I
n the 1970s and ’80s, most major
United States orchestras changed
their audition policies in an attempt
to eliminate their bias toward hiring male
candidates. The new procedures included
advertising the positions more widely,
restructuring admissions committees to
also include members of the orchestra
and most importantly, the introduction of
“blind” or “screen” auditions in which the
identity of the player was hidden from the
jury.
By doing this, they increased female
representation from 10 percent in the
early 1970s to 35 percent in the mid-1990s.
The screen, meant to address gender
discrimination within the hiring process
of orchestras, had allegedly achieved its
purpose. But as they gained representation,
women musicians who were auditioning
for orchestras also lost something: their
right to perform gender and to own and
show their bodies in the ways they pleased.
Anne
Phillips,
London
School
of
Economics Gender and Theory professor,
argues in her book, “The Politics of the
Human”, that women had to become
“disembodied abstractions” in order to be
considered as musicians of equal merit to
their male counterparts.
Phillips’s
notion
of
disembodied
abstractions stuck with me, because it
suggests that women need to surrender
their bodies to claim their equal place in
the world. To be considered as humans,
we would need to give up the gendered
particularities that make us women.
As I paged through “The Politics of
the Human”, all I could think about was
my body: my brown hair, flexible legs,
uncoordinated arms and face. It looks
different from any other body I’ve ever
seen. It shapes how I see and experience the
world, and also affects how others see me.
It is a woman’s body. It is an immigrant’s
body. It is a body that carries stress and
grief, but also happiness.
In a lot of ways, my body makes me
who I am. Was it possible for me to think
of myself, a human and a woman, without
considering the particularities of my body?
For me, the answer was no.
The more I read, the more I came
to understand that Phillips’s feminist
argument was based on something much
deeper than equal gender representation
for musicians in orchestras. Although
representation is an important step in
achieving equality, Phillips was attempting
to attack the problem at its root. In her
view, the origin of gender inequality does
not come from simply from genitalia.
It can be explained, at its core, by the
essence of personhood.
“We make up people,” she writes in “The
Politics of the Human”. “When we decide
that the crucial distinction is that between
a man and a woman, or human and animal,
or heterosexual and gay, we settle on
definitions and boundaries that then mark
our ways of thinking and living.”
So, if women musicians auditioning
for orchestras in the U.S. were forced to
surrender their bodies to be considered
worthy of a position, then what does that
say about their status as people?
T
he United Nations proclaimed
the
Universal
Declaration
of
Human Rights in 1948 aiming to
protect the universal human rights of all
people on Earth. It was, according to them,
a groundbreaking moment that marked a
milestone in the fight for human rights.
For the first time, they say, all people
were recognized as having a personhood
worth protecting, no matter what their
nationality was. For the first time, there
was a governing body whose goal was to
see everyone and prevent them from being
acted against, no matter their societal
status.
Article 2 of the UDHR reads like this:
“Everyone is entitled to all the rights
and freedoms set forth in this Declaration,
without distinction of any kind, such
as race, colour, sex, language, religion,
political or other opinion, national or social
origin, property, birth or other status.
Furthermore, no distinction shall be made
on the basis of the political, jurisdictional
or international status of the country
or territory to which a person belongs,
whether it be independent, trust, non-self-
governing or under any other limitation of
sovereignty.”
All is well and good, until one realizes
that the word gender does not make the cut
for the “distinctions of any kind” protected
by the UDHR. Sex is there, but the contrast
between the two is an important one.
Sex is a biological state, it is a non-binary
designation of male or female based on
sex organs. Gender is the attributes and
behaviors that are socially assigned to sex
categories. It is also non-binary, and there
is no assumed correspondence between
gender and sex. The two are undeniably
linked for some people, but irrevocably
disjointed for others.
I
n her book, “Inventing Human
Rights”, University of California, Los
Angeles history professor Lynn Hunt
argues that human rights are given under
three distinctions only.
“Human rights require three interlocking
qualities: rights must be natural (inherent
in human beings); equal (the same for
everyone);
and
universal
(applicable
everywhere),” Hunt writes.
But as the women musicians showed,
our categorical human looks a very specific
way and not everyone is protected equally
within their societies, or by the UDHR. In
fact, I would argue people are placed into
categories based on the particularities of
their bodies, and this affects the degree of
protection they receive.
The women auditioning behind the
screen became “disembodied abstractions”
because their bodies looked different than
those of the male players. Their bodies were
different, and the attributes and behaviors
associated with their female bodies — their
gender — clearly showed. For example,
despite knowing they would play behind a
screen, women musicians who auditioned
for orchestras still dressed for the occasion
and often wore heels.
Phillips writes that representation of
women rose further when a carpet was
added to disguise the sound of women
players walking across the stage. She
further states blind selection and screen
auditions as “an indictment of the nature of
our prejudices.”
