Judith Butler aims to identify the origins of gender as well as sex, while Techniques of Pleasure focuses on a duality between the real and the scene. The intersection of these writings is the duality between defined within readings and female social inequality. Butler’s theories from this book, which include gender performativity, have connections with the Techniques of Pleasure, which is seemingly unrelated to Gender Trouble, because it is an in depth writing about intersectionality in BDSM. Butler’s Gender Trouble is quite frankly a feminist philosophical or queer theory piece. Techniques of Pleasure focuses on social aspects that make up personal identities and their relations with both the actors of scenes and their audiences. Judith …show more content…
Stanford recognizes that there is no sex binary along with Princeton, Yale, and University of California. Butler is simply ignoring or not addressing scientific advancement. Scientists have encountered sexes that disprove the existence of a sex binary, so the rejection of this is the rejection of understanding reality. Butler appears to be anti-scientific or ignorant of biological sexes in the least. Why is Butler applying philosophy to “sex”, which has been defined scientifically? Why has Butler ceased to’ address the non-existence of a sex or gender binary? Nonetheless, Butler actually uses drag” in her feminist text despite not including transgenderism or the rejection of a gender binary, because she says there was one gender, which was feminine. Butler then proceeds to communicate a message of drag racing while metaphorically walking on eggshells. She wrote that,” the anatomy of the performer is already distinct from the gender of the performer, and both of those are distinct from the gender of the performance” (Butler 175). Then, she wrote that the …show more content…
According to Weiss, we should see these BDSM scenes as violent reinforcements of social inequality or legitimate human suffering that is justified by neoliberal rationality. The neoliberal rationality especially emphasizes identity qualifiers like race, class, and gender through materialist, neutral subjectivity. Furthermore, this rationality perpetuates the dichotomy of the real and the scene, so the real is “social inequality, norms, oppression, politics-the public”, while the scenes are “radicalness, transgression, equality, desire- the private” (Weiss 188). In the firstly discussed The Slave Auction, Weiss described the race relations as she described whiteness and colorblindness, where white people get the “fantasy of escaping from racism without giving up on material benefits of whiteness” (Weiss 197). Neoliberals perpetuate colorblindness, and racism when they justify just mistreatment of minorities for its eroticness. Edward. a participant a Master/slave scene said he was"just doing if for the kink cause it actually happened I think parts of it my be erotic" (Weiss 206). Tijuana, a woman who played in a slave trade was “unwilling to be flogged for Master/Slave play or bottom to a white woman in public” (Weiss 196). The unwillingness of a minority to cooperate with a white woman was simply indicative of
Butler, Judith. "Besides Oneself: On the Limits of Sexual Autonomy." Ways Of Readers An Anthology For Writers. Ed. Davis Bartholomae and Anthony Petrosky. 9th ed. Boston: Bedford/St. Martin’s, 2011. 240-257. Print.
Many powers that women possessed in the past, and that they posses today, are located in the most secure vault in the body, the brain. These powers are not consciously locked up, and at times many women do not even now that they exist, and this is mainly due to the “male world” (53) in which women live in. Audre Lorde presents this ideal that one of these powers that are being oppressed by society is that of the erotic. Lorde presents the argument that allowing the desires and feelings of the erotic to play a conscious role in the lives of women will allow women to live a different life, one filled with empowerment from both past and present endeavors.
This essay explores the blurring of gender roles within Bram Stoker’s Dracula and Angela Carter’s The Lady of the House of Love, focusing on the presentation of a sexually assertive female and its threat to the patriarchal society, and the duality of the female characters as they are presented as enticing and thrilling, but also dangerous and somewhat repulsive.
Accordingly, I decided the purposes behind women 's resistance neither renamed sexual introduction parts nor overcame money related dependence. I recalled why their yearning for the trappings of progression could darken into a self-compelling consumerism. I evaluated how a conviction arrangement of feeling could end in sexual danger or a married woman 's troublesome twofold day. None of that, regardless, ought to cloud an era 's legacy. I comprehend prerequisites for a standard of female open work, another style of sexual expressiveness, the area of women into open space and political fights previously cornered by men all these pushed against ordinary restrictions even as they made new susceptibilities.
