Identity in Feminist Cinema from the Perspective of Queer Theory: Take Blue is the Warmest Color as an Exemplification

. Recently, queer theory has attracted more scholarly attention as an extension of feminist theory in terms of deconstructionism and postmodern contexts. Queer theory has been utilized by feminists as a significant theoretical framework in art criticism, with cinemas taken as a representation system and cultural practice for the manifesto of gender identity and gender equity. This research will take the prestigious lesbian cinema Blue is the Warmest Color as an exemplification to analyze the embodiment of queer theory, especially gender performativity and body writing, with the methodologies of case study and analysis of the representation of screen images from the perspective of semiotics. The research findings confirm the association between cinematic techniques and representation and the construction of gender identity from the perspective of queer theory and representation theory. Meanwhile, the research explores the expansion and application of body writing in the cinematic field, clarifying several intentions of the large proportion of the explicit and straight representation of women’s bodies in sex scenes. Overall, this research analyzes how the employment of various cinematic techniques and representation contributes to the construction of the protagonists’ gender identities which destroys the binary regulation of sexuality and heterosexual hegemony, as well as acquires the acknowledgment and acceptance of the spectatorship in terms of queer position.


Introduction 1.1 Queer theory
The late 20th century witnessed a turn in feminist theory which reconsiders the gender identity as a 'doing' constituted in the process of constant performativity rather than an essential 'being' in advance, which indeed denies the existence of so-called 'female', impacted significantly by deconstructionism and poststructuralism.Consequently, the conception of 'queer theory' has formed, which distinguishes prominently from feminist theory in the analysis of the separation of gender and sexuality.Despite the discrepancy, both two theories articulate the complexities of the traffic between gender and sexuality [1].
Tracing the developing trajectory of queer theory, it was firstly promoted by Teresa de Lauretis at a conference in 1990 as a universalizing protocol of lesbian and gay studies neglecting to involve homosexuality in gender and race, with their accompanying differences of class or ethnic culture, generational, geographical and socio-political contexts, which actually embodies her ambition of manifesting the disruptive potential on the privilege of certain talks of homosexuality while ignoring other forms of sexuality [2].Simon Watney subscribes to de Lauretis's argument in general that the most convenient aspect of the current use of the term 'queer' lies in the neutrality of gender and race, as 'queer' expresses a position that welcomes and appreciates all differences in a more inclusive and broader picture of sexuality and social diversity [3].
According to Foucault's position towards queer theory from the perspective of his power-discourse theory, gender identity is constituted by certain specific linguistic representations, existing as the production of power attached to mainstream discourses instead of a natural being, which necessarily ought to be rejected and denied, while the marginalization of 'sexual minority discourse' remains deprived of its subjectivity is the result of the positioning and ideological construction of the dominant discourses [4].
Judith Butler coins the well-known 'gender performativity' theory, arguing that gender is the production of discursive construction conforming to Foucault's core, which is culturally established as lines of coherence and then restrained repeatedly by the existing structure of power, which denies the single, permanent and continuous identity and replaces it with a conception of identity with performative, variable, discontinuous and processual attributes, constructed by constant repetition and the acts of endowing it with new modality [5].In light of Butler's analysis, queer theory serves as a theoretical practice of resisting the binary regulation of sexuality and heterosexual hegemony suppressing the multiplicity of sexual identification.
Recently queer theory has come to be used as an umbrella term for an alliance of culturally marginalized sexual minorities marked as the refusal of normative identity categories and, at other times to describe a nascent theoretical framework that has developed out of more traditional lesbian and gay studies [6].

Cinema and representation theory
Cinema is adopted by feminists as cultural practice when it comes to the conception of feminist film criticism as a crucial branch of feminist theory while seeing cinema no longer as a reproduction of reality but as a representation of the construction of cultural identity, for 'cinema' is not a transparent medium of communication, but an artificial cinematic representation system which mediates reality with its own signifying practice from the perspective of semiotics and linguistics [7].
As one of the most important cinema genres in the 1990s, queer cinema is the latest development of feminist cinema that destroys binary gender narratives.It explores the complex relationship between sexuality, sex and gender, simultaneously taking its interaction with different contexts of class, ethnicity, social environment and personal background into account, in which identity dominates the narrative storyline and serves as the prominent conflict in queer cinemas as an important narrative parenthetical theme.In queer cinemas, the protagonists often encounter identity crises and dilemmas when they struggle to acknowledge and accept their fluid sexual orientation with their position in sexual minority groups.With the aforementioned representation theory, the intersection of cinematic representation and the construction of subjectivity and identity can be discussed by analyzing the screen images and other visual codes in cinemas.

