Performing Gender And Being In Nepantla. In Judith Butler’S

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

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.

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”

Maggie Nelson’s genre-defying work The Argonauts (2015) embraces instability and complexity in identity through eliciting a parallel between the renewal of the Argo in the Greek Myth “Jason and the Argonauts” and language: “Just as the Argo’s parts may be replaced over time but the boat is still called the Argo, whenever the lover utters the phrase ‘I love you,’ its meaning must be renewed by each us, as ‘the very task of love and of language is to give to one and the same phrase inflections which will be forever new’” (Nelson, 5). The Argo implies continued movement and interior evolution; claiming permanence in the structure would be disingenuous since renovations are necessary to keep the boat afloat—just as claiming stability in ones’ internal conception of identity, especially with regards to gender and sexuality, is problematic and ultimately an injustice to the complexities that lie within each person. However, institutionalized binaries of sex (female/male), gender (woman/man), and sexuality (homo/hetero) fail to provide imperative space in self-exploration and work to suppress the potentialities within these arenas. By developing upon examples in The Argonauts through engaging with the ideas of Judith Butler in Gender Trouble and Performative Acts and Gender Constitution and Eve Sedgwick in The Epistemology of the Closet, these binaries may be revealed as a construction that conceals the operations of oppression within contemporary American culture. After the

We are currently living in a society where the lines between gender are blending in unimaginable ways. Male makeup artist have begun to pop up everywhere, Facebook has expanded the gender options to more than 50, gender neutral bathrooms are a necessity, and the prevalence of the singular pronoun “they” has increased and been accepted by many. The hard rigid lines of gender and being bent and broken, and we are watching the world as those who do not fit demand change. We are getting closer to destroying the gender binary for good. In the following I will compare Ali Smith’s “How to Be Both”, to several articles regarding the topics of the ambiguity of gender, the differences between sex assigned at birth, gender, and gender expression, as

Queer theory questions creations of normal and divergent, insider, and outsider.2 Queer theorists analyse a situation or a text to determine the relationship between sexuality, power and gender. Queer theory challenges basic tropes used to organize our society and our language: even words are gendered, and through that gendering an elliptical view of the hierarchy of society, and presumption of what is male and what is female, shines through. Queer theory rejects such binary distinctions as arbitrarily determined and defined by those with social power. It works to deconstruct these binaries, particularly the homosexual/heterosexual binary.4

This project is focused on drag queens and the extent to which they perform gender. Many scholars have looked at the performance of gender within the context of the gender binary. Many scholars, feel that drag breaks down this binary whereas others feel that the binary and heteronormativity are perpetuated by and instilled within drag. Regardless of the debate, it goes without question that drag queens perform gender on stage.

Goffman introduces us to the concept of dramaturgy in regards to the development of the social Self (and therefore to Gender Identity). For Goffman, dramaturgy is how the individual becomes a performer in public/quasi-public settings, and their surrounding environment by default become an audience. He focuses on the dynamic between the two, especially on how the performer must manage their impression to win audience approval. To fail at garnishing such approval means risking the entire social setting. (This builds upon, or at least references, Cooley’s Mirror Self in that one turns to others to understand one’s self in a social situation).

The pronounced blurring of gender boundaries can be explained by one of Judith Butler's gender definition, which states that “the body become its gender through a series of acts which are renewed, revised, and consolidated through time” (523). This theory allows gender to be understood as an aspect of subjectivity that is socialized but repeated so often that at a point it becomes one’s identity. The role of the culture as an end in the developing process of gender along with the act of ‘doing’ is very important, since “the act that one does, the act that one performs, is, in a sense, an act that has been going on before one arrived on the scene” (526). Women from the 20th Century who cross dressed were able to adopt and embody a masculine

“If she patterns herself on ideals that are culturally defined as feminine, she’s likely to be seen as not having what it takes to get ahead in a male-identified world. But if she pursues a more “masculine” path toward success, she opens herself to being judged as not feminine enough.” I’ve experienced this gender bind in my own life. I’ve had more people recently ask me more questions

Another issue with research pertaining to sexual identity is the assumption of there being binary categories, such as gay/straight, male/female, etc. Research in this area is generally dichotomized (e.g. male/female, gay/straight), which can foster rigid identity assumptions, foster homogeneous understanding of research particiapnts and results, foster a divide between ‘normal’ and ‘deviant’ behavior, as well as mask inherent variation in different groups and populations (Johnson & Repta, 2012). Bringing greater awareness to the complexity of sexual and gender identity could have transformative effects on how research is conducted. Some scholars in the social work field have begun to acknowledge and recognize the increasing evidence that sexual and gender identity are not binary categories, as well that categories might not even be an accurate way of understanding these phenomena (Burdge, 2007; Roche & Gringeri, 2010). While an understanding that the binary model is flawed has gained some traction in social work research, the majority of researchers continue to ignore and disregard this possibility, consequently reinforcing this erroneous dichotomous paradigm (Rassi, 2011). It has also been noted that critiques from postmodern, poststructural, and queer theory perspectives, as well as from individuals or groups (e.g. transgender, bisexual, intersex) who do not “fit neatly” into binary categories continue to remain essentially absent within social work

For queer theorists, identity has been constructed through performativity, which is based on the opinion of Judith Butler. Butler (1990, p.25) believed that “ there is no gender identity behind the expression of gender; that identity is performatively constituted by the very ‘expressions’ that are said to be its results.” In other words, there is not any factor to produce the identity, but identity creates itself through performativity. One should imitate and repeat the gender expression again and again according to norms, then the identity will be constituted, which also shows that identity is fluid and constructed. Moreover, Jenkins (2000,2004) stated that a dynamic social process generates identity, so identity is not static but fluid and dynamic.

In her book Acting Women: Images of Women in Theatre (1990), Lesley Ferris interrogates the historical absence of the actress and argues that the ancient Greek performance convention of cross-dressed men masked [7] as female characters effectively created a theatrical “sign called ‘woman,’” which could be “worn and discarded like a costume, a dress, make-up, a gesture.”[14] Such a mimetic semiotic not only reduced woman into (in Ferris’s words) “a disposable sign,” but culturally disempowered the actress as an artist

When I tell people, friends or family that I have to write a paper about my experience of gender, they just laugh at that. They think there is not much to it. Nonetheless, my personal experience of gender is rather a more complex than meets the eye. Having lived two patriarchal societies —one extreme and one that is drifting away from patriarchy— I have had to deal with a lot. It is not all advantage and privilege to be a heterosexual male, it has many negativities and pressures. Especially if by your nature, you struggle to fit into the societal designated gender roles. In this paper, I will reflect on my experience and struggle, as a minority male in Saudi Arabia and the United States of America. I will provide retrieve memories and incidents from my childhood and adolescence, I will describe the everyday challenges and obstacles, and I will

I am a cisgendered female. The roles that are expected of me in society are dependent on my gender. As a girl I am expected to, "sit like a lady," and am encouraged the choice of words I decide to use are not, "ladylike." I am taught, as a woman to keep quiet and don't take up space. I am greeted with looks of surprise from men in comic book stores and then questioned about the Marvel shirt I have on. "Can you actually name all those characters," I will be asked. Why would I need the man's approval even if I couldn't. Gender roles are the limits and "check all that apply," to a person, dependent on whether or not they are a man or a woman. They are what society has formed to separate each gender from one another. They are what makes it okay