The
Independent profiles Grayson Perry who will be on Radio 4 next week. Considering the paper the comments that follow the piece are surprisingly denigrating.
Ah meet the Widow Twanky of
the phoney art world. A slightly tacky pantomimic tribute act paying
homage to an ego trip of his own cheesy desires.
A decent enough
draughtsman though no more than an average 6th former doing a subsid
subject. Without the cross dressing he would be just a very average
'artist'.
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Studied fine art at Portsmouth Polytechnic, did he? That explains a lot.
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Grayson perry: A weird very average artist, that lacks articulate and coherent conversation.
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But why is he wearing women's
clothes? Why was this question not posed? Does he have gender
dysphoria? If so, I sympathise, and I hope he will be able to get
treatment. If not, why? Is he just bringing his sexual kinks into the
public sphere? If so, why does the journalist not challenge him on that?
Or would the Indy be totally accepting if David Cameron dressed in
bondage gear for interviews? Of course not. This sort of journalism
undermines the Indy (and the Guardian) by just accepting people who
deliberately choose to non-conform for the sake of it.
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Your comment made me think -
who decides what are "women's" clothes? OK, clothes are often
manufactured with a particular body shape in mind and a person's sex is
one determiner of body shape but, at the end of the day, they are just
bits of cloth. Does it really matter what style of bits of cloth someone
wears?
I'm not sure it does.
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True. So if all clothes are
just bits of cloth, why is it that he chooses to wear the bits of cloth
that our prejudices say are women's bits of cloth? I do not dispute his
right to do so, but if this is just a sexual kink that he is playing out
in a national newspaper as opposed to genuine gender dysphoria, surely
this impacts on whether he is a credible subject of comment in such
national newspaper??
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"why is it that he chooses to wear the bits of cloth that our prejudices say are women's bits of cloth?"
Why do you care? You have accepted they are just bits of cloth and
that he has the right to wear them, so why is it any concern of yours
what he wears?
"but if this is just a sexual kink that he is playing out in a national newspaper as opposed to genuine gender dysphoria"
So you are limiting the possibilities to just a simple binary, then?
It is EITHER a "sexual kink" OR else it must be "gender dysphoria". It
may be sexual. Or it may be that he simply likes the way the clothes
look, or feel, or that they reflect some aspect of his personality.
Alternatively, he might have a bit of gender dysphoria. Not everyone
who has this syndrome either wants to go the whole hog, or has the
opportunity to do so. In the case of Mr Perry, he has a wife and family,
so he could possibly have decided losing them would be too high a price
to pay. But who are we to judge? If he likes to wear these kinds of
clothes, who is he hurting?
If you want to judge him on his art - fine. I don't think it's worthy
of the name "art", personally, but if he chooses to wear garments that
are, in our culture at this particular moment in history, more commonly
associated with female human beings than male human beings, then I say
good for him. If it makes him happy, he is right to do it.
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My heart tells me that
Grayson should be left alone to do what he does in peace, my judgement
however tells me that his work should not be taken too seriously
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OK, he's a fun character, but a serious artist? Nah!
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"Grayson Perry: A very modern cross-dressing artist"
Grayson Perry - a total fecking jackass in his Emperor's clothes. Artist? Excuse me while I have hysterics.