PHIL 2550G University of Western Ontario WK2 Judith Butler & Her Book Gender Trouble Essay

Reflection Question for this Week: In your opinion, what is the most damaging construction of gender that the dominant heterosexual, social-political structures of power imposes upon us (as subjects), and what gender performatives would you see as being the best way to subvert this impositions? And explain why you feel such and be sure to detail the gender performatives.   **An alternative to this reflection question is to pick a celebrity or culture icon that you feel has gender performatives that have been powerful and effective at subverting damaging constructions of gender tied to the dominant heterosexual, social-political structures of power. [You must detail what the damaging constructions are and why they are damaging and to who, then who this chosen person is and what gender performatives they do and how they effectively subvert the dominant heterosexual, social-political structures of power.]

Links shown in the lecture:

Trailer for ‘I am Divine’:

https://youtu.be/gyt_JM7fnPI

Divine walking:

PHIL 2550: Sex or Gender In
the Digital Age
Week 2:
Judith Butler on Sex/Gender
Agenda
•
Discuss Section 1 of Gender Trouble (1990, 2006)
•
Discuss essay by Butler: ‘Sex and Gender in Simone
de Beauvoir’s Second Sex’
•
Continuing themes introduced last week on Sex/
Gender – she puts forward the idea that both are
constructions
•
Gender as performativity
Some Debate about Sex & Gender
•
Essentialists of Sex/Gender = Rooted in Aristotle; The view
that there is some attribute that is fixed, intrinsic, universally
shared, innate that make women & men what they are;
Biological or psychological features observed in bodies &
behaviour
•
Heavily criticized by those who are Conventionalists of Sex/
Gender (i.e., social constructionists)
•
Conventionalists of Sex/Gender = Rooted in Beauvoir; Sex is
biological & gender is socially constructed by institutions &
agents in our culture
Debates about the fix
•
Conventionalists of sex/gender = The fix involves adjusting the
social structure & norms to be less oppressive & more equal; Keep
the same categories but renovate them, make them more fluid
•
Abolitionists of sex/gender = They hold the above but for them the
fix would involve getting rid of gender altogether because the
gender ontologically depends on oppressive social conditions;
Changing the social conventions to end oppression would mean
the end of gender; Feminism’s political goal should be doing away
with gender
•
Butler is in the conventionalist group – she wants to expand the
ideas of sex/gender
Judith Butler
(1956 -)
“…gender is a kind of imitation for which there is
no original; in fact, it is a kind of imitation that
produces the very notion of the original as an
effect and consequence of the imitation
itself…what they imitate is a phantasmic ideal of
heterosexual identity…gay identities work neither
to copy nor emulate heterosexuality, but rather, to
expose heterosexuality as an incessant and
panicked imitation of its own naturalized
idealization. That heterosexuality is always in the
act of elaborating itself is evidence that it is
perpetually at risk, that it, that it ‘knows’ it’s own
possibility of becoming undone”
Butler Overview
•
Most famous books: Gender Trouble: Feminism and the
Subversion of Identity (1990) & Bodies That Matter: On
The Discursive Limits of Sex (1993)
•
Best know for her theory of Gender Performativity,
challenging conventional & accepted notions of gender
•
Criticisms of social constructions about sex & gender
•
Draws on existential & phenomenological philosophies, as
well as feminist & social-political philosophies
Butler Gender Trouble Overview
•
Name is a reference to 1974 John Waters’ film “Female Trouble”
which starred Divine, a famous drag Queen
•
Critically discusses the ideas of thinkers like Freud, Beauvoir,
Irigaray, Kristeva, & Foucault
•
Main argument: the seemingly natural coherence of categories of
sex, gender, sexuality, etc. (e.g., masculine gender &
heterosexual desire in male bodies) is culturally constructed
through the repeating of stylized acts
•
Challenges the biological accounts of binary sex & how feminists
have used terms like sex & gender
Butler, Gender Trouble: Ch. One, Part. 1
•
Category of ‘women’ is the subject of feminism
•
Problem = ‘women’ is not a stable category; it is also unclear what the
criteria is defining category & it varies across culture
•
Problem of defining subjects – those with definite identities, interests,
experiences; Subjects as represented & regulated by the law but do
they exist apart from it? Not a natural existence
•
These two problems are interrelated because they both have identity
issues – who/what are they?
•
Identity & subjecthood are political – constructed, regulated, contained
in the power structures of society; Not a natural existences
Butler, Gender Trouble: One, Part. 1
•
Feminists must not universalize these concepts – there are changes
across race, class, sexuality, etc.
