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Gender Trouble By Judith Butler Summary

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Judith Butler is an American philosopher and feminist who in her book Gender Trouble: Feminism and the subversion of identity, explore the idea whether we are assigned our gender or do we perform it based on what values we have learnt. She seeks to radically reconceptualize, challenge and help alter our ideas on how we understand gender and sex. She starts off by saying that existing feminist movement are limited in how they define gender. She says that this definition is outdated but still reflected by the world’s treatment of gender as a set of binary categories, this means that when we are born we are distinctively placed into one of the two categories i.e. male of female and these categories define how we behave.

When we think of gender …show more content…

Rather, feminism does not have an actual subject. This leads her into a discussion of the relationship between sex and gender. Butler believes that sex and gender are culturally constructed. She believes that the two cannot be separated and she talks about them together. Many individuals are born 'sexed ' in that they have a biological form, but what relationship does this bear to gender, she then worries about the very idea of gender, what its origin is, to what extent it is connected to sex. She says gender is performed we act it out and it’s not part of our nature. She also believes that masculinity and femininity are so constructed attributes. An example when a baby is born if it’s a …show more content…

In fact these things are a result of a repetitive behavior. This repetitive behavior is our gender roles, the one we play in society. The reason we play our given roles is because we want to fit in society and felt left out. We see that the society we live is the least bit tolerant and are very quick to judge. If a boy like to dress up or wear makeup or even cry people in society laugh and make fun of him and use harsh words against them an individual cannot be his or her true self in society because being your true self comes at a cost. It’s like society is a stage and the people living in it have a certain choreographed part to play and if someone changes that choreography they are simply cut off from society.
Identity politics relies on creating a collective self concept for a usually discriminated group of people. It usually seeks to what they are.
Butlers says that our body parts cannot define our gender or our sex. There should be a change in the way gender and identity is seen and perceived by society, because after all it is society that has made the groupings and expects everyone to fit in a particular category.
"The very subject of women is no longer understood in stable or abiding

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