Performance
In Iris Marion Young’s On Female Body Experience: “Throwing Like a Girl” and Other Essays, Young analyzes the effects of differences in socialization of young boys versus young girls. Women are defined as Other from a very young age. The straight, white male is established as default. These notions affect the way women move through the world, as women are not encouraged to take up space. The body becomes a burden, an object to be gazed upon. It becomes threatening to have a body. Performance art allows women to reclaim their bodies, take up space, and be liberated. Feminist performance art is a means by which conventional notions of gender power structures are subverted. Traditional expectations of women to be submissive, polite, and pretty are all deconstructed through performance. Still Not “Asking For It” (2018), (2019), and Look Over Your Shoulder (2019) are performances created in response to patriarchal oppression which aims to control women’s bodies through violence and domination.