•
p. 6 – 7
•
“By conforming to a requirement of representational politics that
feminism articulate a stable subject, feminism thus opens itself up to
charges of gross misrepresentation.”
•
“Is the construction of the category of women as a coherent and
stable subject an unwitting regulation and reification of gender
relations? …To what extent does the category of women achieve
stability and coherence only in the context of the heterosexual matrix?”
Butler, Gender Trouble: Ch. One, Part. 2
•
Feminism has classically seen sex as fixed biology & gender as
the construction arising out of culture
•
But this implies a stable system of Sex/Gender/Sexuality as well
as the binary – feminists are upholding this system
•
Butler argues that sex, like gender, is a category constructed
through discourses (science, history) according to certain
political & social interests
•
If sex is constructed, maybe there is no difference between it &
gender? Gender is the means by which sex is constructed and
presented as ‘natural’ (nature’s design before structures)
Butler, Gender Trouble: Ch. One, Part. 3
•
Investigate construction of gender to reveal it is sex: that the
body “come[s] into being in and through the mark(s) of
gender.”
•
Determinism of gender meanings inscribed on anatomically
different bodies & those bodies are passive recipients of
inescapable cultural laws; Culture, not biology, is destiny
here
•
Beauvoir: “One is not born, but, rather, becomes a woman”
but this suggests in ‘becoming’ a degree of agency/volition
in the construction?
Butler, Gender Trouble: One, Part 3
•
Discourse on gender presupposes & preempts the possibilities
imaginable & realizable concerning gender configurations within
the culture
•
Not all gendered possibilities are open – boundaries/limits exist &
these condition experience; also set limits on language & analysis
•
Limits set by the dominant culture &/or social politics, predicated
on binary structures & these appear as the ‘language of universal
rationality’
•
Constraints = what that language constitutes as the imaginable
domain of gender
Butler, Gender Trouble: One, Part 3
•
Social scientists see gender as Signification: existing in
relation to another; the feminine in relation to the masculine;
Cultural Interpretation of the body means gender consists of
the social meanings that are assumed about sex
•
Beauvoir: only female gender is marked – the Other that is
not universal person, she is the negative
•
Irigaray: Women are a paradox = in a language constitute
they are unrepresentable; linguistic absence because of a
culture that expresses mostly male attitudes, reinforces male
dominance (phallogocentric)
Butler, Gender Trouble: One, Part 3
•
Irigaray: Female sex is the subject that is not one; she is not a
lack or marked as Other; masculine & feminine cannot both be
represented in closed signification where the masculine is both
signifier & signified
•
Beauvoir argues female body is marked within masculinist
discourse, masculine is the unmarked, universal personhood;
Irigaray argues female body is marked off from domain of
signifiable, she can’t be represented
•
Feminist inquiry into gender is problematically circular;
Consequence of these disagreements about meaning of gender
establishes the need to radically rethink these categories
Butler, Gender Trouble: Ch. One, Part 4
•
Debates of essentialism raise questions about stability & universality of
female identity & masculinist oppression
•
Feminists make mistakes of totalizing – assume one set of experiences
encompass ‘women’; bad consequences
•
Butler proposes a model of ‘Coalitional Politics’ – an assemblage of
positions that cannot be prearranged or figured out in advance; They are in
flux & flexible, inclusive, unstable
•
Coalitions do not assume solidarity/unity as a prerequisite for political action
•
Interrogate the power relations that condition & limit discourse possibilities;
Acknowledge fragmentation, incompleteness, & anti-foundationalist
approaches
Butler, Gender Trouble: One, Part 4
•
A group can come into being & dissolve depending on the
concrete practices that constitute them
•
Coalitional feminist politics would require no unity among
women but only loosely overlapping connections & relations
•
Feminist coalitions should aim to subvert, not consolidate,
entrenched norms concerning femininity
•
Coalitional politics avoids the problem of identity politics
Butler, Gender Trouble: Ch. One, Part 5
•
Into metaphysics of substance – what is identity? what is the
nature of beings with ‘substance’
•
Identity, as the quality that designates personhood, is inseparable
from gender
•
Coherence of a stable identity is threatened by beings whose
gender is not culturally intelligible – i.e., those who do not follow the
hegemonic binary (i.e., Non-Binary folks; Queer folks)
•
Intelligibility = the types of identities thought possible by a culture;
Heterosexual normativity/systems render what is intelligible & must
be conformed to (& what is not intelligible & thus cannot exist/
impossible); Culture limits what can exist!
