A Real Woman
“Holding the line”
Ink and paint on paper
2024
On a white background, an Indian ink illustration of a woman. She is standing tall. She wears a work trouser, a hoodie, and some walking boots. She has short hair and wears glasses.
Her hands, held high on each side of her body carry a long yellow ribbon. The ribbon, reminiscent of police tapes, is printed with the words “No men beyond this point”. The woman does not smile. She looks straight ahead, focused and firm. Her posture is resolute.
As a reference to a police tape, the ribbon says “Do not access”. It sets a boundary.
The woman stands alone but the ribbon position suggests it is being held by women on each side.
On top of the illustration, the words “WOMAN – holding the line”, in black.“XX – Some things aren’t inclusive” at her feet.
This piece is “a portrait of the artist as an activist”.
I am a gender-non-conforming Lesbian. In order to find myself and my voice, I had to reject decades of female socialisation (let’s call that gender stereotypes). I do not perform femininity.
And yet, with my short hair, work trousers and hoodie, I remain a biological woman. no matter how I feel, I will always be a biological woman. What I choose to wear for convenience, comfort and political reasons doesn’t have the power to alter my biology. Clothes and haircuts do not define chromosomes. I remain XX.
This piece portrays me during a performance called “No men beyond this point”. During this performance, I set up a woman-only space in the public area, invited women to enter it and encouraged them to defend this space from intruders, that is, from non-women people: men.
This piece is both a reflection on semantics and politics.
It raises questions about definitions: the meaning and limits of words.
Words create a linguistic boundary. A definition is a boundary. Defining a word is placing a symbolic boundary, a semantic limit around its meaning. It separates what the word means from what it does not mean. Definitions exclude.
Apples are not oranges.
And in our case, men are not women.
The yellow ribbon “No man beyond this point” places a physical limit around the word “woman”. Everything physically outside this limit is by definition “not a woman”.
Politically, this work is also and mainly a reflection about women’s ability to create and maintain our boundaries in a public space, in a patriarchy. Women’s boundaries are constantly eroded and disrespected by men, including by men with special gender identities.
You ask: what is a real woman?
This project is a way to reflect on the political significance of women establishing our own boundaries and saying NO to men. It considers women’s rights to self-definition:
Women: at the exclusion of men, regardless of their gender identity.
It reviews our rights to declare independence from men and men’s language.
Can women do this today? If not, why not?
And of course, it encourages women to actively take steps to take this independence, to create and maintain this boundary, to claim what is ours in terms of language and rights, and to never let it go.
It calls for resistance.
How do women see themselves and each other in this world? Under attack, our boundaries disrespected, and our rights threatened. But we are standing firm and fighting for our sex-based rights. We do this by holding the line, by saying “Men cannot be women”.
Gender critical views, the Forstater judgment (2022) tells us, are “worthy of respect” in a civilised society. People holding Gender Critical views, the Phoenix judgment (2024) tells us, are protected from discrimination in the workplace.
The Artichoke Project prides itself on its inclusivity.
This piece asked whether the Artichoke Project, as an art institution, will be bold enough to be truly inclusive, to represent a gender-critical view as part of the final selection, a view which is, after all, based on reality, not political ideology.
This artwork was a submission for “A Real Woman” an open call for artists by Artichoke Project.
To see the winners: https://thegallery.org.uk/archive/season-4/