Body issue
The body is an important issue in the discussion on identity, which also has a complicated relationship with gender performativity in the postmodern context.In 'Modernity and self-identity: Self and society in the late modern age', Gidden claims that the body in modernity is more often treated as an object that can be shaped, decorated and trained to express individual identity, while in pre-modern society, the body is traditionally marked in ritualized context [8].Gail Salamon demonstrates in 'Assuming a Body' that gender production can depend on the body's sensation and material contours by examining the relationship between materiality and the illusion of corporeality and devotes herself to eliminating any certainty in gender [9].From the perspective of feminist criticisms, Cixous employs the motif of Medusa as a metaphor in 'The laugh of the Medusa' for women's multiplicity and plurality that oppose patriarchal constraints on women's bodies, formulating a new form of writing through her essay known as 'ecriture feminine' or 'feminine writing' concentrating on the subjectivities of women's bodies, in defiance of female repression by phallocentric languages and patriarchal conventions [10].Cixous emphasizes that women must write with their instinct, using their bodies as texts.The impenetrable feminine text will break down hierarchies and puritanical rules as well as destroy barriers and rhetoric [10].

Blue is the Warmest Color
Blue is the Warmest Color, also known as The Life of Adele, adapted from a graphic novel written by Julie Maroh, is a lesbian romantic cinema directed by the French filmmaker Abdellatif Kechiche and published in 2013, winning the Palme d'Or and the Prix Fébési at the 66th Cannes International Film Festival.The cinema revolves around the lesbian romantic relationship between Adele, starring Adele Exarchopoulos, and a blue-haired girl named Emma, played by Lea Seydoux.After screening, the cinema comes across multiple contradictions and criticism, attracting remarks ranging from various aspects such as lesbian desire, class division, a portrayal of female sex scenes to the male gaze and more.However, there remains very little research on the heroines' identities from the perspective of queer theory and representation studies, even though some have touched upon this topic with few words.

The structure of this thesis
This thesis will take Blue is the Warmest Color as an exemplification to investigate the two female protagonists' identities through the theoretical framework of queer theory and representation theory, with tools of semiotics, psychoanalysis and ideology employed in cinematography, focusing on the issue of the presentation of women's bodies and gender identities.The overall structure of this thesis takes the form of four chapters.Chapter 1 will begin by laying out the research background, including the theoretical dimensions of the research and look at the utilization and expansion in cinematography.Chapter 2 reviews the existing literature concerned with theoretical frameworks and important issues employed in this research.Chapter 3 analyses how the camera looks at sex scenes and the accentuation of female bodies contributes to the spectatorship of acceptance of queer identity.The fourth chapter gives the conclusion and critique of this research and recommendations for future directions.

Research of identity
With the advent of deconstructionism and the fall of grand narratives, postmodernity carries the problematic issue of an identity crisis as an objective socio-historical condition, attracting concentrated scholarly attention to the attributes of identity in the postmodern context.The fluid, changeable and transformative attributes of identity in postmodernity render itself a central issue in culture study, which explores the quest for one's own sense of subjectivity and focuses on the construction of identity of marginalized groups.In culture study, identity is acknowledged as common attributes and characteristics shared by individuals in a particular community in cultural and historical contexts based on certainly given scales as well as frames and references [11].

Research of identity of marginalized groups
'Marginalized group' is a concept that stands opposite to the majority and mainstream group, which are antagonistic to, distant from, or outside of mainstream society and dominant groups, existing in the position of the other that lacks attention and respect [12].In his prestigious article 'Power/knowledge, Michel Foucault argues that in the perspective of linguistics, identity is constituted by certain particular linguistic representations existing as the production of specific discourses [4].The marginalization of "minority discourse" is the result of being positioned by dominant discourses as well as the ideological construction of dominant discourses, so it is possible to eliminate the distinction between the center and the marginalized group [4].Reinterpreting and reestablishing the status of minority discourse as subjectivity is of great essence in recovering one's subjectivity and reclaiming one's identity [4].