Butler, Gender Trouble: One, Part 5
•
Subjects are said to have a gender core – a stable identity of
sex, aka biological & natural; Butler contends it is all
constructed
•
Butler = gender is neither a solid, static thing or set of
qualities, but rather it is performative — a doing that
produces a series of effects that consolidate an impression
of being a man or woman
•
Over time performed expressions of gender give rise to the
appearance of solid identity
Butler, Gender Trouble: Ch. One, Part 6
•
Being a woman = a process of becoming a constructing; not a fixed
substance
•
Wittig = language helps create the illusion of the category of sex, a
genital-based sexuality that renders women defined by their reproductive
abilities & parts; But language CAN change; Need for diffuse sexuality
instead of genital-based
•
Social-Political structures of power give rise to & regulate process of
identity, through discourse of heterosexism & phallgocentrism; Foucault
says power & sexuality are coextensive
•
A sexuality or gender identity cannot exist outside of the field of power,
but gender as a process is itself alterable
Butler, Gender Trouble: One, Part 6
•
The process of ‘doing gender’ can cause confusion &
dissonance in the social-political discourses – it has the ability to
subvert or displace this field of power
•
Butler investigates the ways this discourse has produced the
illusion of ‘real’ binary gender
•
Power structures have an interest in maintaining the binary, its
appearance as natural; patriarchy benefits
•
Butler wants to make ‘gender trouble’ – explore the supposed
fixed categories of identity to show the constructed illusions at
work
Comments? Reflections?
Thoughts?
Discussion Questions
•
Do you agree that gender is a performative?
•
Do you agree with her that sex is also constructed?
•
Do you see a relation between gender & being a subject?
•
Does her position truly cause ‘gender trouble’ – given it
was written in 1996, are we seeing the evidence of this?
Butler on Beauvoir
•
Beauvoir’s argument that “one is not born, but rather becomes a
woman”
•
“Becomes” a woman tells us that gender isn’t fixed – it should be
understood as a modality for taking on or realizing possibilities;
An active process of appropriating, interpreting, and
reinterpreting cultural possibilities on the body
•
Active process of constructing ourselves; ‘To BE a woman is to
BECOME a woman’ is an existential project
•
The question is how much do we freely construct ourselves in
this system of norms?
Butler on Beauvoir
•
p. 37: thesis of the article; Butler will show how Beauvoir’s sense
of ‘becoming’ reconciles the internal ambiguity of both project &
construct; It is both choice & acculturation
•
In keeping ‘become’ ambiguous Beauvoir formulates gender as
a corporeal locus of cultural possibilities both received (already
created) & innovated (those we freely make)
•
Choosing your gender is understood as the embodiment of
possibilities within a network of deeply entrenched cultural norms
•
Freedom in the determinacy; Agency in a preexisting world
Butler on Beauvoir
•
Ontological puzzle – how do we become?
•
If we are always already a gender (born into a system of it,
raised in it) so how do we choose something we are? This
seems to posit the idea of a choosing agent prior to it all,
which is a Cartesian ghost (an egological structure prior to
language & culture – consciousness); But this is hard to verify
•
If Beauvoir means choosing as a kind of volitional acts, she
can’t have a Cartesian ghost – becoming a gender is not the
same as becoming our bodies
Butler on Beauvoir
•
Beauvoir on the body – critique & radicalization of Sartre where
she sees to get past the Cartesian dualism
•
She transposes his arguments of mind & body to sex & gender the tension she speaks of is not that of being in & beyond a body,
but between the natural & acculturated body; this move is from
sex to gender is a move from one kind of embodiment to another
•
To exist one’s body is to, in some part, become one’s gender
•
Gender is not natural; we never know or can know our body as
pure & simple; Never know sex outside of gender; Lived sex is
always gendered
Butler on Beauvoir
•
We do not become our gender from a place prior to culture
or embodiment; but strictly it happens within those terms
•
There is no linear progression of gender or certain moment in
time where it is fixed in form – it is an originating activity
incessantly taking place
•
Gender is a way of organizing past & future cultural norms,
situating oneself with respect to these & actively living one’s
body with them in the world
•
How do we choose it? What kind of choice is it?