In her essay “Visual Pleasure and Narrative Cinema”, Laura Mulvey discusses the subject of how female characters, through various methods, are subjected to erotic objectification, by both the characters on screen as well as the spectators within the auditorium. While Mulvey makes an excellent point in acknowledging female’s exposure in cinema, she fails to realize that male characters are just as likely to be subjected to the same kind of objectification, depending on what type of audience the motion picture is directed at. Mulveys claim depends on a generalization of a homogenous audience and characters that only consists of heterosexual men. When transferring Mulveys claim onto homosexual male characters starring in a production that is in first-hand directed towards a gay audience, the erotic objectification of male characters share several similarities with those Mulvey describe women to be exposed to in her essay. Consequently, erotic objectification is governed by different circumstances, in which the audience plays a large role.
Butler, Judith. "Gender is Burning: Questions of Appropriation and Subversion." Bodies That Matter: On the Discursive Limits of Sex. New York: Routledge, 1993. 121-140.
Irigaray, Luce. “That Sex Which is Not One.” The Critical Tradition: Classic Texts and Contemporary Trends. Ed. David H. Richter. Boston: Bedford Books, 1998. 1467-1471.
In the featured article, “Beside Oneself: On the Limits of Sexual Autonomy,” the author, Judith Butler, writes about her views on what it means to be considered human in society. Butler describes to us the importance of connecting with others helps us obtain the faculties to feel, and become intimate through our will to become vulnerable. Butler contends that with the power of vulnerability, the rolls pertaining to humanity, grief, and violence, are what allows us to be acknowledged as worthy.
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.
Sedgwick (1985) states that Girard’s structure of the erotic triangle was seen as symmetric, as it was not “disturbed by such differences as gender” (pp.23). However, she proposes that the structure of the triangle should be considered asymmetric as it is disturbed by gender. This is because of the difference between the “disrupted continuum between sexual and non-sexual male bonds and the relatively smooth continuum of female homosocial desire” (Sedgwick, 1985, pp.23). Furthermore, Sedgwick (1985, pp.25) states that the power relationships in a -maledominated society suggest a special relationship between male homosocial desire and maintaining patriarchal power. This idea can be transferred to Cristal and Nomi’s relationship, where Cristal maintains her patriarchal power as the lead of the dance revenue, Goddess, while seemingly also having a desire for Nomi as she asks about Nomi’s sex life. This is evident when Cristal asks Zack if he had sex with Nomi, which resonates with McWhorter’s (1999, pp.10) view that sex becomes something that is interrogated and an object of administrative measures. This is further displayed where Cristal questions Nomi if she had sex with Zack to become the lead of “Goddess” or if she wanted to. The use of close up shot when Cristal immediately replies in a determined tone, without listening to Nomi’s answer, that “I say you did it for the spot” emphasizes Cristal’s envy which is reinforced through the close up shot of her jealous, almost angry facial expression. This suggests that Cristal may have feelings towards Nomi thus emphasizes the erotic rivalry between the two females. Therefore, it seems that Sedgwick’s (1985, pp.22) triangle can be adapted to the power relations between women as seen in the film suggesting that the female-female bond may be more potent than the male-male
...present powerful characters, while females represent unimportant characters. Unaware of the influence of society’s perception of the importance of sexes, literature and culture go unchanged. Although fairytales such as Sleeping Beauty produce charming entertainment for children, their remains a didactic message that lays hidden beneath the surface; teaching future generations to be submissive to the inequalities of their gender. Feminist critic the works of former literature, highlighting sexual discriminations, and broadcasting their own versions of former works, that paints a composite image of women’s oppression (Feminist Theory and Criticism). Women of the twenty-first century serge forward investigating, and highlighting the inequalities of their race in effort to organize a better social life for women of the future (Feminist Theory and Criticism).
context out of which a work of literature emerges molds the interpretation of gender in that work.
Bailey, Carol. "Performance and the Gendered Body in Jamaica Kincaid's "girl" and Oonya Kempadoo's Buxton Spice." Meridians: Feminism, Race, Transnationalism. 10.2 (2011): 106-123. Print.
These women authors have served as an eye-opener for the readers, both men and women alike, in the past, and hopefully still in the present. (There are still cultures in the world today, where women are treated as unfairly as women were treated in the prior centuries). These women authors have impacted a male dominated society into reflecting on of the unfairness imposed upon women. Through their writings, each of these women authors who existed during that masochistic Victorian era, risked criticism and retribution. Each author ignored convention a...
Butler, J. 1990. Gender Trouble. Feminism and the Subversion of Identity. London and New York: Routledge.