Research of gender identity in queer theory
In 'Gender Trouble', written by Judith Butler argues that there is no gender identity behind the expressions of gender, while actually, it is performatively constituted by the very 'expressions' that are misrecognized as its results [5].Butler asserts that gender is the production of discourses, which is culturally established and then restrained repeatedly by the existing structure of power [5].Meanwhile, the queer theory proposes "gender freedom," hoping to achieve a broader and more inclusive picture of social diversity through gender liberation [5].
In 'Foucault and Queer Theory', the author summarizes that the legal 'sexual orientation' between heterosexuals is compulsorily constructed by the mechanism of social discourses, and only perverse sexual orientation which refuses the normality can devastate the gender label and escape from the prison of gender regardless of all the stereotypes and legal morality [13].In Foucault's opinion, sexuality is an effect of power discourses rather than an essential being, so any defined category of gender and identity should be rejected [13].

Research of representation theory
In 'The work of presentation', Stuart Hall establishes the theory of representation, demonstrating how the representation system is constructed and the way it works in the position of structuralism semiotics.According to Hall, representation is a process of selecting and combining certain signs and symbols marked by historical, cultural and social contexts to produce textual connotations, which can be seen as a fundamentally cognitive process with subjective intentions and perceptions of the producer of signs and symbols [14].Consequently, representation is not simply a copy or reproduction of reality but essentially a subjective process of selection and construction [14].From the perspective of Hall's theory of representation, cinema can be seen as a form of representation system that has the function of molding subjectivity and constructing cultural identity, rather than merely a mirror reflecting what already exists, which is similar to the argument in 'Women's Cinema as Counter Cinema' by Johnston that cinema is an artificial constitution rather than a transparent medium of communication which mediates reality with its own signifying practices, requiring the spectators decoding the images with the help of semiotics and psychoanalysis, while deriving the statement that spectators also participate in the production of a cinema's meaning and simultaneously be constructed by the cinema [7,15].
In 'Cultural identity and cinema representation', Stuart Hall defines 'cultural identity in terms of the condition which reflects common historical experiences and shares cultural codes with stable, unchanging and continuous frames of reference, while simultaneously acknowledging the constitution of difference and discontinuity in the process of cultural identification [15].Stuart Hall thinks of identity as a production that is never complete; however, always in process, not an already accomplished historical fact [15].Identity is always constituted within rather than outside representation and constructed by the practice of representation in specific cultural contexts [15].

Research on Blue is the Warmest Color
O'Donoghue writes comments in Blue is the Warmest Color on Cineaste that Kechiche places Maroh's love story in a western cultural tradition controlling and distorting female experience from a straight, male perspective, especially when it comes to the long period and eye-catching lesbian sex scene [16].Meanwhile, the author interprets the underlying implication behind the portrayal of food which suggests sexual behaviors [16].Moreover, the author claims that the class distinction, which is the fundamental cause of the tragic ending for Adele and Emma, is also marked by the food and meals presented when each of the girls welcomes the other to their parents at home [16].
In 'Blue is the Warmest Color: or the after-life of 'Visual Pleasure and Narrative Cinema'', Linda Williams selects the cinema as an exemplification to discuss whether or not the graphic sex scenes should be condemned as pornography in the angle of phallic voyeuristic and fetishism catering to male pleasure which is put forward by Laura Mulvey in her prestigious work 'Visual Pleasure and Narrative Cinema' [17].The author comes to the conclusion that the answer is more complex than simply giving yes or no, because without presenting female genitalia, the sex scenes may merely intend to emphasize the intense love relationship between two girls, and it is Emma and her social circle freeze Adele into the position of 'Muse' as objectivity [17].Moreover, the author questions the practicability of the construction of lesbian identity and the equity of compliance with so-called 'moral standard' when rules of lesbian desire and fidelity remain unset and obscure because the theory of Mulvey is partially passed and more phenomena in cinema should be interpreted by new approaches, which demonstrates queer theory can be employed as the supplement of female theory for more sexual complexity [17].
Qian Chen analyzes Adele's postmodern self-identifications in the context of space in her thesis, dividing Adele's living environment into several different spaces, such as school, patriarchal home, lesbian home, streets space, sea space, the third blue space and the gallery space [18].The author discusses Adele's continuous shifting of her sexual identity and her struggling recognition and acceptance of her desire in each space, drawing the conclusion that the inherent stability of the third space grants itself the potential for the fluid and transformative attributes of postmodern identity [18].
Previous research has explored the cinema's narrative structure and main conflicts, metaphors of food for sex, as well as Adele's self-identification in various spacial contexts.However, the existing literature on this cinema fails to clarify the relationship between cinematic representation and the construction of gender identity.Additionally, there is a notable paucity of studies specifically seeing Adele as an individual in sexual minority groups and the construction of her gender identity from the perspective of queer theory and representation theory, as well as concentrating on the interpretation of portrayals of women's bodies in sex scenes.