Butler on Beauvoir
•
Prereflective choice – tacit, spontaneous, quasi knowledge; not
wholly conscious = it is one we make & only later realize we have
made it
•
Becoming a gender is impulsive yet mindful process of interpreting
culture sanctions, taboos, prescriptions; not at a moment’s notice
•
The choice to assume a certain aesthetic on the body or a certain
size/shape assumes there is a world of established corporeal
styles – you just organize them anew
•
Gender is a tacit project to renew one’s cultural history on one’s
terms – not a task, it is one we have been endeavouring all along
Butler on Beauvoir
•
Oppressive gender norms persist only by being taken up & given life
over & over; Tacit consent of these systems through individual strategies
that are more or less disguised = socialization
•
The burden of freedom gender brings – social existence requires
unambiguous gender affinity; if existence is always gendered, then to try
to live outside this puts one’s very existence into question
•
When we see we don’t have to be the genders we have become we are
confronted by the burden of choice intrinsic to living as a man or woman
– the social constraints are heavy!
•
E.g., accepting motherhood as an institution rather than instinct; The
pressures trans individuals have after coming out
Butler on Beauvoir
•
One ‘becomes a gender’ does not say in what way
•
Woman as The Other, set up through a Hegelian dialectic: man seeks
disembodiment that is self-deluding & unsatisfactory
•
Man as self-definition sets up woman as the Other; as the self-identical
he is the “I” consciousness/mind – The One (a disembodied self); Woman
is corporeally itself (determined, only embodied self), the body as Other women are only their bodies
•
Body as Situation: twofold meaning – (1) a locus of cultural
interpretations, it is a material reality which is already located & defined in
a context, (2) the situation of taking up & interpreting the received cultural
interpretations; Body is the field of interpretative possibilities (p. 45)
“The body is not a thing, it is a situation: it is our
grasp on the world and our sketch of our project”
Simone de Beauvoir
Butler on Beauvoir
•
A nexus of culture & choice – a dialectic of interpreting anew
historical interpretations on the flesh; existing a body is about
personal ways to taking up & reinterpreting cultural norms
•
If gender is a way of existing one’s body, & one’s body is a
situation of cultural possibilities received & reinterpreted … then
gender is cultural & socially constructed
•
(p. 45) The notions of natural body & natural sex are rather
suspect
•
Gender is no longer dictated by anatomy, & anatomy does not
pose limits on the possibilities of gender
Butler on Beauvoir
•
Body is an occasion for meaning; it is non-natural – the idea of body as a
natural fact doesn’t really exist in human experience
•
Defining the natural body prior to its entrance in culture is impossible we are situated & cannot step out of culture to make an objective
assertion & we are always embodied
•
Body is always in a state of becoming; never self-identical phenomenon,
until death
•
Body as non-natural asserts an absolute difference between sex &
gender & questions if they ought to be linked at all
•
Gender seems less a function of anatomy & more about its possible uses
Butler on Beauvoir
•
Beauvoir does not take her argument about body as situation to its full
consequences – Wittig & Foucault do, they release gender from sex in
ways she couldn’t imagine
•
(p. 47) If existing one’s gender means that one is tacitly accepting or
reworking cultural norms that govern the interpretation of one’s body,
then that makes gender the place where the binary restricting it can be
subverted; we can innovate
•
Seeing gender as historical constructs indicates that we can see the
binary system as not ontologically necessary
•
To become a gender means both to submit to a cultural situation & to
create one on the body one already wears
Comments? Reflections? Thoughts?
Week 2 Notes
•
•
•
•
•
•
Background: Title of the book inspired by John Water’s 1974 Film Female Trouble,
staring Divine. This book was revolutionary in 1990 when the book was published and
are still shocking to many today. Gender Trouble’s impact reached far beyond academia
and is considered a foundational text of queer theory. Because of its groundbreaking
approach to understanding the very nature of identity, Gender Trouble has remained
relevant ever since its publication.
Inspired by Foucault, Wittig, Rubin, Beauvoir, Lacan, Irigaray, Freud
Gender Trouble calls out the notion that categories of sex, gender and sexuality have a
natural coherence (aka the hegemonic binary) and she argues they are culturally
constructed through a repetition of styled acts; These repeated, stylized acts establish the
appearance of an essential ‘core’ to gender. But, she will argue, that it shows sex, gender
and sexuality are performative. She challenges the biological accounts of binary sex.
Gender Perfomatives are not voluntary, instead they are constructed (often coercively)
onto a subject, within regulative discourses. These frameworks determine in advance
what possibilities exist for sex, gender, and sexuality – what is permitted to appear as
‘natural’.
She wanted to address issues that threatened feminism’s ability to take political action on
behalf of women.
Foucault terms: Subject – they are placed in relations of power; the one subjected.
