Gender Subjectivity, By Judith Butler

Culture often thrives off of polar opposites—hot and cold, bitter and sweet, male and female. By setting up these opposing constructs, one can easily find a set definition for each. A hot surface could scorch someone or a cold temperature could cause them to shiver. In the same way, a bitter substance would be less enjoyable to eat than a sweet one. These terms are often defined by mentioning their antitheses. Because it’s comfortable to embrace specificity and certainty, topics such as gender and gender expression often get simplified into binary existences—however, they don’t quite operate under the same parameters. In an essay entitled “Bad Feminist”, Dr. Roxane Gay explores and warns against the dangers of binary thinking. Throughout

Butler initially observes that the culturally constructed as well as maintained nature of performance of gender are fairly based on the uncontentious as well as widely expounded idea of feminist theory stating that cultural expressions of gender which constitute the cultural manifestations of biological truth cannot be taken at face value. Butler proposes the concept of differences in sex is a construction of heterosexuality ideologically designed to legitimize as well as normalize its existence. Butler notes that manifestations of split as male and female are creations in a self-legitimizing heterosexuality which is also hegemonic. Butler claims that the coherence of either gender namely man or woman is internal requiring a heterosexuality which is stable as well as oppositional. Heterosexuality which is institutional requires as well as produces univocity I each of the terms gendered constituting limits of gender possibilities inside an oppositional along with binary gender system. The concept of gender presuppose a relationship which is causal among sex, desire as well as gender but also suggests that desire reflects and expresses gender and vice versa. The uity of these three factors are metaphysical ad is truly known as well as expressed in desire differentiating a oppositional gender which is a form of heterosexuality said to be oppositional. Butler’s argument on

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 her book “Gender Outlaw: On Men, Woman, and the Rest of us,” Kate Bornstein goes over a lot of the major issues regarding gender awareness and identity politics. She talks about the ideas of labeling ones self, understanding gender differences, how people view laws, behaviors, and the medical and scientific privilege that make transitioning challenging for a lot of people. Bornstein touches on many of the issues today that affect trans people. She includes poetry, pictures, quotes, essays, and a play to raise questions and discuss the idea of gender. This is a great book to introduce and discuss the issues that affect the lives of trans people as they navigate and explore the lines that define gender.

To understand Butler’s work, it is important to know who Butler is. Judith Butler was born on February 24, 1956 in Cleveland, Ohio. She attended Bennington College and Yale University afterwards where she studied philosophy, receiving her B.A. in 1978 and her Ph.D. in 1984. She then taught at Wesleyan University, George Washington University, John Hopkins University, and University of California, Berkeley. In 1987, Butler had released her first book called “Subjects of Desire: Hegelian Reflections in Twentieth Century France” which was about the concept of desire. Butler had then released her better known work “Gender Trouble: Feminism and the Subversion of Identity” in 1990, and its sequel, “Bodies that Matter: On The Discursive Limits of Sex” in 1993. Much of her work had great influence on feminism, cultural studies, and continental

When contemplating the topic of gender role and its impact on identity one cannot help but realise that these gender roles have a huge part to play on a person’s identity. As gender is a combination of male and female it gives way for a number of characteristics to accompany each sex making them different from each other. This has an important position to play on identity which Kath Woodward stated in her book “Questioning Identity: Gender, Class, Nation” where she said “Without difference there would not be such thing as identity”. (Woodward, 2000, pp.51) Unfortunately, however, with these differences there are inequalities. In this essay I would like to elaborate on this further by looking at the meaning of gender and how it impacts

The chapter ‘Subjects of Sex/Gender/Desire’ In Judith Butler’s Gender Trouble illustrates Butler’s problems with the term ‘women’ and the ways in which gender and sex are conceived and constructed within society. Butler debates against prominent feminist theory on the notion that identity must be represented in language and politics, proposing that the term ‘women’ cannot be conflated into one communal identity. ‘Women’, as a term, is not all-inclusive, due to its failure to encompass every female, as there are other modes of identification, such as race; “gender is not always constituted coherently or consistently in different historical contexts, and because gender intersects with racial, class, ethnic, sexual and regional modalities of discursively

In this essay I discuss that "doing gender means creating differences between girls and boys and women and men...." (West & Zimmerman 2002:13) I am concentrating on the female perspective, how societyputs forth expectations of what is 'natural' or biological even though, in some cases, it can be quite demeaning and degrading. I am using some examples from the local media and also a few childhoodexperiences that have helped me to now strongly suspect that the quote from Simone Beauvoir (1972) "One is not born a woman, but rather becomes one" most likely has quite a bit of truth to it.

