The De-Gendered Pleasure Project
by Chase Ryan Joynt
I propose an evolutionary and foundational shift in the way that we are currently thinking and talking about our genitals. My intention in this writing is to explode genital talk out of the many gendered cracks and crevices in which it is currently housed. I want to re-contextualize current musings regarding our parts and in doing so, propose a necessary reclamation of self and a crucial quest for pleasure.
But how do we create a genital revolution when current social conversation regarding gendered genitalia exists solely to realign, repackage and rename us? When we are surrounded by musings about what we ‘should’ have, what we ‘don‘t’ have and what we ‘might’ have it becomes increasingly complicated to even find our truths let alone live them. We exist in a world where overly simplistic conclusions are made about our lives and our identities based solely on the detailing of our genitals … so if we are to have any chance of rewriting these gendered scripts, we need to create new ways of thinking.
Let’s look at the facts: we have penises, vaginas, sperm, eggs, testosterone and estrogen. Some of us own variations and amalgamations of these components and all of us carry (in addition to some chromosomes and DNA) an ultimately personalized combination of each. What is both comforting and simultaneously fracturing about the reality of these combinations is that even though we are dealing with very similar foundational parts, we remain unable to get past the variations and designs of our packaging. Boys have penises and girls have vaginas.
For the purposes of this conversation, I suggest that we attempt to strip the packaging and more specifically the marketing around gendered genitals and get back to talking about the basic parts. Should there be any confusion about the current state of gendered marketing around us, one needn’t look further than the pressure for ‘women’ to procreate and the celebration of a ‘man’s’ sizable birth given penis. If pleasure organs are the parts and gendered genitals are the package, we need to take everything out of the figuratively constricting box and redesign it completely. We need to embark upon a quest for pleasure and must not sacrifice and/or ignore it for the sake of more accurate branding. Risking inadequate sexual functioning based on aesthetics cannot be our welcome community standard. We need to put the pleasure back in our politics and keep the politics out of our pants for long enough to get what we want.
For those of us who identify as being “in transition”, re-packaging and branding our bodies can frequently become the focal point and measuring stick of success. It is not uncommon to spend so much time on our packaging that our physical parts become shelved indefinitely. This shelf life, and tendency to place embodied desires and needs on the backburner can no longer be the acceptable norm.
Throughout the process of transitioning we are so often pushing to get somewhere (that we aren’t) and to acquire something (that we lack). If we take a step back from this assertion we see two things: ‘we aren’t’ and ‘we lack’. An equation such as this, riddled with unclear goals and undeterminable acquisitions is inevitably going to lead us to disappointment. It is time to examine the place our genitals play in this process and to determine a course of action that allows our parts to play a participatory role in our lives rather than simply a marker of our gendered place.
But before we carve out new space for this genital reclamation, it is imperative that we examine how we arrived in this fractured and ultimately polarized place to begin with. It is no secret that we have traditionally been required to re-assimilate and/or assert interest in polarized gender in order to receive any health or medical care. Unintentionally, this access to care has caused a fracture within our community- we have those who have “passed” and those who have not, either by choice or circumstance. Some posit that the increased social acceptance experienced by some “passing” post-assignment trans folk is putting undue pressure on the rest of us to conform to normative types. Most often, any sort of conformity is perceived (by default) to reinforce everything we have been attempting to dismantle.
We must understand that this normative typecasting does not have to be reinforced from within our communities and that normativity is only being demanded by those medical and mental health professionals who lack the knowledge and language to understand and assist.
We must resist the urge to other within our own communities, as creating hierarchies of identity between us only further complicates the unpacking we need to do. We can’t address the fractures between our packages and our parts if we are trying to replicate normative sex structures and roles. After all, such a replication requires that we put our gender/sex back into the categories we often seek to reformulate.
We need to create space for those who want to modify their bodies while honoring those who do not. We need to privilege our pleasure over our parts. We must resist all attempts to prioritize one type of body over another and we must not do to each other what has historically been impressed upon us. I propose that we start thinking about our genitals the way we think about our taste buds.
On average, an adult has between 9,000-10,000 taste buds. Considering the fact that the clitoral glans have at least 8,000 nerve endings, in addition to the penis’ 4,000, this comparison is not outrageous. Like sex, taste is understood to be intrinsically linked to the other senses. I dare say that just as taste is a complicated fusion of smell, taste, touch, texture, and sight, so too is our sense of pleasure and arousal both genitally and beyond.
Our bodies’ physical reactions to taste are not unlike that of our collective genitals. We salivate in preparation for our mouths to taste our favorite food, most certainly not for the food we are told we must eat. Genitalia, like mouths, react when interested in what’s being served, not when forced to eat “the projected” “the assumed” or the “most digestible” fare.
Speaking of “the assumed”, it is common thought that some tastes must be developed over time, and that one must educate their palate in order to appreciate the finer details and more nuanced tastes (think: olives and blue cheese). What if we could think about genitals in these terms? What if our sexual selves can be developed carefully, using ingredients new and old, and recipes that do not replicate but rather create? What if we can rid ourselves of gendered genital assumptions and incorporate true desire and pleasure in their place?
This revolution cannot just include us, what if instead of teaching youth that boys have penises and girls have vaginas, we choose to talk about body function and self care? Understanding that the way you react to food and how you expose your children to it will shape their future reactions to them, why don’t we encourage new generations to explore their genitalia by letting them pick from the menu of tastes and flavors rather than forcing our pre-determined genders upon them.
What if our genitals could have no impact on our gender identity and/or sense of self? What if, like taste buds, we were able to attend to genitals as a strictly de-gendered pleasure project? We need to strip ourselves of our programmed gender inappropriateness and critically engage with what we want and perhaps more importantly how we want to go about getting it. We need not resign ourselves to an irreparably disembodied sense of sexual self, we cannot remain fractured from our most intrinsic desires and we must not to go hungry forever.
Chase Ryan Joynt is a Toronto-based filmmaker, performer and writer. His latest film Everyday to Stay is showing at festivals throughout Canada, the US and internationally, and has recently been picked up for world-wide distribution with Oracle Releasing. You can find Chase’s most recent writing in the pages of Original Plumbing Magazine, Shameless Magazine and the anthology Letters For My Brothers. When not attempting to explain the aforementioned to his mother, Chase can be found pursuing a PhD in Cinema and Media Studies at York University in Toronto.