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Judith Butler This Sex Which Is Not One Sparknotes

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The one-drop rule was a law that was enforced in the 20th century that said that any person who had a family member who was of Black ancestry is then considered Black. This rule originated over the idea that if you had just one drop of Black blood then you were Black and therefore were still permitted to the various restrictions and discrimination which were imposed on Black people. In the minds of these individuals, Blackness was “contagious”. That being said, the one-drop rule was utilized to justify slavery by putting down a boundary to determine who was enslaved and who wasn’t. It was also used to maintain some degree of white supremacy during that time. According to Loic Wacquant from his reading “From Slavery to Mass Incarceration”, the …show more content…

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. Steve Seidman's "Gay Marriage" explores the relationship between gender roles and political rights, particularly by explaining the gay marraige movement. Seidman argues that the fight for gay marriage is not just about overall acknowledgment of same-sex relationships but also about the changing social dynamics of marriage and the deemed threats to traditional gender roles and power structures within it. This opposition originates from those traditional and typical ideas of marriage which …show more content…

Throughout these scopic regimes, the gaze played an important role in shaping our understanding of the world and our place in it. It was used to create knowledge, emotions, and to represent the reality within art and literature. In Michel Foucault's "Panopticism," from Discipline and Punish, the gaze is used as a symbol of power and surveillance. The panopticon was a prison design by Jeremy Bentham through which every prison cell was visible from the central guard tower whereas the prisoners were constantly visible to the guards, but the guards were invisible to the prisoners. Foucault argued that panopticon represents a shift in the forms of punishment and power from the disciplinary and public displays of authority such as whippings or stoning. This was deemed as a sort of sovereign power that reigned over the prisoners under surveillance. Guy Debord's "Separation Perfected," from The Society of the Spectacle, explains that the spectacle is a criticism of our typical society and its focus on consumerism, individuality, and the product of human experiences. The word “spectacle” refers to a system of both social and cultural aspects, which has placed an image and representation that have come to dominate everyday life concepts. He

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The most powerful example of this is the pictures Perkinson put into the book is the picture of the man with a little girl on a horse. The caption under it says “Higher-ranking officers were assigned ‘houseboys’, usually African American trusties who would be used for cooking, cleaning, or even child care”(Perkinson,picture pg.2). The picture helps prove his point that the prison system was used like slavery to control african american because it has the african american prisoner working for his “master” aka his prison warden or prison guard for free. The second picture which is right under it shows prisoners all of which are African American working with some stone and axes. Underneath the picture the caption says “just as slaves built Texas’s first state capitol, leased convicts constructed its replacement”(Perkinson,picture pg.2).

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411 Words | 2 Pages

Moreover, the text about the panopticon from “The Disreputable History of Frankie Landau Banks” by E. Lockhart is about a prison where a guard tower stands in the middle of many cells with darkened windows to create the illusion that they are being watched.

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1580 Words | 7 Pages

Sure, this has been more than a century long battle, but education is important. This book serves it purpose, and Michelle Alexander’s aim of educating people on the oppressive legal systems in America, is met. Alexander says, “Arguably the most important parallel between mass incarceration and Jim Crow is that both have served to define the meaning and significance of race in America. Indeed, a primary function of any racial caste system is to define the meaning of race in its time. Slavery defined what it meant to be black (a slave), and Jim Crow defined what it meant to be black (a second-class citizen).

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2532 Words | 11 Pages

In the first chapter, “The Rebirth of Caste,” Alexander details the rise and fall of slavery and Jim Crow laws, as well as the emergence of its replacement: mass incarceration. In the era of chattel slavery in the emerging United States, the term “race” was born. By creating this social construct and deeming Africans as a lesser race and using pseudoscientific practices to falsely prove their inferiority, whites in America not only

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793 Words | 4 Pages

In her book, Are Prisons Obsolete? Davis dedicates an entire chapter connecting the system of slavery to the current prison system. In order to understand how prisoners are a product of racial ideologies, one must understand that racism is not just an “unfortunate aberration of the past” (Davis 24), but rather it continues to “profoundly influence contemporary structures, attitudes, and behaviors” (Davis 24). When the 13th Amendment was passed, it abolished slavery and Blacks were no longer legal property. However, it did not get rid of the idea that Black people should be harshly governed.

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259 Words | 2 Pages

When debating the legalization of same sex marriage, religious reasoning and accusations of bigotry often provoke obstinance. Instead of reiterating those arguments, William J. Bennett, a prominent cultural conservative, former secretary of education, and author of The Book of Virtues, focuses on societal effects in his op-ed article, “Against Gay Marriage.” Though Bennett’s piece conveys partiality, it also attempts to discuss this issue scrupulously to ensure readers will consider his argument and perhaps accept his implications. While some of Bennett’s word choices convey tolerance of the gay community, his rhetoric incites readers to accept that preserving society requires marginalizing homosexuals.

