Sex, Gender, Becoming - PULP

38 Rory du Plessis
into the audience. 110 This is followed by the soundtrack of the voice
of an anonymous Jewish man who, disapproving of Cohen’s work,
leaves a threatening message on Cohen’s answering machine: 111
Steven Cohen — if you ever prounce (sic) around with a Star of David on
your head, you’ll be looking for trouble ... Avoid using the Star of David
to besmear the Jewish people because I don’t like it ... and there’s going
to be a problem ... I beg you as a fellow Jew don’t make an arsehole of
the Jews with the Star of David.
At this point, Cohen slides from his anus a set of anal beads and ejects
from his rectum a black fluid into a Victorian glass bedpan and then
he decants it into a glass. Then, toasting his audience, Cohen drinks
it. Thus, Cohen 112 proves that queer self-acceptance is an acquired
taste.
Taste, like Tradition (1999) deals with the rectum and its contents as
a site of artistic practice. 113 Using the rectum and its contents in his
art he draws attention to the overarching interest that homosexual
men are to heterosexual society. Forster 114 says that this interest
means that homosexual men make other people think, more than
anything else, about homosexual men’s rectums and their brown
faecal matter. It is this aspect that homosexuals have never been
forgiven for by heterosexual society. Thus, no other group of people
compels one in such a disgusting repulsive manner, as homosexuals.
115 Not only is Cohen’s rectum essential as a site of artistic
practise in his performances, but also the exposing of his anus. The
anus is extensively suppressed and in most cases almost invisible in
Western representations, even more so than the erect penis. The
heterosexual norm insists that representations of the anus must only
be medicalised. However, if it is erotised, one will be accused of an
act of perversity. Masculinity is threatened and declared vulnerable
when the male body, conventionally the sexual penetrator, becomes
penetrable in a similar sense to the way a women’s body is
penetrable. 116 Butler 117 describes ‘[g]ender identity [as] a performative
accomplishment compelled by social sanction and taboo’. Thus
through Cohen making ‘his private parts public’ he draws attention to
the taboos that structure the representation of the sexualised body.
Secondly, Cohen exposes both the heterosexual and homosexual body
as a cultural object that encodes society’s beliefs that supervise the
110 S de Waal & R Sassen in Carman (n 7 above) 20.
111 In Carman (n 7 above) 10.
112
S de Waal & R Sassen in Carman (n 7 above) 20.
113 In Tradition (1999) Cohen hangs from the ceiling and from his anus expels a dark
liquid onto his partner Elu who is dancing beneath him. See S de Waal & R Sassen
in Carman (n 7 above) 20.
114 Rousseau (n 69 above) 406.
115 As above.
116
S de Waal & R Sassen in Carman (n 7 above) 22.
117 J Butler in Huxley & Witts (n 3 above) 393.