Gender Faced By Judith Butler

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

In “Bloodchild,” Butler depicts a reversal in gender roles to argue that people must understand each other’s role rather than place a level of superiority

Gender, by definition, is the state of being male or female typically used with reference to social and cultural differences. Sex, by definition, is either male or female into which humans and many other living things are divided on the basis of their reproductive functions. However, society fails to separate the two. Judith Butler describes in “Phylosophe” that a young man who was murdered because he was dramatically feminine than he was “supposed” to be masculine. In the “Prelude: The Barbershop,” Ashanti Young details of his hardship of being denied from subcultural groups that he wants to identify with. Audre Lorde expresses her tyranny as a black, lesbian woman fighting through criticism and judgement and silence in “The Transformation

What does it mean to be a woman or man? Whether we a man or a woman, in today’s society it is not determined just by our sex organs. Our gender includes a complex mix of beliefs, behaviors, and characteristics. How do you act, talk, and behave like a woman or man? Are you feminine or masculine, both, or neither? These are questions that help us get to the core of our gender and gender identity. Gender identity is how we feel about and express our gender and gender roles: clothing, behavior, and personal appearance. It is a feeling that we have as early as age two or three. In the article, “Becoming Members of Society: Learning the Social Meaning of Gender,” the author, Aaron Devor, is trying to persuade his readers that gender shapes how we behave because of the expectation from us and relate to one another. He does this by using an educational approach, describing gender stereotypes, and making cultural references. He gets readers to reflect on how “Children’s developing concepts of themselves as individuals are necessarily bound up …to understand the expectations of the society which they are a part of” (389). Growing up, from being a child to an adult is where most of us try to find ourselves. We tend to struggle during this transition period, people around us tell us what to be and not to be, Jamaica Kincaidt in her short story, “Girl” tells just that, the setting is presented as a set of life instructions to a girl by her mother to live properly. The mother soberly

If intersectionality is a theoretical framework explaining the discrimination against humans. Butler would highlight, gender classification is the culprit by explaining that the term “gender,” like “race” are formed social concepts. When a human is born it is identified and then labeled. Its identity would be its sex referring to one’s biological organs male or female. Gender identity then describes the characteristics and

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

He says that one cannot keep a certain sex bound by a stereotype, on the basis of their nature, when nature, in this sense, is biased to what is known and allowed by society. "Custom [...] however universal, affords no presumption and ought not to create any prejudice, in favour [sic] of woman's subjection to man" (Pyle 89). What is considered a woman's nature is not a well-rounded viewpoint because it does not allow for the differences that might occur if situations were different.

Judith butler focuses more so on gender, sex and sexuality, which presents a much harder in depth reading documentary. According to Bulter many of the categories performed in the balls were more related to class than race. She also argues that humans are born for a purpose and that over time people form their own identity. She disagrees that gender is something that you are born with. With that being said she claims that it is not a bad thing to express your identify no matter what you presume yourself to be.

The men surrounding her who fail to rescue, are deemed unmasculine, therefore “real men,” implying that to be a woman is to be useless and helpless. From this arises the question, “What does it mean to not be a man?” Looking back at Butler’s quote, the masculine and feminine identities are viewed as opposite of one another, meaning that in society, a person characterizes as one or the other and there is no in between. In that case, if a boy does not acquire the title of “real man,” does that make him a woman? What does this imply? Baden-Powell equates the failure to attain the title “real man” to uselessness, helplessness, and dependency, which are characterized in the woman drowning in the Hampstead Pond. Therefore, women are characterized as useless, helpless, and dependent on the dominance of masculine figures, ultimately supporting Butler’s analysis on the British Empire that the binary exists in gender as a cause of dissimilarity in stereotypic

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

and its definition in society. They bring forth the idea that gender is a result of actions and

Having the focus on women representation or as the subject of feminist could be problematic because the term is hard to define. Not all people identify as a woman, but their sex is identified as female, and what it means to be a woman can change depending on multiple factors like race, class, sexuality, and location. For those that are not cis-gendered and identify with a different gender have to deal with being slighted by those that do. Butler is suggesting if we recognize all genders and gender identities within the feminist movement it will allow gender non-conforming individuals to have a safe space to grow and develop healthily. This made me think of Audre Lorde’s argument where she says, “It is a particular academic arrogance to assume any discussion of feminist theory without examining our many differences, and without a significant input from poor women, Black and Third World women, and lesbians.”

When posed with the question “What is woman?” it seems a daunting task to lay an umbrella statement to describe an entire gender. Upon further reflection, however, it seems that this overwhelming inability to answer the question, may in fact, be the answer to the question itself. Within the past two decades Maria Lugones and Elizabeth Spelman, Caroline Whitbeck, Geraldine Finn, and Helene Cixous have addressed the meaning of woman. There is not a concrete answer to “What is woman?” either produced by women or produced through men’s perceptions of women.

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.

Juliet Mitchell concurs with Butler's view in her critique; Psycho-analysis and Feminism (1974), where she attempts to show that "gender is constructed rather than biologically necessitated" and sees importance be place upon identifying the "precise developmental moments of that construction in the history of gendered subjects." This is similar to Butlers demand for a genealogical inquiry into gender construction. Butler draws on Jean Paul Sartre's essentialism; "existence precedes essence", and Simone de Beauvoir's concept that "One is not born, but rather becomes a woman." Judith Sargent Murray argues that when born we are "tabula rasa"; a blank slate, therefore concurs with the idea that one is not born a woman; our gender is constructed. Donna Haraway adopts Murray's concept later, suggesting we rid of our cultural baggage and accept our identity's as hybrid. In her feminist discourse Butler maintains this idea that a sense of `womanness' is not prescribed at birth, but is in fact constructed by society through experience and life. Gender is not something you are but something you do; "gender, sexuality and the self do not exist before they are performed in a social context." Butler's `Gender Trouble' seeks to discover, however if there is "some commonality among "women."..independent of their subordination by hegemonic, masculinist cultures?" Butler questions if there are, perhaps certain natural elements that are "specifically