Subjection is a process whereby one becomes a subject & is subjected through discourse.
Juridico-Discursive Power – is a top-down exercised power that dominates, subjugates,
and renders a subject subservient. Power expressed through laws and legal structures,
traditionally exercised and held by a king or ruler.
Chapter 1: Subjects of Sex/Gender/Desire
1. Part 1: “Women’ as the subject of feminism
• The category of “women” is the subject of feminism. Feminism seeks to secure
women’s representation in society and politics. But the notion of a stable,
universal category of “women,” as well as the very notion of a “subject” under the
law, are now open to question.
• It has become unclear what criteria defined the category of “women,” the subject
of feminism’s struggle for opportunity and representation.
• The notion of a “subject,” represented and regulated by the law, is troublesome.
She puts forth the premise that this very subject cannot exist apart from the law,
because the law itself defines or constructs the subject, which it then seeks to
regulate. This is a problem of the “ontological integrity of the subject before the
law.” Having created a “subject,” the juridical structures of power—which
regulate social norms through prohibition—hide the fact that they have done so.
While the “subject” appears to have a natural existence that predates the law, she
claims this to be a “foundationalist fiction.” Butler argues that “subjects” are not
natural but come into being through political forces that then seek to regulate
them. Foucault influence here.
•
•
Assuming there exists a feminist subject, defining this subject is also problematic:
There was also disagreement about what constituted the very idea of a “subject,” a
being with identity for whom representation and opportunity could be sought..
Femininity and the workings of the patriarchy—the social and legal structures that
ensure the domination of men over women—are not universal. Gender roles and
the power structure of patriarchy vary widely across cultures. These experiences
are modified by their intersection with “racial, class, ethnic, sexual, and regional
modalities.” Feminism must not exclude by “universalizing” these concepts.
The response to these problems is not to seek universal criteria for the category of
“women” nor to try to discover a subject that exists outside the law. She sees that
her task is to conduct a “feminist genealogy” = investigate the various ways these
categories have been constructed. This investigation will expose the nature of
these concepts as historical constructions
2. Part 2: The Compulsory order of sex/gender/desire
• Feminism distinguishes between sex and gender: Sex is considered fixed and
biological, while gender is arising out of culture. But this does not imply that
there is necessarily a correlation between male bodies and the masculine gender,
nor between female bodies and the feminine gender. Additionally, not necessary
to assume there are only two genders.
• Here we see the starting of her asserting the equivalence and artificiality of the
identity categories of gender and sex.
• She questions the nature of “sex” and proposes that, like gender, sex is a category
constructed through scientific and historical discourses and according to certain
“political and social interests.” If sex is constructed, then, perhaps there is no
actual distinction between sex and gender. She asserts that gender is the means by
which sex itself is constructed and presented as “prediscursive” or “natural.”
3. Part 3: Gender: the circular ruins of contemporary debate
• How gender is constructed, she now speaks of Beauvoir’s assertions that “one is
not born a woman, but, rather, becomes one” and that “the body is a situation.”
She claims that investigation will show that sex is actually gender, and that the
body “come[s] into being in and through the mark(s) of gender.”
• Some have categorized gender as a relation, not an individual attribute. In this
scheme, the meaning of “feminine” exists only in relation to the meaning of
“masculine.” For Beauvoir and Wittig, the masculine gender is the unmarked
gender of universal personhood. The feminine gender, therefore, is the “marked”
gender that is the other. For Irigaray, the masculine or “phallogocentric” quality of
language presents women not as “marked” or “Other” but as “unrepresentable,” a
“linguistic absence.”
• Phallogocentric: Phallocentric means that something is centered around the
phallus, the symbolic aspect of the penis. Logocentric means that something is
based on logic and language.
• This thread of analysis transitions into Butler’s inquiry into the nature of being,
which she labels “the metaphysics of substance.” i.e., the way subjects—beings
with individual existence, or substance—are constructed within various
discourses.
4. Part 4: Theorizing the binary, the unitary and beyond
• Here she returns to the question of a stable identity category of “women” and
whether this is necessary for feminism to proceed with its goals. Asserts that the
search for such a category has caused lapses into “totalizing,” when feminists
assume that any one set of experiences or attributes can encompass “women.”
This totalizing or universalizing is an error that feminism ought to investigate and
remain on guard against. It’s dangerous – Eurocentric, Colonial, paternalistic and
it sweeps over the individual differences of experience.
