Judith Butler Religion

Butler says “We have an interesting political predicament, since most of the time when we hear about “rights,” we understand them as pertaining to individuals, or when we argue for protection against discrimination, we argue as a group or a class.” (Page 241). I agree with this statement. This statement reflects the reasoning why societies that we find ourselves in are the way they are. I believe this statement means more than what is read. I believe this is why individuals who are not accepted by society are the ones who are misunderstood by society. People who are gay, lesbian, or transgendered do not have the same rights and same pre-judgment that is formed from someone who is accepted in society than a heterosexual person. However gays, lesbian, and transgender express political views and ideas just as a heterosexual person who is accepted by society expresses their political views. Sexual orientation is the only reason gays, lesbians, and transgender are not accepted by society. Butler says “We ask that the state, for instance, keep its laws off our bodies, and we call for principles of bodily self-defense and bodily integrity to be accepted as political goods. Yet, it is through the body that gender and sexuality are exposed to others, implicated in

In Octavia Butler’s Dawn the idea of gender is deconstructed and reformed from the typical human’s definition. Often people do not consider the role of gender in society today. Usually the first thing one notices when meeting someone new is their gender or their presumed gender. However, there becomes a problem when the person whose gender we perceived identifies as a different gender. Butler forces the reader to examine how they judge and perceive gender. While the ooloi are actually “its” their personalities seem to imply a certain gender. The transgender community often brings up this issue because these assumptions of gender based on our judgments of what defines a male and what defines a female can skew how a transgender person is treated and addressed. In Chapter One of Gender Through the Prism of Difference by Anne Fausto-Sterling, the idea of expanding the number of genders based on one’s biological differences is examined through the five sexes theory. By now the concept of gender being defined solely by one’s biology has mostly been left in the past but the question remains of how do we truly define gender? How does being outside of the social norms that Michael Warner talks about cause us to feel shame when discussing our gender and our perceptions of gender? In this essay, I will argue that preconceived notions of gender create shame when a person’s own perception of their gender does not fit the social norms. This stigma around the limited and strict definitions

Wilton refers to Monique Wittig, a French author and feminist theorist, who states “our survival demands that we contribute all our strength to the destruction of the class of women within which men appropriate women.” Thus, Wittig expresses that “heterosexuality is a social system” (Wilton 165). Why heterosexuality is forced upon the majority, however, is still unclear. Emily Martin, in her article, “The Egg and the Sperm: How Science has Constructed a Romance Based on Stereotypical Male-Female Roles,” explains why this is so. Procreation can only occur upon the union of sperm and egg and their behaviors have created stereotypes which “imply not only that female biological processes are less worthy than their male counterparts but also that women

The paper written by Kennedy and Davis, which was called The Reproduction of Butch-Fem Roles: A Social Constructionist Approach, provides further evidence that the history of sexuality is young and

In Stephen Mays’ essay “What about Gender Roles in Same-sex Relationships?” published in They Say I Say, the author discusses how people often assign gender roles automatically, even with gay and lesbian couples. Mays stresses the concept of femininity and masculinity, and also shows the difference in their roles, supports them with vivid imagery, and gives a rare example of gay male preferences, all while using the correct diction when referring to personal experiences. Although the author reiterates gender roles and their effect on same-sex relationships, he gives clear examples that support the idea of masculine or feminine qualities.

He argues that psychologists as early as Freud have determined the importance of a person’s sexual identity in defining a person’s psychological make-up and then points out that it is impossible for a reader to divorce their sexuality from a reading of any text, that a reader brings to a text the entirety of his experiences and identity and therefore, he brings his sexual identity to the reading of a text also. I use the male pronoun at this point in this paper because the author of the article examined the homosexual male reader, which is separate from either the heterosexual identity and also separate from a lesbian identity because "the homosexual male, in spite of his ‘difference’ is still a biological man, and very importantly, he is a socially constructed man, with all that this implies for phallocentrism and patriarchy" (73). Therefore, it can be seen, a reader can neither divorce their sexual identity nor their gender identity from a reading of a text; in fact, because these factors play a major role in a reader’s psychological make-up, they also play a major role in a

