A Brief Look at Judith Butler

Gender is a topic that not many people are educated on. When people think of gender, they think of boy and girl, people usually think of a girl having a vagina, and a boy having a penis. Many people have their thoughts on how each sex should behave which would be giving people gender roles, girls should play with Barbie dolls, and boys should play with trucks. There is more to gender than just the vagina and penis, In “Understanding The Complexities of Gender”, Sam Killermann talks about the distinct pieces that also comes with gender, like gender identity, gender expression, and biological sex. When people think of gender, the only part people think of is the biological sex.

Gender can be defined as “sex roles” which are conditions that one considers to be for men or women. People tends to mistake it with sex or thinks that they are both the same. We discussed about the patterns of gender which how the authors of The Kaleidoscope of Gender describes it as “regularized, prepackaged ways of thinking, feeling, and acting” (Spade and Valentino,2017). It becomes an identity for us. We believe that there is and can only be two genders, being masculine for men and feminine for women. These roles has been forced onto us since birth: blue for boys, and pink for girls. You can see the roles being push onto a person throughout one’s life, but we don’t notice it since it’s “normal” to us.

Doing gender is always justified by religion, science, law and society’s believes in morals and values. This proves the truth that in our society gender is very much prevalent. Both sex and gender are very much embedded in each other. But these two are very closely related that most of the time; both words are taken as synonym of each other. But in reality, sex and gender are two very different words having a different meaning and interpretation. We cannot inherit gender as it is not a natural phenomenon but it is created by our society. Gender is a created by a continuous process of teaching, learning and enforcement by generations over generations (Lorber). Some people believe that gender comes from physiological differences. Most commonly known as the differences in men and female genitalia and reproductive organ. But that is not true because both sex and gender are two different things. Sex is mostly about the physical differences in the

Gender has been described as masculine or feminine characteristics that encompass gender identity sex as well as social roles (Nobelius 2004). According to sexologist John Money, there is a difference between gender as a role and the biologically of differences in sex (Udry 1994). Within scholarly disciplines, cultures and contexts, gender frequently has its own mean, contextual frame of reference and the manner in which it is used to describe a variety of issues and characteristics. The sociocultural codes, conventions and the suggested and literal rules that accompany the notion of gender are vast and diverse. There has been and continues to be much scholarly debate regarding the idea of gender and how it has been viewed historically; as well as changes in the grammatical use of the

Performance exists first, then gender. Gender does not occur from an internal essence. We as a society, are unable to acknowledge that we’re performing our gender, we believe it’s inherent. Performance is learned by what is already historically dictated as gender and is acted out by the individual through performance of the body. The act of doing one 's body comes from history that is shared and developed over time. Butler argues that gender is

Judith Butler (Gender Trouble, 1990) argues that rather than sex determining gender-gender determines sex. Sex is shaped by gender discourses which give us scripts to perform according to whether we are biologically classed as male or female. The continual performance of these scripts on a daily basis is what makes us male or female. The classic example of this is the third sex, yes, the third sex and that is the transgender( born male in a female’s body or

There are several sources that tell a person how to be a man or woman. Science tells us by recognizing the X or Y chromosomes. The media shows us through the physically ideal celebrities that grace the covers of magazines and flaunt their bodies in commercials. Sports, wrestling, cars, and blue for the boys. Dresses, make-up, painted nails, and pink for the girls. All of these sources, as well as others, have evolved into an expectation that has become institutionalized within society. This expectation, is placement and belonging into the binary system of person: the man or the woman. In Anne Fausot-Sterling's acrticles “The Five Sexes” and the “The Five Sexes, Revisited”, the

Judith Butler’s essay, “Performative Acts and Gender Constitution: An Essay in Phenomenology and Feminist Theory” calls for a new way to view sex and gender. Butler argues that “gender identity is a performative accomplishment compelled by social sanction and taboo”. In this case, gender is not constituted by what one is, but rather what one does; the performative acts constitute gender. In other words, gender is not the starting place; it is an identity repeatedly constructed throughout time. Butler is trying to show us a feminist perspective of sex and gender. She attempts to follow Beauvoir’s path in a fight against society norms.

