Like Young, the origins of Butler’s argument that “woman is socially constructed in such a way that to be a woman is, by definition, to be an oppressed situation” (Butler 523) are galvanized by Beauvoir’s analysis on the precept that “phenomenological tradition” (Butler 519) induces how one acts in relationship to their gender identity. Butler utilizes Beauvoir’s “distinction between sex, as biological facticity, and gender, as the cultural interpretation or signification of that facticity” (Butler 522) to provide her definition of a woman. Butler believes that no one is born a woman, and that to be “woman is to have to become…a woman [through compelling] the body to conform to [the] historical idea” (Butler 522) of what a woman is. To be a …show more content…
Throughout the text, Butler amplifies the unspoken idea that to understand what a woman is, one must understand what gender is.
Unlike what both Beauvoir and Young state in their compositions, Butler predicates that gender is what is performed “under constraint, daily and incessantly” (Butler 531)– not a state of being molded by “nature…or the overwhelming history of the patriarchy” (Butler 531). Butler reasons that gender is a matter of performativity in which one repeatedly completes acts affiliated with their gender for their “social audience” (Butler 520) until they themselves “come to believe and to perform in the mode of belief” (Butler 520). By virtue of this, Butler maintains that gender is a variable of identity in that it is can be deliberately changes. Gender transformations are simply differentiations in the ways in which one’s gender
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Butler communicates that “one is not simply a body, but…one does one body” (Butler 521). For example, the word I as in oneself does not exist in a permanent state, it is an I that is reconstructed each time an act is performed. The body is a manner of doing, dramatizing, and reproducing” (Butler 521) the historical depiction of a body’s sex in alignment with gender– the body is not the gender. While gender is, in many ways, an embodiment of the body’s performance that is “open to the perception of others” (Butler 521), it is not innately decided by the body. According to Butler, gender is only relevant because of it is performed and “the body is only known through its gendered appearance” (Butler 523). The body is merely a body until it becomes its gender. Analogous to the way in which one does one’s body, one also does one’s gender. Yet, this choice to do one’s gender is not characterized by autonomous choice, rather, it is characterized by a fear-driven adherence to do one’s gender “in accord with certain sanctions and proscriptions” (Butler 525). The entire
Gender is one of the most socially constructed aspects of society; body transformation is created by social construction dynamics of the actual human body into social bodies according to Lorber and Yancey. It can be seen through the ideal body types men and women admire among different social practices
The transformation that takes place in the way in which the girl thinks about gender roles is not described directly as an issue of what is appropriate for men and women. Instead, the description is much more subtle, and almost a natural change that occurs in every person (Rasporich 130). It is this subtleness in the language causes the readers to not only feel sorry for the young girl, but to also think about their own views of gender
“What makes for a livable world?”, and what constitutes the human?”, are two questions Judith Butler inquires in her opening paragraph and throughout her writing that determine the mindsets of individuals throughout our society. Both of these arguments are answered differently, by different persons, within different cultures, yet play a dramatic role in Butler’s view of herself, the LGBT community, and most of all, every other human
In their publication, “Doing Gender, ” Candance West and Don H. Zimmerman put forward their theory of gender as an accomplishment; through, the daily social interactions of a man or woman which categorize them as either masculine or feminine. From a sociological perspective the hetero-normative categories of just sex as biological and gender as socially constructed, are blurred as a middle ground is embedded into these fundamental roots of nature or nurture.To further their ideology West and Zimmerman also draw upon an ethnomethodological case study of a transsexual person to show the embodiment of sex category and gender as learned behaviours which are socially constructed.Therefore, the focus of this essay will analyze three ideas: sex, sex
Gender is a performance according to Judith Butler . All bodies, she claims, are gendered from birth; sometimes even earlier now we can determine sex in the womb . For Butler society dictates ones gender and the individual reinforces that gender through performance . “The deeds make the doer” in Butler’s words; there is no subject prior to performance. Butler’s concept of gender, however, leads us to question: what of those who are incapable of performing the gender ascribed to them? If one is unable to perform are they left genderless, lacking subjectivity and social identity? If no human is without gender , as Butler claims, then where does this leave her theory? Either gender is more than simply performance or one can exist without gender.
