Judith Butler And Diana Crane: A Literary Analysis

In the article “Marked Women,” Deborah Tannen addresses how everything a woman does-from choosing her outfit, her makeup, her hair, to even her surname marks her a certain way. As a young woman, I liked this piece because it addressed issues women faced that I typically don’t think about. I chose to write about “Marked Women” instead of “Sexism in English” because I related more to the article with my past and current experiences on the different ways women are marked in society. Women are judged every day based upon their decisions on their outfits and looks. Tannen states in the article, “you couldn’t say the men didn’t wear makeup in the sense that you could say a woman didn’t wear makeup,” which made me realize how even something as

This piece has a woman looking at her reflection in a shattered mirror, the bold text reads, ‘You Are Not Yourself.’ I chose to discuss this piece first because of its relevance to our most recent reading, The Last Time I Wore A Dress, by Daphne Scholinski. It encapsulates the stereotype that society has created for what is considered appropriate and inappropriate for someone to identify as a female. Throughout the book, Daphne struggles with her gender identity, she writes, “It was the doctors who came up with the idea that I was “an inappropriate female” – that my mouthy ways were a sign of deep unease in my female nature and that if I learned tips about eyeliner and foundation, I’d be a lot better off” (Scholinski 6). In our lecture about

Launched on March 1959, the Barbie doll is a toy that was first put on display in New York. It quickly garnered a lot of attention with the target audience of the creators, young girls. This doll was different than its previous dolls because it was a doll that was an ideal representation of a woman. Thus allowing young girls to use their imagination to create and act-out what this doll’s life is like and what their future would potentially be. To successfully understand this toy, we must think like C Wright Mills, a sociologist who asks to use our sociological imagination, the intersection of one’s biography and history. This artifact reflects and perpetuates the dominant ideology of how to perform your gender the “right” way in the early 1960s. I will argue this demonstrates West and Zimmerman’s concept of “doing gender” which is clarified with Judith Butler’s concept of socialization of gender.

Androgyny and the third gender are present in many cultures and each combination of masculine and feminine qualities make it a unique phenomenon that is on an individual basis. Since ancient times to present day, the idea of the third gender has been discussed by many scholars, as well as what gender truly can be defined as. It is undeniable that androgyny has become more mainstream as of recent, especially with help from the fashion industry in the early 2000s when they began to employ androgynous models as well as designing androgynous clothing. Since this third gender is finally receiving more recognition, it is important to understand where the term comes from, and how it exists in many cultures. In this paper, I intend on exploring the history of androgyny, discuss figures that have analyzed typical gender roles, present the multitude of cultures that have a third gender, and finally examine the fashion industry’s relationship with androgyny.

As Lorber explores in her essay “Night to His Day”: The Social Construction of Gender, “most people find it hard to believe that gender is constantly created and re-created out of human interaction, out of social life, and is the texture and order of that social life” (Lorber 1). This article was very intriguing because I thought of my gender as my sex but they are not the same. Lorber has tried to prove that gender has a different meaning that what is usually perceived of through ordinary connotation. Gender is the “role” we are given, or the role we give to ourselves. Throughout the article it is obvious that we are to act appropriately according to the norms and society has power over us to make us conform. As a member of a gender

When a person hears words like feminist or feminism, notions of what it means to be feminine, or consequently unfeminine, begin to dimly form in our mind’s eye. Although we cannot definitively answer the question of what is feminine, we are able to recognize it when we see it or its absence. This conception, however, is arbitrary at best. What is it about an evening gown that seems to define and dress the feminine aura while a woman spitting would be denounced as inherently unfeminine?

By making use of the cliché vampire tales and transforming them into a unique fictional novel, Octavia Butler’s Fledgling takes the reader into a different world in which pleasure, hatred and persistence are combined to solve the mysterious life-threatening puzzle of a genetically modified vampire. Fledgling is a novel that exposes the ignorance hatred can create and the strength survival can generate. Nonetheless, Fledgling, like many other books, has its downfalls and confusions. Butler’s last novel expresses everything she believed and stood for, and opens the eyes to those who cannot see our universal issues by placing them in a totally different world.

