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In Judith Butler’s Undoing Gender, she examines normative conceptions of sexuality and gender, in doing so she also suggests that those conceptions can then be undone. Butler’s undoing is an ethic argument that attempts to appeal to the conscience of the reader. With this understanding can Butler’s undoing hold up when argued within a religious context? To better contextualize undoing in religion it is Mary Daly’s The Church and the Second Sex that may offer some clarity. Ultimately, it is the intention of this paper to explore undoing gender within religion.

Gender within the framework of Butler’s work is essentially independent of biological sex and is recognized as an act of doing. This doing is the performance of these gender roles (Butler, 2). Gender dictates that value must be placed on one’s ability to adhere to predetermined roles. For a gendered society to function there must be a hierarchical structure based on one’s ability to maintain and perform prescribed gender roles. Those who fit the gender mold retain their full humanity while those who do not become less human.

Fear of displacement in the hierarchy, gender roles leave humans desiring recognition of their stability in their gender role and as a legitimate social being. Those whose chosen gender roles or sexuality leave them outside the gender binary are considered less than human. Being deprived of one’s humanity along with the deprivation of recognition makes life “unlivable” as Butler puts it. “…Without some recognizability I cannot live. But I may also feel that the terms by which I am recognized make life unlivable.” (Butler, 4)

Mary Daly, a feminist philosopher and Catholic theologian writes The Church and the Second Sex as a critique of the Catholic Churc...

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...x in 1968 decades before Butler’s Undoing Gender. The Church and the Second Sex is written in the midst of the reemergence of the feminist movement. Still relatively early in her career Daly considers herself—at that time—a Christian feminist or one who criticizes the Church from within the faith.

The Church and the Second Sex when supplemented with Butler’s contemporary language in Undoing Gender allows for Daly’s ideas to be helpful in current gender politics. Butler’s undoing can in turn, can be understood within the context of religion.

Daly essentially rejects many of the same Christian feminist beliefs that once guided her work. However, Daly’s arc from Christian feminism to a more radical feminism that in essence deems Christianity as irredeemably sexist, does not deduct from its usefulness as a tool in which one can contextualize Butler’s undoing of gender