specific armour for protective solitude
Lucca Süss, Bachelor Fine Arts, Departement Fine Arts
These works address the cultural anthropological question of the influence of toys on the formation of children's gender identities, the theories encompassing a queer ecology as well as the phenomenon of armour as a protection and defence of queer people in a capitalist society.
After birth, we go through a socialisation process that is mostly determined by heteronormative patterns. Toys are a big part of this socialisation, because they can be seen as a text that conveys messages about gender and sexuality, among other things. From this point of view, it is obvious that toys play an important role in the formation of gender and sexuality, as well as in the construction of gender and sexual identities. But in general, today's toys only convey heteronormatively defined messages about gender and sexuality, and there are few gender-neutral or non-gender-specific toys. The toys most likely differ depending on whether the children are socialised as «girls» or «boys». In this sense, the toys that are often given to children are generally designed to reproduce socially created, heteronormative, gendered characteristics and stereotypes. This is because providing children with different types of toys based on a constructed gender identity may cause them to develop different gendered characteristics. Furthermore, this teaches children that some toys are for «girls» and others for «boys», which in turn can lead to children drawing clear symbolic boundaries between «male» and «female» already in their play.
Armour is a ubiquitous part of queer people's lives, it is more than just protection, it is often what makes it possible to maintain an identity in the first place. Clothes become armour, make-up becomes a helmet and high heels become steel toecaps. But this kind of «everyday armour» is needed above all to feel alive and like a human being. Unfortunately, this armour is not able to offer the true protection