MY PROJECT My dissertation project concerns the relational capacities of social gender identity development in current Western culture. This work interrogates the constitutive relationships between dichotomously different gendered subjects, especially in spaces that are considered culturally and legally gendered. In doing so it seeks to track those discourses that inform and shape various socializing behaviors, policies and laws. This discursive influence becomes pertinent in the public and quasi-public spheres when failures to adhere to rigid dominant gender ideologies (e.g. binarism, biologically determinism, and heteronormativity) and taxonomy (e.g. - male, female, cisgender) foreclose freedom of movement, access to gendered spaces, institutional identity and knowledge production, and therefore subsequent legal benefits, social understandings, and cultural reliefs. The consequence of such failures have led to competing identity claims and/or problematic levels of recognizable/intelligible genders, struggles for accurate or authentic representation, and an absence of personal agency and bodily autonomy.

The definition of gender and sex pertains to a distinction between male and female binaries, gender in this sense is therefore considered achieved at birth. It is argued that social interaction and conventions influence the difference in behaviour and construction between men and women. Alternately it is also plausible to argue that behaviour and gender constructions are influenced by biological factors. Judith Butler however deconstructs distinctions between biological given sex and a socially and culturally constructed gender. According to Butler traditional ethics of gender identity are restrictive because they are limited to gender as binary.

To conceptualise sexual identity and gender expression, Judith Butler (1990) proposes a poststructuralist perspective; that gendered behaviour (masculinity and femininity) is learned, a performative act, and that gender is constructed through a ‘heterosexual matrix’. She describes this as

In Gender Trouble, Judith Butler discusses complications with constructions of inner and outer worlds of the body. She argues that “internalization of gender”, as common linguistics describes it, is a part of the heterosexual hegemonic binary of gender conformity which distinguishes inner and outer worlds. Gender, in the commonly accepted model, is innate and through a process of bringing out the inner gender is expressed. Butler proposes, instead, that “the gendered body is performative” and “has no ontological status apart from the various acts which constitute its reality” (173). Thus, gender does not exist within a person, a part of the body itself, but is a performance constructed through many displays. Gender is not explicitly

Once you learn about feminism, it is impossible not to notice the misogynistic undertones in just about everything. From media to everyday life, it is a plague that runs rampant in the lives of everyone whether or not they realize it. For the sake of this paper, we will analyze these instances in a literary work. Linda Pastan, in her poem Marks, finds that traditional gender roles, denial of subjectivity and instrumentality cause the speaker to reject her role in her family.

Judith Butler, an American philosopher and gender theorist once said, “Gender is culturally formed, but it is also a domain of agency or freedom and that it is most important to resist the violence that is imposed by ideal gender norms.” Individuals are expected to conform to their strict gender norms and behave a certain way based on their prescriptive gender and it follows that when someone behaves, in any way, outside of this prescription they are judged and often even ridiculed for being ‘unladylike’ or ‘not manly enough’ when acknowledging women and men respectively. For the Magistrate, he lives in a world of strict and structured colonialism where males in a position of power are expected to be just as harsh as the system they’re working for. Colonel Joll and other officers are this perfect expectation, exhibiting their force and power over others whereas the Magistrate struggles to be this strong and sensible official, giving way to a much more weak and emasculated man, struggling to do the right thing while maintaining his post as the Magistrate. As Waiting for the Barbarians continues to unfold, the Magistrate becomes increasingly emasculated and weakened in terms of his leadership and gender role especially in contrast to Colonel Joll and other officers as well as in terms of his relations to the barbarians.

For the past decades, feminists are constantly debating the conventional views, prevailing views and roles of sex and gender in today’s society. As a result, we often think of sex as biological and gender as social, which are terms that are often used interchangeable and are socially or culturally constructed. In other words, the terms male and female are referred to as sex categories, while masculine and feminine are considered gender categories. “Over time, sex tended to be understood as the base and gender as the superstructure” (Oyěwùmí, 2005, 12).