My mother gave me my name in hope that the dreamy embers I began with would ignite into a roaring fire. A powerful fire that she could stand back and admire; a fire she helped build and that she hoped would never falter. She wished for me to be an individual and hoped that I would explore every avenue that might give me that spark we all so desperately seek to fulfill our lives. However, society has given me boundaries. They have passed down an unwritten, prescribed set of rules. They have informed me that I am a girl, consisting of female traits and feminine tendencies. I have been given the female version of the script and I am expected to follow it to a tee if I want to stay in the play. Imagine if you will...”You there! Take this script. This here is your stereotype, down here is your gender role, and on the back page with further clarification is the social norm. This is what is expected of you take the time to memorize it in full.” It sounds pretty rigorous and constricting doesn’t it?
In cJudith Butler’s essay Gender Trouble: Feminism and the Subversion of Identity, she examines the restrictions placed on men and women by the process of socialization. She makes an important distinction between sex and gender and argues that both sex and gender are culturally constructed. A vital term Butler fashions is Gender Performativity. She says that no identity exists behind the show that we put on. We are taught to wear a mask that supposedly expresses the gender society has prearranged for us. Those people who alter their masks or try on the opposite gender’s mask are socially outcast or at the very least frowned upon. These masks establish the roles we are to play rather than convey the illusion of the unwavering, traditi...
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... because it is directly opposing the norm and challenging the separated heterosexual genders. The ideal genders are not allowed to experiment with the roles either by playing them up or switching them around without being targeted in some way. However, it is a good thing some individuals deviate from the regular forms of expression because it is a step closer to changing gender norms and the binary understanding of masculinity and femininity. Butler calls for gender trouble which essentially means to mix up these given roles so that they aren’t so important or no longer exist at all. It is essential in order to gain back the individuality we all so desperately seek.
Works Cited
Butler, Judith. (1990). “Subjects of Sex/Gender/Desire”. In Gender Trouble. Feminism and The Subversion of Identity”, pp. 1-34.
Philosophe en tout genre. Paul Zajdermann. 2006.
In a future class, the question “what is a woman?” should be addressed with a study of the musical film Hedwig and the Angry Inch because Hedwig reveals how a façade can lead to authenticity. Many women today are under the impression that they must fit a certain gender binary mold in order to live up to the definition of their gender. Women plaster on makeup and create personas centered around societal beliefs and not personal beliefs. Hedwig and the Angry Inch highlights how the gender binary mold lead individuals to choose a gender and within that set gender mold, express themselves to a limited extent. In other words, makeup and playing into the gender binary isn’t terrible. However, it leads to a constricted form of self-expression that
Irigaray, Luce. "This Sex Which Is Not One." Feminism: An Anthology of Literary Theory and Criticism. Ed. Robyn R. Warhol and Diane Price Herndle. New Brunswick, NJ: Rutgers UP, 1991.
Growing up everyone plays games, whether it’s Monopoly, Mario Kart, or Simon Says. Regardless of whatever game you play, you have to follow certain rules. You go to jail if you land on “Go to Jail”; you drive one way in a race; and you do whatever Simon says. But what many don’t realize is that we are all playing a game, a gender game.
Stereotypes have become a socially accepted phenomena in today’s society. So socially acceptable, in fact, they have made it onto advertising billboards and into our daily language. We do not think twice as they pass our tongues, and we do tilt our heads in concern or questioning as they pass into our ears. In Judith Butler’s essay “Besides Oneself: On the Limits of Sexual Autonomy”, stereotypes are exposed and explored. Especially stereotypes pertaining to sexual orientation. Butler explains how stereotypes are unacceptable. She does this in a way which allows her to concurrently explore what it means to be human, and also what humans do or need to make Earth a livable place for ourselves. When examining Butler’s essay, one could say, and
In this article, Shaw and Lee describe how the action of labels on being “feminine” or “masculine” affect society. Shaw and Lee describe how gender is, “the social organization of sexual difference” (124). In biology gender is what sex a person is and in culture gender is how a person should act and portray themselves. They mention how gender is what we were taught to do in our daily lives from a young age so that it can become natural(Shaw, Lee 126). They speak on the process of gender socialization that teaches us how to act and think in accordance to what sex a person is. Shaw and Lee state that many people identify themselves as being transgendered, which involves a person, “resisting the social construction of gender into two distinct, categories, masculinity and femininity and working to break down these constraining and polarized categories” ( 129). They write about how in mainstream America masculinity and femininity are described with the masculine trait being the more dominant of the two. They define how this contributes to putting a higher value of one gender over the other gender called gender ranking (Shaw, Lee 137). They also speak about how in order for femininity to be viewed that other systems of inequality also need to be looked at first(Shaw,Lee 139).
In discussing the subject of male identity, especially as compared to female identity, Farrell is very careful to remain very objective throughout his rhetoric. Part of his balanced approach to proving his argument, is the use of an objective point of view. Farrell’s deliberate objectivity can be seen in aspects of his piece such as his word choice, free of denotative language, his lack of any first hand anecdotes, a removal of any indication of his gender (except his name), and a strict third person style throughout his piece. All of these characteristics combine to make his argument effective to a large demographic of people, unlike many pieces on gender identity, whose audience is usually limited to at most a spe...
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.
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.
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.
perspective on the concept, arguing that gender is a cultural performance. Her careful reading of
Fausto-Sterling, Anne. Sexing the Body: Gender Politics and the Construction of Sexuality. NY: Basic Books, 2000.
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.
Butler, J. 1990. Gender Trouble. Feminism and the Subversion of Identity. London and New York: Routledge.
Kendal, Diana. "Sex and Gender." Sociology in Our Times 3.Ed. Joanna Cotton. Scarborough: Nelson Thomson, 2004. 339-367
Therefore, gender brings is the action through which what it names is brought into being; masculinity or feminism. It is the language that constitutes and construct gender identities meaning gender comes after language. The extent to which a person performs the gender determine how much real a gender is. An outside gendered self or a self-preceding isn’t there; gender identity is not necessarily constructed by “I “or “we”. Social conventions enactments which is due to our retrospective reality results in subjectivity characterised by self-willingness and independence as contended by Butler. From this we learn the prerogative nature of gender identity, is determined by the situation in which one is in like society, contact etc. therefore certain social positions can potentially produce a privileged