Gender Boundaries Of Judith Butler

Judith Butler is an American post-structuralist philosopher and critical theorist. Her area of expertise is gender theory. She is most well known for her theory of gender performativity which states that gender is a social construct which is performative in nature. In simple terms what this means is that gender is not a quality that people have, but a pattern of behavior that people perform. The performance of gender, Butler contends, creates and reinforces societal gender norms which are perceived as “natural” and “normal” but are actually a set of learned behaviors which are fluid and constantly changing.

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.

The idea of othering will be looked at in this essay through the study of Judith Butler’s chapter “Violence, Mourning, Politics”. Butlers grasp of the concept alongside my understanding and discussion with the reading will be displayed in this essay. The techniques to display this phenomenon to an audience in theatre will be explained trough looking at Augusto Boal and Bertolt Brecht. Examples of successful and unsuccessful ways of portraying the ideas will be looked at. These ideas will be looked at in relation to modern media and “Gamer-Gate” and then compared to the theatre performance “Father, Father, Father”.

For Judith Butler, gender roles, norms, behavior, and generally everything about and associated with gender is an artificial performance. In "Gender Trouble," Butler asks: “does being female constitute a ‘natural fact’ or a cultural performance, or is “naturalness” constituted through discursively constrained performative acts that produce the body through and within the categories of sex?” Butler’s answer to this question is, of course, yes, gender is no natural fact, and is indeed produced and maintained by a programmed and repeated set of performances. I argue that the female characters in "The Duchess of Malfi" by John Webster, are completely aware of how they are perceived to act as a gender, and use the idea of “cultural performance”

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.

Not all crossdressers are created equal and each has their reasons for deciding to don the opposite gender’s clothing, other than desire, survival is huge underlying factor as to why woman are driven to cross-dress. Women placed at a disadvantage from birth has to work double and face hurdles in attaining their professional and educational goals at times. In two films in the chapter Albert Nobbs and Yentl, chronicle the hardship and deceit that these women had to undergo in order to survive in their environments. These women’s livelihood was rooted in falsehood out of necessity and changing their destinies by choosing male garb.

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.

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

In the excerpt from Judith Butler Gender is burning, Butler emphasizes how it is possible to ‘displace’ the rules of a normative society through the exaggeration of one’s Identity. As it applies to Drag culture, the ability to hyperbolize the standard value of normative gender roles allows for a unique evolution of one's original gender identity in a way that is more than just the traditional ‘male’ or ‘female categorization. Through parody, and exaggeration of normative genders, one is able to add a unique and transformative identity. On an individual level the ability to parody the stereotypical nature of male/female genders, allows for a creative interpretation on the characteristics of each gender. This hyperbolization also speaks to the

Individuals within society are constantly strained by the way they should present themselves as they conform to their gender roles. For instance, is this outfit too tarty? What will people think if I wear it? Are the questions that several ladies ask themselves when choosing to clothe as they face the challenge of maintaining their femininity through the way they dress as they abide by their social constructions of gender (Holmes 2007).Subsequently, this essay seeks to explore to what extent the body is central to social organisation and control in relation to gender and will make reference to two theoretical approaches which include: biological essentialism and the social constructionist framework to aid the response. In order to further illustrate

Judith Butler’s essay, “Performative Acts and Gender Constitution: An Essay in Phenomenology and Feminist Theory” calls for a new way to view sex and gender. Butler argues that “gender identity is a performative accomplishment compelled by social sanction and taboo”. In this case, gender is not constituted by what one is, but rather what one does; the performative acts constitute gender. In other words, gender is not the starting place; it is an identity repeatedly constructed throughout time. Butler is trying to show us a feminist perspective of sex and gender. She attempts to follow Beauvoir’s path in a fight against society norms.

The 1960’s was the start of new movements within feminism. Feminist found ways to branch out and discover new outlets that allowed them to express their political ideologies. Science fiction during this time, was a genre primarily known for being male dominated, specifically by white males. Science Fiction, gave feminist the opportunity to break the gender roles within the genre while also writing about theoretical future “worlds” that depict societies without present issues such as gender and social inequality. Science Fiction became increasingly popular with feminist because of the particular narrative that allowed them to develop their own societies that addressed contemporary issues.

As human beings, we like to place other in categories making it easier to know how to act and treat others. For example, in the first paragraph I mention that, Hitler used pink triangle for classification of homosexuals. To support this claim further, Richard Dyer argues that “we are always “making sense” of things in terms of some wider categories. ….we come to 'know' something about a person by thinking of the role which he or she performs...." (1977: 28) But what is gender? Judith Butler's theory of gender is that, 'gender as a stylised repetition act (Butler, 1990: 140) refers to conscious choices we make about gesture, clothing and style.' (Butler, ___:287) Meaning that gender is something that is not only taught to us but something we create for ourselves; from when we are young; a performance we play from the day we are aware of our gender, to the day we die. She also argues that 'gender is not a noun (Butler, 1990:24) it does not exist in and of itself, but only in the expression of gender aimed at giving it coherence'. (Butler, ___:287). In Rebecca Arnold's theory she states that '...fashion helps to play a part in the gender performance...'; she adds that 'once the traditional moulds were broken they could not be patched together and the masquerade of fashion enabled those alienated from such stereotypes to dress up and invent their own gender identity.' (Arnold, 2001:101). Although, Roversi may have played a lot with

What necessary tasks does Judith Butler identify for feminist criticism? How is her articulation of and response to these tasks characteristically "postmodern"?

In Judith Butlers novel “Undoing Gender 13” she’s fundamentally stating that “human” was considered a category which excluded many extensive ranges of minorities. So, in history we see that white men were fitting the necessity to be put into the category of “human”. It was done on purpose to differentiate the different classes, gender and races. This caused different issues such as racism and hate to rise. The society standers were raised because of the “human” category, if back then one didn’t belong into the high class or the superior race they would simply be thought of as an inferior and low class. Humanities are described as the theoretical persuasions which drops the expression and development of human experience narratives and ideas.