The Combahee River Collective was a black feminist group. Barbra Smith was the author of “A black Feminist Statement” in the reading she discussed the origin of modern-day black feminism, what they believe, problem when it came to organizing black feminist and black feminist issues and practices. They believed that all black feminist were linked. They argued in order for any community to start welcoming black feminist they have to really look at how black women’s lives were affected by the subjugation of racism, sexism and class. The black feminist had difficulty in organizing their groups in the reading it explains many of their issues. For example they had low value as black women in society and they were also fighting with all the people in society that believed they did not deserve rights. The women in Combahee River Collective were an extremely influential group they fought for all women rights and struggled to overcome many situations and never gave up for their right.
The Role of allies in 2010 was a speech by in this speech she talks about how hard it can be a black queer female how she risks her life by being different and speaking about it. She explains what its is to be an ally, she has 5 rules to being an ally. The first was to know being a liberal is not required, the reasoning behind that is because liberals don’t fully except queers, color, women and poor because they are with the government they are not fighting for freedom. The second rule be loud and crazy say what you believe in don’t hold back. Third rule was to not tell any oppressed group to be patient. Fourth is to recognize the new racism, sexism the old homophobia and the last rule is too not be embarrassed when your called to attention about racism, se...
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...ses of the erotic: the erotic as power” she speaks of fighting the enemy, and how women need power in order to fight the power comes from erotic. She explains how the erotic has been mistaken for the opposite of power. When Lorde speaks of erotic she means knowing how you feel and living on those feeling now being in the dark with those feelings.
In “performative acts” Judith Butler argues gender identity a success induced by social sanction, she argues that we are not born into gender, gender is created by your performance. She always believes gender is a topic that should not be binary, the fact that gender is binary makes people think they only have two choices and thinking they don’t have their own choice to make. When the author says performance he means performance by acts of the body. Butler reflects gender as a coming from and spirit within the inside of you
...he importance of gender performance. Devor says how gender identity is a lifelong process, a central means of developing one’s self and a key to becoming a member of society (140,143). Since Devor’s essay teaches about early stages of life and development, we can then see that when Messner and Montez de Oca continue on the topic of gendering one’s self and performance of gender as a means of acceptance (405), it is true that finding your gender identity is a lifelong process.
Throughout history, the black woman has always had a multitude of responsibilities thrust upon her shoulders. This was never truer than for southern black women in the period between 1865 and 1885. In this span of twenty years, these women were responsible for their children, their husbands, supporting their families, their fight for freedom as black citizens and as women, their sexual freedom, and various other issues that impacted their lives. All of these aspects of the black woman’s life defined who she was. Each of her experiences and battles shaped the life that she lived, and the way she was perceived by the outside world.
Butler, Judith. "Performative Acts and Gender Constitution: An Essay in Phenomenology and Feminist Theory." Theatre Journal 40.4 (1988): 519-31. The Johns Hopkins University Press. Web. 11 May 2011.
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.
Something Lorde did not try to hide as she says “It is never easy to demand the most out of ourselves, our lives, our work (Blah). One must go farther then they ever have before, naturally letting down their guard so that they can experience the erotic feeling and embrace it. Confusing the impossible with the possible is common, but finding the erotic is something that everyone can be successful at. The erotic opens up the doors of capability and shows all the possibilities it has in store for those who determined enough. The erotic is self empowerment, happiness, excitement, sadness, disappointment and everything in between. It is exactly what everyone believes it to be and so much
Butler, Judith. Ed. Case, Sue-Ellen. "Performative Acts and Gender Constitution." Performing Feminisms: Feminist Critical Theory and Theatre. Baltimore: The Johns Hopkins University Press, 1990.
A quote by Darlene Hine, an African American historian that has studied violence, particularly intra-group violence against Black women, sums up the experience of Black women provides some insight as to why it has been and still continues to be difficult for Black women to protect their bodily rights and seek the justice deserved:
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.
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 ...
perspective on the concept, arguing that gender is a cultural performance. Her careful reading of
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.
Lorber uses a very effective example of “doing gender” of a man who carried a female child in a stroller dressing the child in boyish clothes. The man was stared at and people around him found it really shocking that he was performing the role of a woman (because g...
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
In the challenge to classify and distinguish the sex, gender and gender preference, Judith Butler `s theory about perforsmative acts in her Performative Acts and Gender Consititution: An Essay in Phenomenology and Feminist Theory is very important for us to understand queer. She purposed, the acts of homosexual, bisexual or heterosexual are not a settled identity; it is an act that is constantly changing like a actor. In her opinion, there is no real gender in this society. Gender is a substructure for repetitive act that is histrionic.