Remember the childhood game Rocks, Paper. Scissors? Using your hands, you compete for a senseless, almost theoretical victory using the three titular, seemingly unrelated weapons.
The contemporary version is smarter, cooler and much more fun. It’s called Rocks, Paper, Etc. This is how it’s played. With paper and pens and your own limitless, elastic minds, think of things that are powerful contenders on one stage and compare with opponent(s) and battle it out using wit and persuasion.
For our class, I decided to control a few variables and add a few rules in order to create a more political discourse than the average game engenders. Like in real life, I arbitrarily separated the class into “boys” and “girls.” No one has a say in what “team” they feel fits them.
I chose a list of concepts/objects that, depending on the match-up, create oppositional forces, destroy binaries, contrive whimsy and hilarity, inspire debate.
So let the games begin.
girls vs. boys
Name: Rocks, Paper, Etc.: an interactive, gender-bending game for the trans at heart
Date: 12.9.07
Thesis: Conceptual gendering, oppositional forces, game as revolution
Favorite Color: Pink + Blue = Purple
Favorite Book: The Transgender Studies Reader
Favorite Song: Boys Who Love Girls by Blur
Biggest Gripe with this Site:
That iWeb/Word does not recognize the words “transgender,” “blowjob,” or “teledildonics” and considers them mis-spellings.
Battle Cards --
in alphabetical order:
ambition
the atomic bomb
blowjobs
Buffy the Vampire Slayer
Catherine the Great
China
death metal
drug-resistant bacteria
English grammar
flying death-sharks trained by Nazis
football
Greek mythology
grief
a gross-out abundance of hairy spiders
hip hop
HIV/AIDS
Hollywood
iLife: all things Mac
Joan of Arc
Libertarians
love
the Madonna and Child
Mona Lisa
the New England Puritans
the night
otherness
prostitution
red
the reproductive instinct
Sandy Stone
Sanrio & the cult of cuteness
teledildonics
when my ass looks so good in these particular jeans
a wicked big granite boulder
( wild card )
( wild card )
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