Fluid sexual orientation and continuous shifting of gender identity
Blue is the Warmest Color, also named Adele's Life, is a movie telling the story of the romantic lesbian relationship between an ordinary high school student Adele and an artist named Emma from the upper middle class.The movie utilizes various cinematic techniques to centralize the perspective of Adele to express queer sexuality, using Adele's sensory system to observe and experience as a way to challenge heterosexual hegemony and the binary regulation of sexuality, which embodies the trait of the queer identities of the protagonists.Adele comes from an ordinary French working-class family, significantly impacted by traditional Arab values dominated by the heterosexual social orientation.She is persuaded by her classmates to keep in a relationship with a boy though she feels uncomfortable oftentimes and fails to discover her sexuality until she meets Emma in the street occasionally.During this initial period, Adele shows her gender identity as heterosexual and tries to identify her sexual desire through repeated performances according to Bulter's performativity theory.
Deeply attracted by the blue-hair young girl Emma, Adele falls in love with her immediately and cannot help masturbating at night; however, accompanied by fears and self-accusation when Adele suddenly wakes up, which demonstrates her inner conflict of accepting her gender identity and rooted homophobia from her living environment.Adele meets Emma in a lesbian bar and introduces each other, gradually forming a relationship with Emma but firmly denies her homosexual identity when questioned by her classmates.Spectators can discover that Adele tries to escape from the fact that her body is predominated by heterosexual desire, which is completely contrasting to Emma, who recognizes and accepts herself easily with the theory of Sartre's existentialism as a member of the lesbian sexual minority group.
When two girls invite each other to their homes for dinner, spectators can see the enormous difference between the two families' attitudes towards ideals and life, as well as sexual orientation.In Emma's family, her parents pay respect to their daughter's gender identity as a lesbian, treating Adele as their daughter's partner and caring for the girls' emotional conditions, while in Adele's family, her parents automatically locate Emma in the position of Adele's tutor, stressing the importance of settling down when Emma talks about her career as an artist, which makes Emma reluctantly pretend to have a business boyfriend who can support her ideals.The discrepancy in family background and living environment makes the two protagonists take different behaviors when facing the dilemma of gender identity, which simultaneously suggests the tragic ending of their relationship.During the second period, Adele presents her gender identity as a lesbian through her relationship with Emma.
The time when Emma and her friends are celebrating the success of a large-scale art exhibition with Adele's naked paintings on display, they completely freeze Adele in the position of 'Muse' who inspires Emma to create those paintings, arranging Adele to organize the dinner but rejecting to communicate with her about in-depth thoughts of art, which obliterates her personality and subjectivity, putting her in the position of the other even though they indeed share the same identity as a homosexual marginalized group.Adele has difficulty fitting into Emma's social circle due to the fact that she knows little about art and has different opinions on her future career with Emma.At the celebration party, Emma has vague behaviors with her old friend Lisa several times.One day when Adele comes home from work, she receives a message from Emma, saying that she has left with Lisa to arrange the art gallery and will return late.All of these make Adele lack security in this relationship and struggle with the hardship of gender identity, so she has some unimportant sexual behaviors with her male dancing partner to fill the blankness caused by Emma's ignorance and absence but cannot express herself articulately when questioned by Emma.It can be deduced that Adele steps into the period of bisexuality in relationships with both female and male partners.
Adele feels miserable when she oscillates in her shifting sexual orientation for the reason of failing to accommodate the fluid, processual and transitive attributes of gender identity.She restrains herself in the binary opposition of heterosexual and homosexual, virtually serving the same function as that of male and female, which conceals the power structure of inequity, obliterating the third space and potential possibility of obtaining multiplex gender identity as queer.Compared to Adele, Emma expresses herself smoothly when she admits the experience of having relationships with both males and females, but she finds the fact that she prefers females, so she determines to identify herself as a lesbian.Additionally, Adele's queer desire is integrated into the complexity of gender in contexts of historical background, class division, cultural difference and ethnicity, rather than operating in isolation, which conspicuously testifies the intersection of multiple influential factors in queer identity.

