ipl-logo

Gender Trouble By Judith Butler Summary

1105 Words5 Pages

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 She says that this definition is outdated but still reflected by the world’s treatment of gender as a set of binary categories, this means that when we are born we are distinctively placed into one of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

Show More
Related
896 Words | 4 Pages

Her claim is that if we generally refuse to use the word “woman” in the accommodation of others, the concept of cisgendered woman is erased. The author uses pathos in her article by stating the fact that Rowling's tweet “excludes trans men, non-binary and gender fluid people by emphasizing the idea that only cisgender women can menstruate.” (Rogers,par.7). This prompts her audience to possibly understand the common feeling of exclusion. With Rogers using this controversial tweet as an example at the beginning of her article, she introduces her claim that gender and sex are not the same thing.

Read More
459 Words | 2 Pages

In Butler’s theory, she introduces the idea that each woman’s feminism is her

Read More
1522 Words | 7 Pages

The Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy defines identity politics as an “aim to secure the political freedom of a specific constituency marginalized within its larger context.

Read More
1611 Words | 7 Pages

There is no question that women have struggled over many years to be seen as equals by their male counterparts. Years of struggle and oppression continued throughout time, but the oppression took different forms over the course of history. Susan Glaspell wrote, “Trifles” which explores a woman’s status in society during the 1920s and the political leanings that perverted society at the time. The play demonstrates how women were subjected to mental abuse and viewed as intellectually inferior as dictated by American society and politics. “Trifles” exposes how political leanings in the government favored and enabled a patriarchal society as well as displaying how the Women’s Rights movement was beginning to combat these prejudices.

Read More
1635 Words | 7 Pages

Traditionally structured gender roles place both men and women into very strict categories. However, as we move into the future this way of thinking becomes increasingly archaic. Thinking of such things in such black and white terms gives one a narrow point of view and places people in categories which they do not fit. In Octavia Butler’s Dawn and William Gibson’s Neuromancer the ideas of the feminine gender role are redefined.

Read More
1967 Words | 8 Pages

Tran is a college student at Portland University, she focuses on two books that shows how society portray gender and sexuality. In her essay, Tran explains about one of the book, which is Abandon your Tedious Search by Kate Bornstein. Bornstein was born as a but, male but decided that living as a male was not the right lifestyle for her, so she became a female. Tran mentions that Bornstein was reciting eight golden rules of the genders to the readers from Studies in Ethnomethodology and was mocking it as she gave her opinion on those rules. Tran said, “Rule six, everyone must be classified as a member of one gender or another (Bornstein 49).

Read More
996 Words | 4 Pages

Misogyny in The Female We all enjoy the freedoms we have as American citizens and part of it is expression of oneself. Today we are so busy with self image and politics one may forget how fortunate and privileged one might be. In the Handmaid’s Tale by Margaret Atwood and Scarlett Letter by Nathaniel Hawthorne the society is misogynistic and women are oppressed. The sexism and misogyny within the society has pressured women to internalize the and truly believe in an unequal society.

Read More
742 Words | 3 Pages

According to Eastern Kentucky University on women and gender studies, “feminism is the issue of equality based on gender, gender expression, gender identity, sex, and sexuality as understood through social theories and political activism”. Feminism

Read More
978 Words | 4 Pages

She suggests that women need to reclaim their own sexuality and create a new “language” to describe it, not including anything male wise. In “Bodily Inscriptions, Performative Subversions” from Gender Trouble, Judith Butler challenges the idea that gender is not just an aspect of an individual, but rather an aspect performed by an individual. Butler opens up new possibilities for the execution of gender through which she explains that it is inscribed into our bodies through various practices, such as our clothing, makeup, or any forms of body modifications. Butler believes that gender is a concept that is continually being created and destroyed by both social interactions and cultural standards. Butler's theories have influenced how society today thinks about gender and sexuality.

Read More
738 Words | 3 Pages

In our daily lives, we as modern individuals can be seen drifting through each day, determined to make it past the dreaded 24 hours of school, work, or anything within our daily lives. And as omniscient threats linger in the back, law enforcement brutality, political injustices, world war tensions, and large business corporations growth, we simply ignore them. Why? Because we are so determined to reach the end of each minute of the day, worrying about our appearances, our relationships status, and whether or not we will fail our next midterm. And as all those “small things” become background noise to our own selfish worries, they continue to collide and create deeper friction, allowing enough potential for a catastrophe, something that we

Read More
663 Words | 3 Pages

She feels pressure from the labels society affiliates with being a woman. She longs for the freedom of masculinity, saying “My brothers, no matter what else might befall them, would remain men”(Smith, 3). Unlike her, they would not be defined by their ability to have children or their hormones. She does not want to be seen as someone who fits the traditional standards and spends most of her life fighting against femininity. When she was young she thought “I’d rather be a brain in a jar than a ‘natural woman’.(Smith 7)”

Read More
1870 Words | 8 Pages

The Impact of Culture and Gender Roles Heather Richardson-Barker Drexel University Society has clearly defined boundaries between what is considered to be male or female. The development of an individual’s gender role is formed by interactions with those in close proximity. Society constantly tells us how we should look, act and live based on gender, as well as the influence of family, friends and the media have a tremendous impact on how these roles are formed and the expected behavior of each gender role. The term Gender, as defined by the United Nations, includes the psychological, social, cultural, and behavioral characteristics associated with being female or male. It further defines acceptable

Read More
1690 Words | 7 Pages

Gender is something that is brought to the attention of people well before people are even brought into the world. Take for instance, when a woman finds out that she is pregnant and is about to have a child. The first question that that women is asked is “What are you having?” In doing this we are automatically emphasizing the importance of being able to identify whether or not to buy “boy” things or “girl” things. As a society we deem it important for each sex to practice a set of “norms” of how to behave via that sex.

Read More
1379 Words | 6 Pages

From the very beginning of our lives, a majority of us are told or taught upon by cues on how to act according to our gender. Saying that if one wants to perform gender right, than girls should act a certain way, while boys act another. In,“Night to His Day,” Judith Lorber discuses how the formation of gender begins, “For the individual, gender construction starts with the assignment to a sex category on the basis of what the genitalia look like at birth” (Lober 1994:55). Solely based off the genitalia, it will be determined if the child is a boy or a girl; from their parents will dress their child in a certain way to make that gender prevalent to an outsider.

Read More
1093 Words | 5 Pages

Although some people believe that nature affects the gender identity, others argue that, based on the education an individual receives, it is actually nurture. For example, John Moore, a teacher at a female-only school, says, “My findings suggest that, in some senses, the single-sex school is strongly feminist” (Moore, 2005). On the other hand, many societies teach the children gender stereotypes to try and limit them from becoming against what the society feels is appropriate. Gender roles or stereotypes are “a set of qualities, behaviors, and attitudes that are considered appropriate for males and females based on their biological sex” (Whalen & Maurer-Starks, 2008). Most of the time, these stereotypes are taught and explained to the children in the early stages of learning, since as mentioned above, gender identity is most likely detected after the child is two years old.

Read More

More about Gender Trouble By Judith Butler Summary

Related Topics

Open Document