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597 Words | 3 Pages

Cynthia Keo 12/22/2022 Room 303 Slavery; Is it flawed? ELA “You may choose to look the other way but you can never say again that you did not know.” ―

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1006 Words | 5 Pages

In the book, Brave New World written by author Aldous Huxley back in 1932 had many themes that he had basically predicted to happen in today’s day and age. One of these topics is the enhanced but also abundant use of security/surveillance. Plenty of times in Brave New World Huxley talks about how security/surveillance work in his made up society. The idea of being able to control and see what is going on in the society at a very high level. Relates to the high intensity of the security/surveillance levels that we have in today’s day and age.

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1504 Words | 7 Pages

In both 1984 and The Hunger Games individuals are rendered powerless by oppressive states which subvert technology to surveil and distribute propaganda. In George Orwell's 1949 novel, 1984, telescreens placed in the homes of individuals deemed a possible threat to the party are symbolic of the omniscient panopticism Big Brother yields. Winston psychologically struggles with the constant surveillance and subsequent lack of privacy: ‘Winston kept his back turned to the telescreen. It was safer, though, as he well knew, even a back can be revealing.’ Telescreens act as a pervasive deterrent, yet in a place where individuals are always watched, always listened to, and always judged, resentment is inevitable, and recidivist acts increasingly likely.

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444 Words | 2 Pages

The spectacles were intended to make him not only half blind but to give him whanging headaches besides” (Vonnegut 3). This symbolizes the maltreating nature of society, which restricts individualism and promotes equality as much as possible. The handicaps, like earphones, glasses, masks, and other things, restrict everyone from really showing their whole self and identity. The handicaps show the need for conformity and unity in society and the negative impacts such a demand has on people.

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1042 Words | 5 Pages

The book is a good illustration of many example of controlling a population that is still find in our day, in France. Taking control over a population by cameras, for example, permit to apprehend any risks of rebellion against the government by people who dislike and do not accept it in the book 1984, or risks of accident, in France. Cameras, or telescreen are a big part of the book 1984.

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1829 Words | 8 Pages

American slavery has indeed caused some hardships in the past. Some viewed slavery negatively while yet other used believed that if you just obeyed your masters everything will be just fine. In the article’s that I will feature in this paper, “An Address to the Negroes in the State of New York” by Jupiter Hammon and “Appeal to the Colored Citizens of the World” by David Walker, show two very different men who hold two very different views towards slavery. One suggests slaves to respect and obey their masters, never to rebel, and learn how to read, while the other pushes the issue about equality between whites and black, and suggests that slaves become rebellious towards their masters, while also making references to Thomas Jefferson’s “Notes

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902 Words | 4 Pages

The Civil Rights Movement gained traction around the 1950s, paving the way for many other oppressed groups. These groups fought for different rights, but they still had a similar struggle to the original movement. One of these groups is the Gay Rights Movement. The comparison between the black civil rights movement and the gay civil rights movement is “typically a sensitive subject, even among liberals” (Williams). Some people believe that it is unfair to compare a fight for marriage to a fight to gain equality in every aspect.

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807 Words | 4 Pages

By using this reference, it illustrated the severity of the alienation of blacks in the Southern United States. In 1619, a Dutch ship “introduced the first captured Africans to America, planting the seeds of a slavery system that evolved into a nightmare of abuse and cruelty that would ultimately divide the nation”. The Africans were not treated humanely, but were treated as workers with no rights. Originally, they were to work for poor white families for seven years and receive land and freedom in return. As the colonies prospered, the colonists did not want to give up their workers and in 1641, slavery was legalized.

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886 Words | 4 Pages

Thus, in doing gender, one does not move beyond this context, but instead gender identity is “performatively constituted by the very “expressions” that are said to be its result” (55). Gender, for Butler, is “the repeated stylization of the body, a set of repeated acts within a highly rigid regulatory frame,” it is something fluid that congeals over time “to produce the appearance of substance, of a natural sort of being” (63). In this sense, one can never become woman because there is no ontological ‘woman’; it is a “substantive appearance” (64). Butler uses the example of drag to illustrate how it disrupts the “very distinctions between the natural and the artificial, depth and surface, inner and outer through which discourse about genders almost always operates” (27). Drag is not an imitation of true gender, but an act that exposes foundational categories that create the notion of gender as an effect of a “specific formation of power” (27).

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