Female bodies portrayed in sex scenes
In this chapter, representation theory will be employed to discuss the interaction between screen images and the construction of heroines' subjectivities and identifications.
Criticisms and condemns of feminists on the sex scenes in this cinema lie to the negative depiction of pornography which is suspected of standing in the straight perspective of the male gaze [16].Notwithstanding, opposite reviews are left as defenses that sex scenes serve as resistance and subversion of patriarchal conventions and heterosexual hegemony aesthetically through woman's body writing which can be seen as the expansion of Cixous's feminine writing in cinemas.
In the groundbreaking thesis 'Visual Pleasure and Narrative Cinema, Laura Mulvey claims that cinema is constructed for the male gaze, which relies on voyeurism and fetishism of taking the female bodies as spectacles [19].While in this cinema, the presentation of female bodies in sex scenes emphasizes the freedom of opting for sexual partners and enjoying sexual desire as queers.In light of Merleau-Ponty's theories of the phenomenology of perception, the body epitomizes the foundation of the formation of subjectivity while simultaneously connecting individual consciousness with existence as an agent of experiencing the outer world [20].Moreover, the body exists as the initial 'other' that one can manipulate initiatively [21].In cameras of sex scenes, filmmakers utilize numerous close-up shots and extreme close-up shots of the girls' naked bodies to accentuate their initiative subjectivities of dominating their own bodies and satisfying themselves through intensive and positive sexual behaviors instead of sacrificing their own bodies for spectators as sexual bearers and erotic objects.Nevertheless, without presenting the cameras of genitals explicitly, the cameras of sex scenes make the audience isolated from the scopophilia of the male gaze but immersed in recognizing and enjoying romantic love between the two protagonists [17].Through the 'feelingseeing' cinematic technique, which endows sensational feelings into visual codes, the audience is encouraged to develop acceptance of the heroines' queer desires as well as form recognition and identification of two girls' gender identities positively.
Meanwhile, the large proportion of women's bodies portrayed in sex scenes in this cinema perpetuates the masquerade that flaunts their femininity in a surplus way of highlighting the women's nakedness in the cameras in the position of 'masculinity' as defiance of phallocentric conventions [22].The cinematography of masquerade serves as an artificiality of feminine that verifies the argument of gender as performance while simultaneously detaching the female spectators and women as images on the screen, which prevents the female spectators from putting the heroines as their own narcissistic objects of sexual desire and invites them to create recognition and acceptance of the subjectivities of the heroines as lesbians [23].Without visually concealing or decorating, the explicit and straightforward portrayal of women's bodies rather than utilizing cameras of erotic implications for spectators also can be detected as an approach to demystifying women's bodies which remain inhibited and distorted under as something dangerous, virginal and taboo that is forbidden to be discussed overtly.Furthermore, the portrayal of women's bodies can be seen as reclaiming female subjectivity, which is disparaged into the subordinative and peripheral position contrasting to the male in dominant artistic works [24].Additionally, the portrayal of lesbian sex scenes possesses the potential to transcend limited sexual desires, which are constrained in feelings categorized binarily into masculinity or femininity, providing a multiplicity and plurality of choices and possibilities for gender identity.

Transformative color of Emma's hairstyle
Despite the female bodies depicted in sex scenes, the presentation of the transformation of the color of Emma's hairstyle plays a significant role in implying the narrative storyline.According to the title, Blue is the Warmest Color, the changing color of Emma's hair has attached significance to the portrayal of female bodies.As an essential fragmented part of the body, the hair functions as a manifesto of demonstrating individual identity, which can be decorated, molded and sculpted to satisfy the subjectivity rather than a passive objection that one should adapt to [8].In this cinema, the initial presence of Emma is characterized by her short, blue-colored hairstyle, which is taken for granted by the public as a lesbian identity, serving as the subversion of patriarchal society through her body as a manifesto.The color of Emma's hair remains blue until the celebration party of her artworks of naked images of Adele, which suggests the emergence of a breakup in their relationship.Instead of the warmest color, blue, Emma's hair turns brown, which appears normal as others when Adele fails to integrate into her social circle or exchange thoughts with her on a mental level.According to Foucault's arguments in 'Discipline and Punish', changes and any shaping approaches against one's body are ways of uncovering individual identity as well as a sense of subjectivity due to the fact that the control over one's own body is more accessible manipulation [25].For this reason, the process of Emma changing her hairstyle from blue to brown demonstrates the repositioning of Emma's gender identity.Additionally, after their relationship collapses, Adele goes to the beach and immerses herself in the seawater, making her hair appears to turn blue in the blue water.The transient transformation of the color of Adele's hair suggests the erasing of the definiteness of her gender identity of either homosexuality or heterosexuality, endowing her with more opportunities and possibilities as a queer [18].