Barbara Perry’s article “Doing Gender and Doing Gender Inappropriately” addresses violence and gender, and how gender is influenced through the way it is perceived in society. The construction of gender comes in polar extremes, with masculine dominant men and feminine subordinate women. Gendered violence is used to control women as a class. It is a systematic tool used by men to reinforce gender norms and patriarchal ideas of masculine superiority and feminine inferiority. It “terrorizes the collective by victimizing the individual”. Like any dichotomy, it has scripts, and to deviate from these scripts will leave you labeled as ‘unnatural’ and ‘immoral’. These scripts “constrain everything from modes of dress and social roles to ways of expressing emotion and sexual desire”. In Judith Lorber’s “A World Without Gender” we are introduced to the possibility of eliminating gender and how “degendering [would] undercut the patriarchal and oppressive structure of Western Societies”.

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

Milton was, by no means, a feminist, and was of quite a conventional outlook when it came to gender roles as is apparent in the fourth book of Paradise Lost, which has inevitably been scrutinized over and over again under the modern gendered eye. “Paradise Lost,” says Shannon Miller, “is Milton’s most sustained attempt to represent in poetry, gander roles, relations and hierarchy.”It is evident, she points out, in the course of his introduction of Adam and Eve in book IV, the stories of creation they relate there and in book VIII, and finally in the way Milton presents the consequences of the Fall. The reader observes the process by which gender is created as a cultural category.

West and Zimmerman claim that gender is not something we are but something we do.

Gender subjectivity is another important aspect of the debate around gender because it focuses on a move away from the idea of innate sexual identity characteristics that divide human beings into male and female (Encyclopedia of Critical Psychology, 2014). This type of view challenges the essentialism of sexual difference into something more then a binary between male vs. female, heterosexual vs. homosexual, etc., as it recognizes that these dichotomies are problematic because the term of gender encompasses a whole range of identities across a spectrum. In particular ideas like what does it mean to be equal? (Butler) and seeing division of gender into binary conceptions of identity can be seen as a process of ‘othering’ (de Beauvoir) are some of the areas that this topic examines.

Queer theory questions creations of normal and divergent, insider, and outsider.2 Queer theorists analyse a situation or a text to determine the relationship between sexuality, power and gender. Queer theory challenges basic tropes used to organize our society and our language: even words are gendered, and through that gendering an elliptical view of the hierarchy of society, and presumption of what is male and what is female, shines through. Queer theory rejects such binary distinctions as arbitrarily determined and defined by those with social power. It works to deconstruct these binaries, particularly the homosexual/heterosexual binary.4

Judith Butler’s approach in “From Undoing Gender” lets the audience see a different side of opinions regarding gender. Judith’s presence and way of speaking lets us look at things in a way we never had before. She demonstrates her way of thinking, acknowledges other peoples ways of thinking and also goes outside the box in creating her own definition of undergoing gender.

Sexuality is the capacity of one’s feelings. Patriarchal society can be defined as one where men have authority over women in all aspects. Male and female roles are clearly defined in patriarchal society. Women were anticipated to illustrate obedience before all different virtues and at each level of existence. How does culture influence sexuality? The aim of this paper is to discuss sexuality in patriarchal society.

Since its publication in 1990, Gender Trouble has become one of the key works of contemporary feminist theory, and an essential work for anyone interested in the study of gender, queer theory, or the politics of sexuality in culture. This is the text where Judith Butler began to advance the ideas that would go on to take life as "performativity theory," as well as some of the first articulations of the possibility for subversive gender practices, and she writes in her preface to the 10th anniversary edition released in 1999 that one point of Gender Trouble was "not to prescribe a new gendered way of life [...] but to open up the field of possibility for gender [...]" Widely taught, and widely debated, Gender Trouble continues to offer a powerful