How do we define “human?” This is a question that has become more difficult and bewildering to answer as time passes day by day. Judith butler tries to answer this age-old question of how we define “human”. In Butler’s essay, “Beside Oneself” it demonstrates the predominance of sexual orientations and how the role of society has influenced human’s lives. In turn, the essay asks many questions that challenges the readers to think critically and look within outside the norm and interpret for themselves what one believe the answer for Butler’s ideology. However, Butler failed to define clearly the most important question, how do we define “human?” Although, Butler made the claim that to be defined as human is to be part of the society and be accepted into the social norms, humans should not be based on standards of being accepted by the society. Instead humans should be defined by humanity (caring for those in need), and the freedom to critically think for ourselves.

What does it mean to be human? Is it having emotions? A beating heart? Instincts that you cannot evade? Dawn by Octavia E. Butler is a science fiction novel that addresses the question of what it means to be human and how humans react in catastrophic situations. The human race has destroyed itself through war, and an extraterrestrial species have stepped in to help keep a handful of humans alive and restore the Earth back to it’s living state. Once humans are sufficiently prepared for the newly modified Earth, they would be sent “home” to reinstate the human population, but at what cost? Humans are born with the natural instinct to fight for survival and to not give up, but the instinct becomes obscured when they are forced to live an unnatural life amongst aliens, instead of having a “dignified” death with the rest of the human race. The interference that the Oankali, the alien race, commits against the humans can be juxtaposed with the invasion of Siberia by the Russian Empire in the 17th century. This is because the humans would have not been able to survive without the Oankali, while the Siberians wouldn’t have been affected without the invasion of the Russian Empire. Though the human race would not have survived without the Oankali’s assistance, they would not have been subjected to a life sentence of no longer being authentically human.

Moreover, Lang (1999) successfully demonstrated that young women within sorority clubs do gender as their role of adopting their traditional feminine characteristics become gender obligations in order for them to fit in that particular society. Therefore, the example of dress illustrates that individuals within society are deeply controlled by their body since non verbal communication has become a form of social control (Lang 1999). For instance, it enables users to project their identity and allow agents of social control to interpret their identity through their style of clothing (Arvanitidiou and Gasouka 2013). To conclude, the example discussed above highlights how garments are devised by humans which offer a clear distinction between how

Judith Butler questions the belief that behaviors of either sex are natural. She proposes a rather radical theory that gender is performative and that sex is constructed. When gender is being performed, it means that someone would take on a role, acting in such a way that gives society the idea of their gender and constructs part of their identity. To be performative means that we produce a series of effects.Gender is constructed and is not in any way connected ‘naturally’ to sex.

Children learn at a very early age what it means to be a boy or a girl in our society. As children grow and develop, the gender stereotypes they are exposed to at home are reinforced by many elements in their environment and are thus perpetuated throughout childhood followed by adolescence. One major societal issue uprising with the way children are raised in today’s society is the gender specific dressing for boys and girls. The history with gender specific dressing is a one sided masculine enforced point of view for centuries. As children move through childhood and into adolescence, they are exposed to many factors which influence their behaviors and attitudes regarding gender roles. It is difficult for a child in today’s society to grow to adulthood without experiencing some form of gender bias or stereotyping. The question lies whether the view of gender specific dressing shall change or stay the same. As society continues to evolve and grow so does the tolerance of new uprising views for the general purpose of equality and freedom to do as pleased. Children regularly learn to adopt gender roles which are not always fair to both sexes. These attitudes and behaviors are generally learned first in the home but then reinforced by their environment, school experience, and media viewing. Nonetheless, the strongest influence on gender role development seems to occur within the family setting. Culture, values, and beliefs are the parents early role for passing on, both overtly

In a world that is so complex with technology and other advancements we tend to overlook things we assume we understand. On every application we fill out, we are asked about our gender or sex, but is it that simple? Can our gender and sex be identified so quickly, and if so how do we identify ourselves? Butler (1999), a philosopher and professor at the University of California, believes that gender is performed and what we portray is a performance or act. Butler argues that objectively, gender is nonexistent unless it is performed.

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.

Chris Brickell discusses the ethnomethodology of gender performativity and how Harold Garfinkel analysed his understanding. The basic idea of a stereotypical woman would be that she would cook, clean and look after the children while the man would work hard, provide for the family and come home to rest after a hard day of work. Brickell describes, “This “natural attitude” requires one to be either a male