Metaphor of food
As one of the modalities of the representation system, cinema adopts coded visual screen images that invite the audience to decode and interpret the connotations behind the obvious and literal information with tools of psychoanalysis, semiotics and other concerning theories [22].In Blue is the Warmest Color, food is utilized as a metaphor for sexual desires and behaviors [26].Take Adele's descriptions of her eating habits as an exemplification.She tells Emma that she has a good appetite and devours everything all day long, even including her scabs, which implies her desperate sexual desire is hard to fulfill and the fact that she chooses to sacrifice her own body for being the spectacle presented in Emma's paintings in front of her friends.Moreover, when Emma invites Adele to dinner in her home, Emma's family expands Adele's horizon by introducing her to oysters, an expensive delicacy Adele thought she would dislike and that Emma compared to oral sex, which implicates the inclusiveness and spacious acceptance of sexuality of Emma's family members [16].Additionally, sex scenes of two girls are oftentimes displayed after the scenes of having food or drink, which demolishes the mystery imposed intentionally by patriarchal discourses on sexuality to deprive of female sexual pleasure.Furthermore, this cinematography disenchants sex into something that happens naturally as daily activities and is worthy of being appreciated, thankfully.Consequently, the utilization of food as a metaphor for sex in this movie contributes to easy and widely-accepted recognition by the audience of queer desires and queer identities, which concurrently embodies the function of constructing queer identities in the viewpoint of subjectivities.

Conclusions
In Blue is the Warmest Color, a variety of cinematic techniques are utilized to construct the gender identity of the protagonists as marginalized minorities from the perspective of queer theory and representation theory.The representation of sex and women's bodies also contributes to the construction of gender identity through adopting cinema as a cultural practice to manifest gender diversity and gender equity, as well as resist the binary regulation of sexuality and heterosexual hegemony.
This thesis tries to analyze the portrayal of women's bodies in sex scenes from the viewpoint of body issues in a postmodern context and a way of feminine writing as well as masquerade.In this cinema, identity crisis and dilemma of gender dominate the major part of the storyline and serve as the main conflicts in the narrative structure.The cinema reinforces the romantic lesbian relationship between Adele and Emma while simultaneously demonstrating the queer attributes of Adele by presenting her fluid sexual orientation and continuously shifting gender identities, which subverts the patriarchal structure and phallocentric conventions.In light of Judith Butler's theory of gender performativity, this research argues that the stereotype of gender identity from Adele is constituted by her constant repetition of sexual behaviors, which exists as the illusion of coherence that should be rejected and demolished.The representation of lesbian desire and queer desire blurs the boundary between heterosexual and homosexual, transcending the limitation of homosexuality and extending to the potential and possibility of more inclusive and diverse options and alternatives for sexuality from the position of queer identity.
The findings from this research may contribute to the improvement and extension of examining gender identity by the theoretical framework of queer theory as well as the perspective of employing cinema as a representation system and an approach to obtaining comprehensive acceptance and acknowledgment from spectatorship.Additionally, this study clarifies several intentions of the large proportion of portrayals of sex scenes and women's bodies in the cinema.Notwithstanding, another source of uncertainty is the obscure moral standard and practicality of queer relationships in terms of the position of an individual.Consequently, future research could also be conducted to establish the feasibility of queer practices in the condition of the deconstruction of gender in the social context and further explore the fluid, negotiable and creative options of multiple subjectivities for the queers, which provides an innovative strategy of dispelling the oppressively and manipulatively constructed structure in the conception of gender, as a result, subverts gender discrimination and gender inequity.