Lady MacBeth, Meet Grindr.

Whenever I (hesitantly) re-download the gay hook-up app Grindr, I am immediately and constantly plagued with the same question- over, and over, and over again.

“Are you masc, or fem?” 

This question may look easy to answer. But that’s where you’re wrong. It nags and gnaws at me with a ferocious appetite, one that I can never quite satisfy with the correct answer. 

Recently, I’ve discovered that I’m not the only one with this problem. Thousands of other users on Grindr complain that they, too, are harassed and pigeonholed daily by men who feel the overwhelming need to put a label on everything.

My personal problem with this is that I don’t identify as either masculine or feminine. There are things I do that are masculine, and there are some that are feminine. I don’t see a need to be put in a place where I don’t belong. In a perfect world, I would be able to embody both of these gender and sexuality roles seamlessly, but we do not live in a perfect world. This blend of masculinity and femininity has only been pulled off, successfully,  a few times in literature. One of those times was with William Shakespeare’s character Lady MacBeth in MacBeth.

In the play, Lady MacBeth is struggling to get one thing- the crown. She wants to be queen and see her husband become the king of Scotland so bad, that she’ll do anything in her power to do it. Sadly, she doesn’t have much power, because she is a woman. She is supposed to follow the unofficial female rules of that time period; keep your mouth shut and keep your husband happy while he fights for honor and works for glory. Most women abided by these rules at the time.

However, Lady MacBeth is not like most women. When she sees an opportunity to become the next queen, she takes matters into her own hands by throwing a party for the king and planning his assassination that night. She is not taken seriously by the men invited based on her gender, but little do they know of her masculine power hiding underneath. 

I identify a lot with Lady MacBeth’s struggle to break out of her assigned gender stigma. While she is trying to prove her masculine power trapped in her feminine confines, I am trying to prove to men that I am a balance of both. I find it funny that something so old can still be so relatable to men and women today. 

Female Revenge Plot: Then and Now

Although Tamora is essentially cast as the evil queen/manipulator/adulterer of Titus Andronicus, I feel her role in the revenge plot is sorely underappreciated. Today, revenge plots and/or diabolical females are pretty huge in Hollywood films (ex. Law Abiding Citizen; Maleficent). What then, would Shakespeare think of a movie like Kill Bill? Or, even more interesting: what would Tamora think of the Bride? For starters, both Titus Andronicus and Kill Bill would likely reach about a 9.5/10 on the gore-scale. They also follow the same general plot: Tamora seeks revenge on Titus for destroying her kingdom and sacrificing her firstborn son; the Bride goes after Bill, her former assassin boss and the father of her lost child. Most importantly, both females are survivors: Tamora survives the destruction of the Goth empire and the Bride survives her wedding-day massacre.

A major downside on Tamora’s reputation is the fact that she orchestrates the rape of Lavinia. Yes, that’s horrible. But it’s not far off from what the women of Kill Bill do to one another. In a similar grimace-worthy encounter, the Bride kills her former assassin friend, Vernita, right in front of her young daughter. That, too, is pretty low. Neither woman should be considered a monster, when they are simply driven in their revenge.

Some additional similarities in plot include rape and illegitimate babies. However, the ways in which the women handle these situations differ. Because of societal restrictions, Tamora is forced to give up her interracial baby to avoid being caught as an infidel. The Bride’s child, also a lovechild, would have at least been accepted in society. Regardless, both babies are lost (sacrificed or missing) tragically.

The rape culture of Titus also differs from that of today. Lavinia’s rape caused her death: death in social status, self-worth, and physical being. In Kill Bill, the Bride easily enacts her vengeance. In both cases, tongues are lost: Lavinia is mutilated by her rapists, but the Bride mutilates her rapists. Lavinia would never have been able to actively seek revenge on her rapists. Instead, her father commandeered the mission and made it about his own pride and honor.

However, getting back to Tamora and the Bride, there is one final difference: Tamora fails while the Bride succeeds. Tamora’s failure is likely due to the societal expectations of female villainy and the presence of a male revenge-seeker, Titus, who essentially stole all of Tamora’s thunder. To allude to the opening quote of Kill Bill, “Revenge is a dish best served cold.” Unfortunately, Tamora literally eats that dish of revenge. But on the bright side, the Bride, fellow female vengeance-seeker, succeeds in killing EVERYONE who ever wronged her.