• She’s wary of these “identity politics” for their exclusionary nature. She examines
the alternative of “coalitional politics,” where the category of “women” is not
predetermined nor stable. “Identity politics” has caused fragmentation among
feminists. She proposes a new conception of “coalitional politics,” which will
allow for the inclusion of various, shifting, unstable feminine identities. Such a
conception will avoid the problem at the heart of identity politics: the normative
question of what women ought to be. Think of Wittig and the idea of having class
consciousness and individual consciousness.
5. Part 5: Identity, sex, and the metaphysics of substance
• Butler claims that identity, the quality that designates personhood, is inseparable
from gender. The concept of a stable, coherent identity is threatened by the
existence of beings whose gender is not culturally “intelligible.” These
“unintelligible” beings do not exhibit the culturally prescribed alignment between
sex, gender, and sexual desire. This alignment is the heterosexual norm wherein
female sex correlates with feminine gender and a sexual desire for men, and viceversa. The compulsory heterosexuality of the culture requires this gender binary
in order for either gender to be “intelligible.” This gives rise to the idea of a
“gender core,” as a stable identity that belongs to subjects that appears to be
natural but is actually constructed.
• Some have argued that the apparent existence of substantive beings, or subjects, is
an illusion that arises as a consequence of mistaking language for reality. Wittig
undertook a critique of the French language to show how personhood cannot be
designated in language apart from gendered categories.
• Butler asserts that gender is neither a solid thing nor a set of qualities, but it is
rather a performance or a “doing.” Over time, performed expressions of gender
give rise to the appearance of solid identity.
• Gender as performative tells us that it is the illusion of identity, which is
suggested on the body’s surface through performance. This performance that
constitutes gender consists of desire, acts, gestures, and words. It is repeated and
ritualistic. Gender is not an expression of internal essence rather it is produced by
repeated acts. The appearance of internal identity has no existence apart from the
repetition of the acts that constitute it. It is therefore open to subversive forms of
these repetitions. The styles in which gender is performed are regulated and
enforced by culture – the juridical structures and norms.
•
The heterosexual matrix regulates gender, sexual desire, and sex to align with its
goal of reproduction (hegemonic binary). Intelligible gender identities = those that
manifest the standard configuration of these elements. Other configurations =
unintelligible & unacceptable. The illusion that gender is an internal identity
conceals the role of the power structure in producing and policing gender. This
concealment serves to consolidate and maintain the power of the heterosexual
matrix.
6. Part 6: language, power, and the strategies of displacement
• Butler asserts that being a woman is not having a certain fixed substance, rather it
is a “process, a becoming, a constructing.” Wittig = language creates the illusion
of the category of “sex,” rendered culturally as a genital-based sexuality where
women are defined by their reproductive function. Language is open to change,
however. Wittig takes advantage of this in her promotion of diffuse sexuality, or
“polymorphous perversity,” in contrast to the genital-based sexuality that is the
norm.
• The social and political field of power gives rise to and seeks to regulate this
process of identity creation through discourse, in line with its “heterosexism and
phallogocentrism.” Term from Foucault: “sexuality and power are coextensive.”
Therefore, there cannot exist a sexuality or gender identity outside of this field of
power. But because gender is a process, it can be altered. The process of “doing
gender” can use “hyperbole, dissonance, [and] internal confusion” to subvert or
displace the field of power within which it exists.
• In her task of constructing a “genealogy of gender ontology,” Butler investigates
the specific ways in which discourse has produced the illusion of a “real” gender
binary. She also explains these mechanisms in terms of the field of power’s
interest in maintaining this binary and its appearance as a natural, substantive
reality. Her overall goal is to “make gender trouble” by exposing ways these
supposedly fixed categories of identity can be revealed to be constructed illusions.
• The concept of “reification” can aid in understanding this claim. Reification
occurs when an abstract concept or idea takes on the quality of having a fixed,
concrete, reality. An arbitrarily grouped set of elements can be “reified” through
language. Given a word to describe these attributes, they come to seem as if they
were an inevitable, distinct entity. An example of this is the way that body parts
are named and then attached to the idea that they are the source and location of
sexuality and sexual pleasure. These arbitrarily constituted “parts” are then used
as the basis of classifying persons as either male or female. Because sex can be
“seen” on the body, its status as a reified abstraction can be difficult to
understand. However, people could just as arbitrarily be classified on the basis of
other combinations of physical attributes, such as various configurations of hair
color, foot size, and blood type.
• As Wittig points out, bodily pleasure is not inevitably limited to penis and vagina.
