It’s not that I want to be a man, I just don’t want to be treated like a woman.
Pole dancing got a surge of media attention recently and it’s for none of the reasons that would typically make us, pole dancers, proud. I used to teach at a pole studio that has doubled, quadrupled, and octupled down on their transphobia in the media. They don’t seem to understand that no one is contesting their right to a women’s only training space. We are contesting their discrimination against trans women.
The studio says they’re doing it to protect women’s rights. To create a safe space for women.
Which women? Not me. I don’t feel protected by them, and I don’t feel safe there anymore. I have never felt the need to be protected from trans women, but I have felt the need to be protected from men. And now I feel the need to be protected from people who would want to verify my gender by genital inspection on demand under the guise of protecting women’s rights.
I have a complicated relationship with gender. I’m “gender-rebellious”. Maybe it’s the neurodivergence in me, but I never understood why I had to adhere to certain standards based on gender – it’s literally illogical. I wanted to act like a boy. I didn’t want to be a boy, but I certainly preferred acting like a boy and I definitely preferred being treated like a boy.
I was made to play with the boys in gym class. I could run faster and jump higher, with my arms unusually long and my shoulders unusually wide. By the time I started pole dancing, I was decades deep into tomboy-maxing, so the joy of sparkling spandex, glittering rhinestones, and platform stilettos were my first foray into femininity that ever clicked.
It took me writing an hour long show about being a pole dancer to understand that I don’t really have to be either/or, because I’m actually neither here nor there. I have been picking & choosing my own adventure – and so can you.
The Pole Shebang is a living example of how the masculine & feminine can coexist in varying proportions. It’s a celebration of self – the gender, the cultural, the diversity – and then I pole dance about it.
The Pole Shebang runs at the Emerging Artist Share House from September 22 – 26 as part of the Sydney Fringe Festival. Tickets are available here.
