Magale Hernandez SOCY 105B—Kristin Miller Paper #3 Foucault & Butler on the ‘Gay Gene’ This paper aims to explain how Michel Foucault and Judith Butler would respond to Simon Copland’s critique of the “Born this way” argument used by queer persons to justify their sexual identity. Rather than supporting its creation or reproduction, Foucault supports the termination of identity. He sees identity as a form of suppression and a way of exercising power over people and preventing them from moving outside fixed boundaries. “Discourse transmits and produces power; it reinforces it, but also undermines and exposes it, renders it fragile and makes it possible to thwart’ (101). By saying this Foucault hopes we recognize that power is not just a negative, …show more content…
Foucault suggests scientific discourse, such as the creation of confessions, are not fundamentally liberating. By saying this Foucault implies that the idea of confession as being therapeutic is not a fact, but a construction of our culture. Other cultures might think of this demand for confession as coercive rather than liberating. Scientia sexualis is used generally in contradiction to ars ultimately claiming that science presumably deals in facts that are true no matter what humans do. Therefore, the science of sexuality should in theory be focused on the physical methods at work but scientia sexualis considers human experiences to be forms/bodies of knowledge that need to be studied and …show more content…
In other words, rather than being a fixed quality of a person, gender should be seen as changeable which moves and deviates in different contexts and at different times. Butler points out, that 'the experience of a gendered... cultural identity is considered an achievement.' This is supported by men and women’s ability to feel like more or less masculine of feminine at any given moment in their life. Butler argues that the binary of sex is seen to cause the binary of gender that conclusively causes the desires of one gender towards the other gender. This is seen as a kind of scale that can be traveled through. Butler says “there is no gender identity behind the expressions of gender...identity is performatively constituted by the very "expressions" that are said to be its results.” (25). In other words, Butler is claiming gender is a performance; it is actions at certain times not a universal depiction your persona. Butler argues that we all put on a gender performance ultimately. It is not a question of whether we should act out a gender performance, but how that performance will look like. By choosing to be different about it, we might work to change gender norms and the binary understanding of masculinity and