Casey Jenkins received thousands of abusive, threatening comments after her 2013 performance art piece — for which she knitted with wool inserted into her vagina — took the internet by storm. Now, for her latest performance, she's fighting back against the patriarchy and knitting up those comments for all to see.

Some say the perceived anonymity of the internet creates and fosters sexist attitudes. I'd be more inclined to say it exposes them, like lifting a rock to reveal a bed of slugs.

Sexist attitudes are immemorial but now the hollers on the street and backroom conversations are being transcribed and broadcast en masse.

My 2013 performance, Casting Off My Womb, kicked a vast phlegm of web slugs into action. For 28 days I knitted a long passage from yarn I inserted each day into my vagina.

The wool started out white then, as I menstruated, threaded to red and then back to white.

It was a long, slow meditation on the intimate understanding we have of our own bodies and creative potential and how it's impacted by societal stereotypes and expectations.

It began as a gentle, quiet performance, and then, when SBS broadcast a 'Vaginal Knitting' report online, it suddenly became very loud.

Sorry, this video has expired WARNING - Video contains strong language: Casey Jenkins explores online harassment for the Festival of Live Art (FOLA) in Melbourne. ( Margaret Burin )

Thousands of abusive, gendered internet comments came pouring in from around the world. I was called "gross!" and an "attention whore!", while others questioned my hygiene and sanity.

Intriguingly, most of the negative commentary came from people who presented as women, the very people who would themselves be the target of abuse if they ever stepped into the spotlight in a way not deemed to support dominant culture.

It made me reflect on the immense power our society has over us; that many would rather be complicit in a system of behaviours ultimately detrimental to them, than dare to challenge it.



The power of social shaming in directing behaviour and shaping culture should not be underestimated.

Public speaking is often cited as a greater fear than death and people risk their lives at war for the sake of "honour".

Shaming is a society's greatest tool for maintaining the status quo. Perhaps then, finding a way to become impervious to shaming is the first step to superseding the patriarchy?

Why I'll be reading all the comments

The ubiquity of gendered abuse on the net is disturbing, but also potentially transformative — after all, you can't deal with anything until it's out in the open. That's why I find the prevailing advice about how to cope with internet abuse — "don't read the comments" — troubling.

I don't want to be crushed by reality, but I don't want to blinker myself to it, either. And so, for my new performance at the forthcoming Festival of Live Art, I'll be reading all the comments.

In Programmed to Reproduce I will again knit with yarn from my vagina, this time forming a protective womb-like cocoon around me to signify the private self — who we are when we're alone or with those we trust.

I'll also be exploring the notion of psychological endurance, and will categorise and incant the thousands of web comments directed at me, relentlessly, since I performed Casting Off My Womb.

And, I have hacked old knitting machines to digitally reproduce the online abuse I received using yarn partially dyed by menstrual blood — this will be a nod to the robotic, machine-like way we are judged by society and the roles we play in perpetuating that system.

'The ubiquity of gendered abuse on the net is disturbing, but also potentially transformative,' says Casey Jenkins. ( ABC News: Margaret Burin )

Just compiling the comments has been draining (the direct opposite of practicing positive affirmations) but fascinating.

It's apparent that none of the thousands of people who commented saw my original performance and relatively few appear to have even seen the video report or articles exploring my art.

Instead, they respond with rote, predictable negativity to a fleeting and indistinct idea of me and my work.

'We are our own jailers'

Those who presented as male seemed angered and baffled by the inaccessibility of my art and my body; many, physically unable to dismiss my work as something they could have done with their eyes shut, bumbled around and gleefully declared they were going to knit out of their arses.

It was people who presented as women who expressed the most disgust though, and dominated the concern-trolling about my hygiene and mental health.

Perhaps the fear of being associated with me, and in turn shamed, is what compelled them to distance themselves by delivering some of the most fervent disapproval.

In any case, it's apparent that while cultural structures primarily benefit old white men, they're administered and policed by the rest of us. We are our own jailers.

So then what might our lives look like without the threat of these negative judgments? If we were only informed by, not defined by, the communities that surround us?

In Programmed to Reproduce I want to explore the possibility of rebooting the system; of breaking the shackles of shame and creating a world in which we can identify, behave and exist in ways that honour all of the wondrous complexities of our experiences, genetics and minds, free from the crushing force of patriarchal programming.

Casey Jenkins's performance 'Programmed to Reproduce' is part of the Festival of Live Art 2016 at Arts House, North Melbourne Town Hall, 1-13 March.