“Dear Gender” with Stacey Waite
“We wait for people to tell us who they are” – Stacey Waite
On Thursday evening, the Wall Atrium was home to a performative lecture given by the University of Nebraska’s resident English professor and poet: Dr. Stacey Waite. For the entirety of this composition, I will be referring to Waite by name, as Waite eschews personal pronouns believing that they force stability on what feels fluid. This subversion of convention regarding gender and our society’s language around it is the focal point of Waite’s work.
When walking into the Atrium, you are immediately within the space. What I mean by this is that there are no rooms to walk into, no doors, nothing separating this social space from the flow of foot traffic. Everyone, whether they attended the event or were just walking through Wall, was incorporated into the discussion; they were allowed autonomy regarding the choice of remaining to hear Waite. With such an inviting yet spacious place to fill, Waite combined aspects of performance and the typical lecture style, once again almost leaving the entire event up to subjectivity. To be in such an open space leaves pretty large shoes to fill, as far as energy goes, and Waite accomplished this by reciting the poetry in the style of spoken word; in this style, poetry isn’t about the rhymes or the meter, but about the words themselves and how they relate to each other. Waite’s words encompassed us as we all sat transfixed.
Waite began with poems about childhood and the ramifications of what it meant to be genderqueer (though that term was unclear to Waite at the time) in a time of such critical development. The poems revolved around misgendering and what it meant to gender an entity. Waite likened it to a deadlock in which every human that interacts with gender is dictated by it and the act of perpetuating gender can only be limiting (no matter one’s gender identity). Moving into adolescence, Waite explores ideas of grappling with a duality and then specific instances of gender euphoria. This constant juxtaposition of binaries, of emotions, of concepts is unique to Waite.
Towards the end of the “show”, during the Q+A portion, Waite introduced the idea of destabilization as a driving force; the aim, even if Waite agrees with a claim, is to examine the norms and discover why we, as a collective, think as we do. Waite encouraged the audience to more deeply consider what is viewed as conventional. Specifically, Waite questioned why so much of our society is gender-divided. For example, Waite proposed that the world would be improved by bathrooms being labeled as either “Likes Tears for Fears” or “Would Rather Listen to Other Bands”. Then you would be able to engage with others in a way that is inclusive in a way that the binary nature of gender isn’t.
As the Atrium filled with the sound of respectful applause and appropriate snapping, it was made obvious that Waite was successful. I had attended the event with a group of friends, and we were incredibly enlightened and thankful for Waite’s perspective. It was refreshing and pushed the boundaries of what I thought. Poetry is so subjective, and, personally, I had always appreciated poetry, but I had never experienced the words and the emotions surrounding me. Waite had a talent for speaking to the collective while looking at each individual, and that made it that much more impactful for me. Waite presented it as something uncomfortable, something unnatural, and something “not pretty”; Waite’s poetry wasn’t wildflowers and misty night skies–it was visceral and coarse.
As for the future of gender, Waite presents a compelling argument for not a total dissolution of the binary, but more of a dissolution of the societal importance that we place on it. Waite presents a future where every human is free, is fluid, and not controlled by these inherent binaries that currently exist.
