When Rabbits Howl, Gender as Ontology: Fable, Figuration, and Futurity

“When Rabbits Howl, Gender as Ontology: Fable, Figuration, and Futurity” explores gender as ontology through the research-creation methodology; figuration (Loveless, 2019). “When Rabbits Howl” is a zine that is a fabulistic, or Fae-bulistic, figuration of Fae Futurity, a proposed concept that sprouts from Queer Futurity. Glitches (Russell, 2020), troubling (Haraway, 2016), and queer heterotopias (Walker, 2022) theoretically support this practice-based project as well as the exploration and critique of the Wild Woman archetype (Estés, 1989). When Rabbits Howl" is a fable where a rabbit undergoes a transformative journey as a metaphor that explores gender expansion as an ontology that encompasses ways of being in the world that resist the gender binary. The idea of gender expansion challenges the traditional binary system by affirming non-binary, gender non-conforming identities and the use of neopronouns. The language of animacy (Kimmerer, 2013) is pivotal to the understanding of gender as ontology as Indigenous languages recognize the animacy of all beings and objects, contrasting the gendered limitations of English. This perspective is further extended to how some people may identify with objects or more-than-human beings as part of their gender identity. This challenges the gender binary and creates space for new, expansive gender identities that can even align gender with abstract concepts like time, place, and aesthetics. “When Rabbits Howl” also critiques the gender essentialism found in second-wave, radical feminist narratives by engaging with glitch feminism. Gender expansion can "glitch" the existing binary system, or "cis-tem," by existing in ways that the system cannot fully categorize or control. This glitching creates opportunities for new ways of being and becoming, existing in the liminal spaces between gendered categories. The zine itself embodies all of these theoretical explorations, offering a speculative glimpse of Fae Futurity where gender is fluid, relational, and embedded in an expanded ontology of being. This work also proposes that creative practice and research-creation are powerful tools for visualizing and imagining alternative futures.

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