In this workshop, we will explore concepts surrounding gender, drawing inspiration from philosophy, pop culture, performance research, kink play and our own lived experiences as gendered human beings.

Intricate choreographies of “femininity” or “masculinity” often show up in our interactions and relationships with others. These movements, behaviors and gestures that we often don’t remember being taught or explicitly choosing, can seem so firmly embedded in the way we move through the world and shape much of our experience.

What happens when we take a step back in order to examine these concepts as the performances that they are? It may become clear that we like some of them, others might prove to be irrelevant vestiges of our socialization in desperate need of an update or we may even find new ways of expressing our gender. And what can we learn from high heel training, animal mating and reproduction rituals, the work of Diane Torr, the art of drag, PSAs from the 1950s, bullfighters or the writing of Camille Paglia?