Below The Belt – More Dirty Tackle

Let’s get one thing clear: what’s below my belt?  That’s between me, my doctor and maybe a lover, not a judge, not a journalist and definitely not a stranger in a toilet queue.

This umbrella series brings together two collections: Intersecting and What’s in My Pants is None of Your Fucking Business. They push back against the relentless public obsession with sexual identity, genitalia, and public toilets.  The UK Supreme Court’s cis-centric rulings and the media’s fixation on “defining” and controlling women deflects attention away from male violence and promote transphobia and homophobia.  This work says: enough. 

In Intersecting, bodies blur, morph, overlap – they are fluid and luminous, refusing to be boxed.  The figures aren’t meant to be labelled.  They’re ambiguous, symbolic, and joyfully undefinable.  Colourful and playful, they seduce you into looking, then refuse to tell you what you think you want to know. They invite you into uncertainty and that’s the point.  It doesn’t harm you, not to know.  It’s really none of your business, and if it offends you, well, you’re making it your business.  Why?

Curiosity is welcome, offence is not.  Ask, explore, question if you need to, but don’t confuse your discomfort with entitlement.

Meanwhile, What’s in My Pants… strips the politeness right off the conversation.  It’s cheeky, raw and loud.  It mocks the question itself, dares to make you laugh, and then makes you uncomfortable for laughing.  Because what’s underneath the humour and pants is deeply personal and quite frankly no one else’s business.  Except that this mock outrage is giving authorities more licence to demand of us, yes, all of us, to drop our pants and display the contents.

If you’re a woman feeling unsafe, I hear you, I really do.   But let’s place the fear where it belongs: at the feet of cis men and the systems that protect them.  Not in the pants of gender-diverse people trying to pee in peace.

Together, these collections form a visual manifest: gender and sexuality are not political footballs, courtroom exhibits, or toilet signage.  And if you need clarity, ask yourself why.  If you need labels for someone else and not yourself, ask yourself, again, why?  If you feel your safety is in jeopardy, ask yourself what gender is really threatening you, and who is actually being threatened?  

And if your answer isn’t cis men, then this is not the show for you.  Make sure you leave by the Cis Gender, Transphobe’s door.