In Doing Gender authors West and Zimmerman argue the concept of gender being an outcome of daily life rather than an outcome from a physician with an ultrasound with only two permanent results. The meaning behind the term gender invokes different connotations of either masculine or feminine qualities that lay the groundwork for societies preexisting roles. Society today views gender as being either of masculine or feminine form however the controversy with this is how this is determined in our society today as well as in the past. Both authors fall upon the idea that sex is a disposition of birth whereas gender is a disposition of your actions after your birth. “It is necessary to move beyond the notion of gender display to consider what
Fresh from the womb we enter the world as tiny, blank slates with an eagerness to learn and blossom. Oblivious to the dark influences of culture, pre-adult life is filled with a misconception about freedom of choice. The most primitive and predominant concept that suppresses this idea of free choice involve sex and gender; specifically, the correlation between internal and external sex anatomy with gender identity. Meaning, those with male organs possess masculine identities, which involve personality traits, behavior, etcetera, and the opposite for females. Manipulating individuals to adopt and conform to gender identities, and those respective roles, has a damaging, life-long, effect on their development and reflection of self through prolonged suppression. This essay will attempt to exploit the problems associated with forced gender conformity through an exploration of personal experiences.
Judith Butlers book entitled ‘Bodies that Matter’ examines and questions the belief that certain male-female behaviors are natural within our society. The behaviors that Dr. Butler has distinguished between in this book are femininity and masculinity. She believes that through our learned perception of these gendered behaviors this is an act or performance. She implies that this is brought to us by normative heterosexuality depicted in our timeline. In which, takes on the role of our language and accustomed normalization of society. Butler offers many ideas to prove some of her more radical idea’s such as examples from other philosophers, performativity, and worldwide examples on gender/sex. Some philosophers that seem to be of relevance to her fighting cause are Michel Foucault, Edmund Husserl, Maurice Merleau-Ponty, and George Herbert Mead. Her use of the doctrine of constitution takes ‘the social agent as an object rather than the subject of constitutive acts” (Performative). In other words, Dr. Butler will question the extent to which we as a human race assume the given individualism between one another. She has said that “this will constitute him-or herself” (Butler 13). She also wonders to what extent our acts are reputable for us, rather, by our place within dialect and convention. Dr. Butlers followings being of a postmodernist and poststructuralist practice, decides to use the term “subject” rather than “individual” or “person” in order to underline the linguistic nature of her position. This approach should be of credit to philosopher Jacques Lacan because symbolic order gives the system and signs of convention that determines our perception of what we see as reality.
This article was written to bring attention to the way men and women act because of how they were thought to think of themselves. Shaw and Lee explain how biology determines what sex a person is but a persons cultures determines how that person should act according to their gender(Shaw, Lee 124). The article brings up the point that, “a persons gender is something that a person performs daily, it is what we do rather than what we have” (Shaw, Lee 126). They ...
middle of paper ... ... And one can conclude from Fausto-Sterling's book that not only do we "do" gender, we also "do" gender and body as well. Works Cited Butler, Judith. A. "Performative acts and gender constitution: An essay in phenomenology and feminist theory." 1998.
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 an individual is pushed to conform to social expectations of his/her group.
Gender identity has been a delicate issue when it comes to determining if a person's gender is set at birth or develops and changes as a person ages. A person’s gender is not as simple as being classified as either male or female. There’s a considerable amount of external factors that can influence someone's identity. Although society has a major role in gender identity, sex assignment at birth is not final; furthermore, a person's gender can be influenced by psychological, physiological differences and undergoing changes to the human body.
The concept of gender performative is the focus of Judith Butler's work, particularly in Gender Trouble. In Butler’s terms the performance of gender, sex, and sexuality is all about the control of society. She pinpoint the fabrication of the "gendered, sexed, desiring subject" in "regulative discourses". Hence the argument of Butler concerns the role of sex in the production of natural or rational gender and sexuality. In her report, gender and heterosexuality are constructed as natural because the opposition of the male and female sexes is supposed as natural in the social imaginary.
In her novel Orlando, Virginia Woolf tells the story of a man who one night mysteriously becomes a woman. By shrouding Orlando's actual gender change in a mysterious religious rite, we readers are pressured to not question the actual mechanics of the change but rather to focus on its consequences. In doing this, we are invited to answer one of the fundamental questions of our lives, a question that we so often ignore because it seems so very basic - what is a man? What is a woman? And how do we distinguish between the two?
Identities are an important part of the human experience. One of the many identities that creates a person is gender. Society, being the entity establishing social norms and social roles, plays a part in effecting the individual’s gender, and how they choose to express themself. The underlying or overlying identities also have the same effect. Gender is not only an identity, it is a lifestyle inside and out. Gender, like race, class, and sexuality; is not limited to the binary scale, and that is normal, natural, and human. The concept of gender is man-made, but it forces one’s hand to analyze the thought processes behind an individual's perception on gender through self, through society, or through the dichotomy and/or correspondence of the