relg 271 assignment
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McGill University *
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271
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Arts Humanities
Date
Jan 9, 2024
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docx
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5
Uploaded by jessiekayihura
Over the years the body has been used as a vessel to convey cultural, societal, religious as well as
gender roles. The body is socialized to act according to the environment it is in as well as to
interact with its surroundings. The body has the ability to demonstrate discipline and control
through the way it behaves in accordance with societal norms. A body that does not function in
accordance with these societal norms is deemed as deviant or as subversive. The digital print by
the two-spirited indigenous artist Dayna Danger fuses the societal binary norms in an attempt to
challenge the heteronormative as well as the ‘colonial queer’ and uses this two-spirit religious
aspect as a decolonization attempt, as well as to give queerness its original definition. Thus,
through the use of the confounded imageries of binary gender norms, Danger explores as well as
challenges gender roles and descriptions and through this fusion refreshes the meaning of
queerness, using indigenous spirituality.
This image is produced primarily for individuals that do not seem to fit anywhere. It is for the
women that are deemed too masculine by society and it is for the oversexualized woman who
decides to reclaim her sexuality. It is also for the non-binary and not in the colonial sense, rather
in the real sense of the queer word, the one who cannot be defined or characterized. It is also for
the native American who has been robbed of their spirituality and is reclaiming it. The audience
is important in understanding the overall message of this image. It is an image that challenges the
norm.
The body in this image is of what would generally be described as that of a woman because of
the long hair and the breast as well as the general build of the body. However, in the lower body,
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the genital area is covered with what appear to be antlers. The description of the image indicates
that the author: Dayna Danger uses her work to challenge perceptions of power, representation,
and sexuality. This image provides an interesting contrast between what is stereotypically the
male and female bodies. The image subverts to the norms of bodily discipline as Foucault puts it
where he uses gender roles as imagery to what bodily discipline should be and how men versus
women should behave, he says that: “In short modesty, restraint, reserve, orients the whole
female body downwards, towards the ground, the inside, the house, whereas male excellence,
[…] is asserted in movement upwards, outwards, towards other men” (70). Through this,
Foucault puts forward the distorted power relations between men and women whereby women
are expected to be made smaller and to be more fragile whereas men are to be tougher and
bigger, and more violent. He adds that: “the opposition between male and female is realized […]
in the form of the opposition between the straight and the bent, between firmness, uprightness
and directness” (70). In her photograph, Danger challenges these double standards and the notion
of power by portraying the individual in the image as what would be the description of a man
according to Foucault: looking straight at the camera in a challenging manner, standing tall and
proud like a man and not attempting to be made smaller, not covering up the body as would be
expected from a woman. However, the individual in the photograph completes other gender roles
and norms such as having long hair, as well as wearing make-up, and most of all, having breasts.
David Halperin defines the word queer as: “whatever is at odds with the normal, the legitimate,
the dominant” (228). This image that Danger presents confound the binary gender norms by
giving to the individual in the photograph breasts which represent reproduction for females as it
is associated with nurturing infants, as well as the antlers which are shaped like a phallus,
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therefore providing the characteristics that would otherwise be exclusively attributed to only one
gender.
In the description, the artist Dayna Danger is described as being Métis-Saulteaux indicating that
she is indigenous. This makes the relevance of her choice to use antlers as a substitution for
genitalia to be because Native American traditions primarily associate deer with fertility
(Wigington). The significance of the subject in the picture holding this symbol of fertility in their
hands could be interpreted as them reclaiming their sexuality against all the guidelines of gender
norms provided in a heteronormative society. This reclaiming of sexuality marries all the other
features that are blurred female and male characteristics and amount to the “two-spirit” gender
which is defined as a person who embodies both the feminine and the masculine (Robathan,
February 9
th
).
Driskill puts forward the argument that queer experiences and narratives have been exclusively
molded into colonialist definition and this erases and marginalizes the experiences of native
people. This image by Danger is subversive to colonial narratives because through reconnecting
with their spirituality, native people are decolonizing and thus, by reclaiming this spiritual
identity, the native people are able to resist the colonial constraints of queerness and its
definitions and are able to go beyond it and actually live out the definition of the word—
whatever is at odds with the dominant. For example, in some of the reports by British colonialists
these queer individuals who were assigned male at birth for instance and live their lives as
women were very highly respected and were able to take up these gender roles. The importance
of decolonization is that in the past the religion and spirituality as an expression of sexuality is
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suppressed by colonialism and deemed as divergent but within native American traditions: “an
individual may identity as two-spirited because of their sexual orientation, sexual or gender
identity or roles, or their spiritual identity” so through decolonization the intersection of religious
practices such practices can be explored and reclaimed (Robathan, February 7
th
).
In conclusion, the body in this image is being used to convey a decolonized image of a two-
spirited individual that transcends binary norms as well as colonial versions of the LGBTQ
community. It blurs the lines of sexuality in terms of what the norms should be for the
appearance as well as the mannerisms of either gender and confounds them into one body as a
challenge to the notion that an individual can only play or represent one gender role.
Furthermore, there is also the reconnection aspect with Native roots through the use of the antlers
in the place of genital areas which represents what was traditionally regarded as a fertility deity.
To sum it up, the body in this image conveys the confounded characteristics of men and women
together with their expected mannerisms and ties in an aspect of decolonization through
reconnecting with spiritual roots.
Works cited:
Bourdieu, Pierre. “Belief and the Body.” The Logic of Practice, trans. Richard Nice. Cambridge,
UK: Polity Press, 1990. pp. 66-79
Driskill, Qwo-Li. “Doubleweaving Two-Spirit Critiques: Building Alliances between Native and
Queer Studies.” GLQ: A Journal of Lesbian and Gay Studies 16(1-2): 2010. pp. 69-92.
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Robathan, Lucie. “Queering the Religious Subject.” RELG 271. McGill University. February
9
th
2021.
Robathan, Lucie. “Theorising Queerness and Religion.” RELG 271. McGill University. February
7
th
2021.
Wigington, Patti. "The Symbolism of the Stag." Learn Religions, Aug. 28, 2020,
learnreligions.com/the-symbolism-of-the-stag-2562308.
Wilcox, Melissa. “Queer Theory and the Study of Religion.” Queer Religion ed. by Donald L.
Boisvert and Jay Emerson Johnson. Santa Barbara, California: Praeger, 2012. pp. 227-
251
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