R Sassen in Carman (n 7 above) 18.
57 R Shields Places on the margin. Alternative geographies of modernity (1991) 47.
58
Shields (n 57 above) 47.
59 Shields (n 57 above) 48.
60 Social spatialisation refers to the social construction of the spatial and
encompasses a fundamental system of spatial divisions that ground hegemonic
systems of ideology and practice. It is most visible in the connotations people
associate with a place. The connotations associated with Fort Klapperkop are
hetero-normative values that ground the hegemonic conception of masculinity.
See Shields (n 57 above) 7-48.