But when culture repeatedly identifies these organs as the source and location of
sexual pleasure, other areas of the body tend to fall “silent.” It is not so hard to
imagine a culture where discourse held that sexual pleasure existed in the entire
•
body. Nor is it difficult to imagine how, in such a culture, bodies would “awaken”
and respond sexually to this discursive concept.
Therefore, it is no more natural to designate the arbitrarily-constituted penis and
vagina as the source and location of sexuality than it is inevitable to classify
persons according to the presence of these organs. There is, however, an aim to
this classification scheme and the notion of genital-based sexuality, which
Foucault speaks to. Such classifications are part of society’s aim of ensuring the
reproduction of humans. In a patriarchal society, such classifications also serve to
cement the power of men over women. In other words, such reifications and
classifications are tools of social power rather than natural facts.
Other things she will come to argue and say:
• Parody is a subversive act – so when Divine acts like a woman, what is revealed to the
film goer is that gender is constructed and historically contingent rather than natural.
Gender parody” reveals that the original identity” being mocked is “itself an imitation
without an origin.” Parody not only “deprives hegemonic culture of the claim to
naturalized or essentialist gender identities,” it also extends intelligibility to
configurations of sex, gender, and desire that do not align with the norms produced and
enforced by the heterosexual matrix. This subversive gender parody, such as the example
of drag performance, not only mocks gender, it mocks the very idea of the real, authentic,
or original. Parody that confuses assumptions is subversive. Subversive parody
undermines the gender binary of compulsory heterosexuality because it “compel[s] a
reconsideration of the place and stability” of gender categories.
• Drag, as a subversive parody, also subverts “the distinction between inner and outer
psychic space.” In their subversive aspects, drag and transsexuality create confusion as to
whether the person is man or woman, masculine or feminine. It becomes “unclear how to
distinguish the real from the unreal.” This confusion and blurring of categories leads to
the realization that gender and sex are not natural facts but are naturalized and illusory
structures.
• The Body as Constituted Surface – body is not an inert medium that receives cultural
meanings like a blank canvas. It is an effect of cultural meanings. Anatomical is not fixed
sex. Sex is a culturally constituted designation, like gender, which is naturalized (made to
seem natural) by the discursive power that generates it. The consideration of individuals
whose bodies lie at the margins of what is culturally intelligible and legitimate, reveals
the constructed nature of the categories of the male and female sex.
• She concludes – body is “a surface whose permeability is politically regulated” and “a
signifying practice within a cultural field of gender hierarchy and compulsory
heterosexuality.” The body is a place where the illusion of interior essence, which
includes gender identity, is fabricated and performed.
Butler: Sex & gender in Simone de Beauvoir’s Second Sex
•
•
•
•
•
•
•
•
•
Existential Terminology used here, Sartre & Beauvoir: Freedom, situation, facticity,
lived body, project
Freedom: Existence necessarily involves freedom of thought & action; we have the
ability to be self-conscious & launch ourselves into action; It is the way each one of us
interprets ourselves and our actions/behaviour; We have the freedom to choose an action
& to act on that choice; My self-consciousness is not only an awareness of who I am now
but who I shall become – who I become is my free creation; It is about agency &
autonomy more than doing as you please (self-legislator), because our actions help create
our essence & character; but because we are free we are also responsible for our actions
& how they impact others
Project: A self-made plan for who we will be in the future, that which commits us to
activity; More than a goal it is the projection of yourself into the future; It motivates you
to actions and goals, it is a self-defined purpose; You can change your project at any time
Lived Body: A unified idea of a physical body acting and experiencing a specific sociocultural context, we all live a specific context, also called body-in-situation; Situation is
the produce of Facticity (the material and factual things about your body like age, height,
race, ability, size, health, sex; a person lives the material facts of their body in a given
social environment) and Freedom (What you choose to do through actions and create
projects with that material body in a given social environment) – when we engage with
others in our environment we are in Situation, the way that the facts of embodiment,
social and physical environment appear in light of projects a person has. Beauvoir
critiques Sartre in not understanding that women experience all of this very differently –
he was gender-blind to the fact that women are not free like me, women cannot create
projects just like men, and women’s situation is very different because of this.
The Body as Constituted Surface – body is not an inert medium that receives cultural
meanings like a blank canvas. It is an effect of cultural meanings. Anatomical is not fixed
sex. Sex is a culturally constituted designation, like gender, which is naturalized (made to
seem natural) by the discursive power that generates it. The consideration of individuals
whose bodies lie at the margins of what is culturally intelligible and legitimate, reveals
the constructed nature of the categories of the male and female sex.