This book features a collection of Judith Butler’s essays and her primary intention with this collection is to “focus on the question of what it might mean to undo restrictive normative conceptions of sexual and gendered life” (12). These essays look at the construction of gender and the way certain conceptions of it are normalized and reproduced in potentially harmful and limiting ways. Butler uses a feminist poststructural framework to critique the normalizing/marginalizing views of gender that exist because the “terms that make up one’s own gender are, from the start, out-side oneself, beyond oneself in a sociality that has no single author (and that radically

Judith Butler’s essay, “Performative Acts and Gender Constitution: An Essay in Phenomenology and Feminist Theory”, argues that “gender identity is a performative accomplishment compelled by social sanction and taboo ”. In this context, the word “performative” means that an act is an act simply because of it happening, she means that an act is an act by the very fact of it happening. In this context, gender is a construct based on the acts of one’s body. Therefore one may understand this point to mean that performative acts make up- and construct, gender.

Her essay deals with the conceptual presence of gender within society that functions as the primary element in expected behavioral roles. Drawing upon previous philosophic and psychoanalytic thought, Butler espouses a theory rooted in the concept of social agents that "constitute social reality through language, gesture, and all matter of symbolic social sign." (Butler 270) Butler asserts that gender is not based on an internal identity or self-definition, but rather on perceptory, reflective notions of performances. Gender itself, in its unstable temporality, is defined by Butler to be "an identity instituted through a stylized repetition of acts"--an ephemeral performance from which social constructs are formed. (Butler 270) In this analysis, Butler establishes the notion of gender as an abstracted, mass perception which is rendered concrete by the fact of its common acceptance. It is a shared reality of the public, it's existence is a consequence of society's mutual acknowledgment. In this light, Butler describes the concept as being purely temporal--the appearance and perception of gender constitutes its reality. As a result, the examination of gender construction is the examination of its performative, perception-based manifestation. Upon breaching the collective assumption of the actuality of gender, its mutual acceptability is undermined, rendered unstable, and therefore, non-existent.

Therе arе mаny wаys in which tо exаmine the cоncept оf gеnder. Mаny pеоplе simplу detеrmine gеnder as a divisiоn intо mаle аnd femаle but it becоmеs mоre difficult with theоry. In Judith Butler’s Performative Acts and Gender Constitution she says that gender is an act that is repeаted, reеnacted and re-еxperienced (Butler, 1988:906). It is a performance that is impоsed to individuаls by mаny outsidе sоurces thrоughout histоry such as the sоciety. She аlso аdds that sоciety mоlds us into how we view “men” and “women” shоuld act or behavе. We wеre raised to behаve in cеrtain wаys that оur pаrent’s beliеve were traits of a prоper lаdy or a gentlemаn becаuse they too, were rаised with the same understаndings.

This essay will navigate the differences between sex and gender through definition and discourse. First I will discuss sex with reference to biology, what it means to possess the "parts" of a man and of a woman. Within this context I will address intersex people and will examine transgenderism. I will then explore and identify gender through a discussion of Gender Identity Disorder (GID) associated with transgenderism touching briefly on the construction of gender roles. The paper will critically discuss the relationship between sex and gender, and why these concepts of identity can be fluid rather than constant.

In Western society, the two biological sexes, male and female, are recognized by masculine and feminine attributes. The advancement towards understanding what makes up innate human traits, such as the distinction between sexes, applies directly to gender role theory, where it is analyzed and debated in various disciplines. From a firm feminist viewpoint, Germaine Greer asserts in “Masculinity” that the cultural influence of gender roles are socialized into the sexes while explaining how masculinity’s overbearing constitution creates a polarity between the sexes, thus determining females as lesser individuals within the given social order. Judith Butler focuses not necessarily on whether gender is essential or constructed in “Undoing Gender”, but rather she proposes the greater question of what dictates our humanity, making it aware through the unique case of David Reimer. Although Greer and Butler both criticize gender’s structure and ideology, Butler further expands her argument to consider what sort of “intelligibility” (743) manifests within and outside of the individual when the expected gender norms do not conform to society’s standards.

When considering gender and sex, a layman’s idea of these terms might be very different than a sociologist’s. There is an important distinction: sex, in terms of being “male” or “female,” is purely the physical biological characteristic differences – primarily anatomical differences. (There are also rare cases of “intersexual” individuals as outlined in the Navarro article, “When Gender Isn’t a Given”.) Gender, on the other hand, is an often misconstrued concept that is commonly mistaken as synonymous with sex. A non-sociologist might surmise the following, “men act masculine and women act feminine, therefore, it must follow that gender is inherent to sex,” however, this is not necessarily the case.