Lady Gaga and Her Penis(?).

I’m very much into Lady Gaga at the moment and not just because of her Alexander McQueen tie-in. I think she’s quite intelligent, quite well-read on gender theory and performativity, and quite adept at maintaining an image that is both subversive and marketable. Perhaps I overestimate her creative genius–yet even if I am wrong about her in all accounts, Lady Gaga still possesses/lacks one thing that cements her as a fascinating and brilliant subject: a penis.

We’ve all heard the story: Lady Gaga was born an anatomical male or was born intersexed or was born with ambiguous genitalia or was born as LADYGAGA, the botched outcome of an in vitro experiment on Princess Diana with alien sperm. MichaelK of Dlisted has humorously documented the songstress’s “tuck game,” as it were.

Do I particularly care whether or not Ms. Gaga comes ready-to-assemble with a meaty apparatus clipped to her groin? No, not really. Sure, there’s some aesthetic value in it for me, but I care that other people care. The natural drive to categorize, to normalize, to label and box and stamp and send off to Heteronormativille with free shipping is clashing against Lady Gaga’s own non-normative body and subjectivity in some sort of epic theoretical power struggle. People just don’t know what to do with her!

That is, if she’s packing some heat.

But is it? As I indicated above, I don’t care if she pees standing up (which, come to think of it, she would probably do even if anatomically female). Isn’t it enough that others think she may or may not have a schwing-schwong? Does this create some sort of illusory and amorphous phallus that follows her around like some ethereal and foggy animal spirit, permanently clouding her sex and gender from those that wish to normalize her? When we see Lady Gaga perform in, well, this, are we fucking her with our eyes or is she really just fucking with us all?

I don’t have the answers to these questions, gentle readers (alright, I totally do, but that’s only because I live and breathe this Butler crap). But with the twentieth anniversary of Gender Trouble‘s publication on the way, I’d like to think, in the newness of the coming decade, that Stefani Joanne Angelina Germanotta could lead us forward into a fabulous queer dawn.

Oh, and I haven’t abandoned my Campaign. Please continue to click the link on the right. He’ll friend request me one day. But, come to think of it, it might be a good idea to meet him in person first.