It is — the forced distinction between
gendered bodies places us on a balance
that often tips toward cisgender men. The
screen may have increased representation,
but it also enhanced gender as an innate
difference and did little to address the root
problem of gender discrimination.
Being placed behind a screen forces
people to assert their humanity through
factors other than their bodies, which play
a key part on how they view themselves.
The screen demonstrates
that the fullness of women,
their gender performance,
identities
and
physical
attributes — their humanity — could not
be on the stage. They had to be considered
only on one aspect, their musical abilities,
but they could not be accepted on their
assertion of personhood.
In other words, the women who played
behind a curtain were not being considered
as people because of the way they showed
up in the world and how they chose to
adorn and portray their bodies.
T
he way our society categorizes
personhood is ascribed in these
so-called solutions to inequality
and discrimination. “Blind” or “screen”
auditions inadvertently categorized women
as “lesser than” by forcing them to hide
their bodies and identities in the same way
Article 2 of the UDHR completely ignored
gender and failed to protect those whose
sex organs don’t necessarily dictate their
identities.
Liv Naimi (they/them), an LSA senior
studying
social
theory
and
practice
commented on the potential harmful
nature of these exclusions.
“When it is women being discriminated
against in (orchestras), that is interesting,
because they are being discriminated
against for the way they are showing up in
the world,” they said.
“There is a lot of beauty in (their
identities), and a lot of parts of themselves
that they don’t get to show when they have
to hide behind a curtain. They could still
(play), and it could be really good, but I
think that it says a lot to take away the
outside of yourself. It says a lot about how
other people can’t take all of you in and
about why you can’t be yourself, and it can
be really harmful.”
Naimi argued that the way we show up
and present ourselves matters because it is
a choice.
“My queer and also, at times, gender
identity are things that I could hide if I
wanted to,” they said. “But the opportunity
to show them matters a lot to me, because
they change the way that I can show up and
be understood in space, and they change
the way that I feel authentic.”
They also stated that language matters
in recognizing someone’s personhood.
“When someone looks at me and uses
‘she’ pronouns, I get why. The culture we
live in automatically genders the shape of
my body. But being misunderstood in this
way is harmful, because I am not being
seen as how I feel,” they said.
“I do enjoy femininity somedays, and
looking like I would like to involves many
steps. What I want changes. It’s not that
I am not human when people see me as a
woman, but it is that I am not the specific
and unique human that I am. I am not me
to them,” Naimi added.
The metaphorical screen being built
around people whose gender identities
do not conform to our normative idea of
personhood can be harmful and, despite
increasing representation, it can lead to the
vindication of difference and to a lack of
understanding and empathy across gender.
Andrew Miller (he/him), an LSA senior
studying film, television, and media had a
similar opinion.
“(Being put behind a curtain) sounds
like a scary proposition,” he said. “It is
hard, because when it comes to art, you
want the best product to be shown; but
when it comes to humans, you want people
to like you and for there to not be that much
hidden about you.”
Miller
said
the
ability
to
be
recognized holistically matters and that
compartmentalizing the self could lead to
ingenuine interaction.
“I want people to like me for everything
about me. I want people to see me. In an
ideal world, I would like to think that my
character would really speak for itself, but
I’d like everything I can to be upfront and
present.”
Miller also said he believes that if art
is left to what he called a “free market
ideology,” gender and race discrepancies
in terms or representation and acceptance
will always exist.
“There’s
a
whole
movement
in
Hollywood that put more minorities and
women into films,” he said. “I don’t know
if (representation) would fix the problem. I
think if you gave people who are different
and who have different experiences a
chance to tell their own stories, instead of
just inserting them like paste into films,
that would be very interesting.”
Both Naimi and Miller agreed in
saying that the UDHR’s exclusion of
gender is important and can lead to
misunderstanding about the difference
between gender and sex. They also agreed
in believing that the right to express gender
freely should be protected as its own entity.
W
henever I walk into a room, I
am aware of the particularities
of my body. I know that the
makeup on my face and my long hair are the
normative symbols recognizable to others
as femininity. “I feel like a woman,” these
features say. “This is who I am.”
I know that one day, I will inevitably
be asked to go behind a metaphorical
screen to attain equal status to my male
counterparts. I know that every day, even
now, as I write this, people are forced to go
behind a screen because of their gender.
It is not representation that we need, it
is empathy. We need to recognize gender
performance as a human right, and all
gendered bodies as people first.
Andrea Pérez Balderrama is a senior
studying Communications and International
Studies and is the former Managing
Statement Editor. She can be reached
at andreapb@umich.edu.
Wednesday, February 5, 2020 // The Statement
4B
5B
Wednesday, February 5, 2020 // The Statement
BY ANDREA PÉREZ BALDERRAMA, STATEMENT CONTRIBUTOR
ILLUSTRATION BY MAGGIE WIEBE
From behind the screen