Summarize Butler's Overarching Idea

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.

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

Gender is actually a set of rules, customs and traditions assigned to people of a particular sex. Gender is not biological but sex is. Rather, according to Lorber, it is influenced by our society and our culture. By proving this claim, Judith Lorber has put forth the example of the man and this example is efficient in distinguishing “gender” as a practice than as an innate attribute.

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

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

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

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

The Study of Performativity In Judith Butler’s opinion, the gender identity is created through a series of performances. The ideal form of gender identity should be clear and definite which has regulated all the qualities that each gender should have. For example, a man's body should be massive, his thoughts should be logical; the way he thinks and takes actions should have a clear determination. On the other hand, a woman’s body should be exquisite and a woman needs to be sentimental and emotional. When she is faced with difficulties, she is always undecided to take any action.

For Judith Butler, sex and gender is an outlandish cultural construction which defines the body. She calls into attention gender as a substance and practicality of man and woman as nouns. Although gender is not a noun, it proves that it is

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.

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.

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.

“Performative utterances do not describe but perform the action they designate” (Culler 96), and the repetitive assertions from the white man placed upon the black man results in him being inferior. The white man’s performativity about Butler’s idea of gender trouble, that gender, sexuality and biological makeup are not correlated. It also refers to oppressions of genders that do not fit the norm of society. For Butler gender acts “as a strategy for survival within compulsory systems, gender is performative with

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