Cartesian Dualism is the mind-body problem and often asserts that we can know
consciousness more certainly than the body; Conscious mind is seat of rationality and is
incorporeal, and this takes priority over the fleshy feeling corporeal body; Existence in
the world is of mind and body, and existentialists tried to find ways to overcome the
Cartesian legacy to speak of experience
One is not born, but rather becomes a woman carries with it an element of choice; it is an
active process where we construct ourselves in light of cultural histories and meanings.
Balance of choosing & acculturation
How do we become? If we are always already a gender – from our birth – then how is
there a moment to make a choice? If we think of a subjectivity/ego as pre-culture and prelanguage then we have a Cartesian ghost, and that gets you nowhere because you cannot
prove it. Can’t have a Cartesian ghost.
•
•
•
•
•
•
•
•
•
•
•
•
Beauvoir’s critique and radicalizing of Sartre’s body is her way of getting rid of this
ghost and the dualism with it
His arguments for mind-body she transforms into sex-gender in a world of free choice
and cultural norms; the body is seen as both a natural object and an acculturated one
Gender is not nature – we never know our body as without gender or sex as a pure &
simple body
There isn’t a place where we become gender – it happens within culture and the body; It
doesn’t happen at one specific time, it is incessantly taking place
Gender = organizing past & future culture norms and situation yourself with respect to
these, and then living your body in the world
What kind of choice is this? Prereflective one! It is tacit, spontaneous, and not wholly
conscious – we understand we’ve made it later on
Becoming a gender is both impulsive and mindful process of interpreting cultural norms,
taboos, prescriptions
Your choices assume that the world contains established styles/modes to choose from –
you just organize them anew
Oppressive gender norms exist and keep existing because people take them up and give
them life – tacit consent to these systems of patriarchy that are easily disguised in
socialization
Gender brings a burden of freedom – social existence prefers an adherence to gender, and
if you try to go outside that you put your very existence into question. When we see we
don’t have to become the genders we are we are confronted by the burden of what that
means – you feel how heavy the social constraints are when you think about changing
your ideas/actions of gender. So, if you are a woman and you don’t want to be a mother,
you feel backlash against this as if you are putting your whole femininity into question
and turning your back on it. Motherhood is seen as a natural instinct of women (rather
than a social institution); trans persons feel pressure as they come out and transition from
one gender to another that they are – not only the shame of leaving one, but then the
pressure to adhere to the transition properly & accurately
How one becomes a gender isn’t specified – Butler looks at Hegel and his dialectic
between slave and master. Man sets himself up as the definition, the One, the
Consciousness/mind – he is higher and better than corporality; Woman is his opposite,
she is the Other, the corporeal itself. His self-definition requires her to be his contrast.
She is really his own alienated self (the body). This established the interdependence of
the disembodied man and the corporeally determined woman – his status hinges on hers.
But this means women have a monopoly on the body sphere. He is the cartesian man –
more mind than body, he is not really his sex – he is beyond it. He inhabits a body
convinced he is not a body – his body must appear to him as alien, a body not his. The
body is Other. He makes the logical assumption that others are their bodies – he is mind,
women are bodies. Women’s existence and essence becomes this redundancy. This IS the
limits of the cartesian dualism and the view of autonomy that is largely masculine gender
norms based. Disembodiment is denial.
Body as situation is twofold: a locus of cultural interpretations, it is material reality
already located & determined in a cultural context, and the situation of taking up and
interpreting the received cultural interpretations – the body is a field for these
possibilities to be understood and acted out
•
•
•
•
•
•
•
The body is nexus of culture and choice – we take in and interpret cultural and historical
information and then decide how to exercise it – keep the same or innovate it? It is
personal and creative
Natural body and natural sex are suspect – if gender isn’t dictated by anatomy, and
anatomy doesn’t limit gender possibilities … then they seem not connected
Body is an occasion for meaning – it is not a natural object; We cannot see the body prior
to culture to define it, we also live in bodies so we cannot get outside of them to
understand a neutral body
Bodies are always in a state of becoming – never static or self-identical (until death)
Gender seems to be a function of the possible uses of anatomy
Beauvoir doesn’t take this argument to its consequences, but Wittig and Foucault do –
gender as a cultural and historical construct means that the binary restricting it has no
natural necessity or reason to be. Becoming a gender can be subversive to the binary
system!
To become a gender means to both submit to a cultural situation and to create one on
your body