Judith Butler Essays

CHAPTER 2 GENDER PERFORMATIVITY: JUDITH BUTLER Judith Butler is an eminent and prolific writer, who has assumed an exceptionally powerful part in moulding present day feminism. She is Professor of Comparative Literature and Rhetoric at the University of California, Berkeley, and is well known as a theorist of power, gender, sexuality and identity. She's composed broadly on sex and her idea of gender performativity is a focal topic of both present day women's rights and gender hypothesis. She has

This article defines what Butler in her book Judith Butler introduction gender trouble chapter one: “subjects of sex/gender/desire” wants to convey to the reader. Butler presumes that there is an already existing feminist identity known as "women.' Many feminists believe that developing a female identity is essential to creating awareness on women's political issues. Butler challenges this. She doesn't think that the idea of "woman" is a well-defined category. Society constructs subjects and then

Description Peculiar Benefits is a memoir written by Roxane Gay. According to Roxane Gay (Peculiar Benefits May 16, 2012, para. 2) " To this day, I remember my first visit and how at every intersection, men and women, shiny with sweat, would mob our car, their skinny arm stretched out hoping for a few gourdes or American dollars." In the second passage of peculiar benefits Roxane Gay made reference to a genuine past experience, making the reading a memoir. Peculiar Benefits centralizes on Roxane

Let us start with a quote by one of the most prominent French writers and most important figures in the twentieth century, Simone de Beauvoir – “One is not born, but rather becomes, a woman.” I personally think that this is the single-most appropriate way that best describes how feminism is a social construct which means that the roles that are associated with women, or those that are assigned to them, are not given by biological nature, but are actually defined by social norms, and history. Feminism

‘A Raisin in the Sun’, which is debuted on Broadway in 1959. The topic that I chose is How do the female characters deal with sexism in society? Discuss by analyzing at least two characters. In the following, I will first define the term of sexism. And then I will analysis two female characters who is Beneatha and Ruth to discuss how they deal with sexism in society. First of all, sexism is an unfair treatment of people because of their sex, especially an unfair treatment of women. “There are the

process begins from a young age; although observing one’s biological sex can influence femininity and masculinity to a degree, individuals do have agency to some extent, which allows them to make their own decisions about how they perform gender (Butler, 2007, p. 47). Yet in terms of children and even adults having the agency to decide to take up sport either in a social or professional capacity, there are structural barriers in place that make it more difficult for women and girls excel in and participate

In the novel The Green Glass Sea, author Ellen Klages writes a story that shares the lives of two young girls, Dewey Kerrigan and Suze Gordon, during World War II, living in New Mexico with their families, as they make an effort to develop the atomic bomb and create new technology to aid in America’s fight. It is apparent that the author’s main purpose of this narrative was to entertain, but to also somewhat inform and give readers some insight on the occurrences that took place during this time

Joan Scott’s central argument in her seminal work Gender: A useful Category of Historical Analysis is that gender as a framework of inquiry is relevant to many historical fields beyond simply women’s history. Scott argues that ‘descriptive usage of gender’ relegates gender to being analytically irrelevant towards addressing and changing historical paradigms. She reprimands the three distinct methods through which feminist historians have traditionally approached gender. The first process is the attempt

GENDER THEORIES Observation ,imitation ,rewards and punishment – these are the mechanisms by which gender develops according to social cognitive theory .Interactions between the child and the social environments are the main keys to gender development in this view .Two cognitive theories-cognitive developmental theory and gender schema theory- *The Cognitive Development Theory of Gender stated that children’s gender typing occurs after children think of themselves as boys and girls. Once they consistently

Upon registering for an English Class for winter quarter, I had one goal in mind: take the easiest English class I could, breeze through the class, boost my GPA, and finish my English prerequisite. Thankfully, this class did not fulfill that goal. As my first English class at the university, this class challenged the way I thought, and shed light on my strengths and weaknesses. In high school, I had a substantial amount of English experience under my belt, as I had taken all honors and AP English

The Renaissance’s attitude towards gender and sexuality was completely different from that of the Middle Ages, which considered women as dangerous sexual creatures. "For the first time in Western history," for example, "men stressed the fact that females should be educated. The Platonic orientation in humanist thought may have spurred them to do so" (Bell, 182). (mohja)Actually, the primary purpose behind the call for women’s education was not to heighten her position in society, or to “overturn

Part I: We “Other Victorians” In the first part of the book, Foucault discusses the “repressive hypothesis”, which is the belief that sexuality and the open discussion about it was socially represent during the late 17th, 18th, 19th and early 20th centuries, because of the rise of capitalism and the bourgeois society. What Foucault argues, is that it was never truly repressed, and asks himself why modern western scholars believe it was repressed. One idea was that in rejecting past ideas, future

Femininity in Mulan This paper wants to discuss the difference between female and femininity and how to apply the last one to the Disney character Mulan. Mulan is a film released in 1998, directed by Barry Cook and Tony Brancroft and produced by Pam Coats. Set in the Han Dynasty, it tells the story of Fa Mulan, a girl who enlists herself in the army instead of her elderly father and saves China from the invasion of the Huns. Being female does not implies being feminine. “Femaleness” has to do

Both Feminist Theory and Queer Theory are critical analyses to better understanding the formation of the social Self and sociopolitical Subject. How the individual and/or their community profiles are constructed through understandings of Gender and Sexuality reveals a richly woven tapestry of interpersonally and institutionally-constitutive relations. Because these associations are relational (and often dichotomous), interactive, and emerge from intersections of oppressive social indexes such as

Times effect on relationships between people can only truly be understood when we examine how and why our relationships change over time. Through using Judith Butler’s Beside Oneself as a framework we gain an understanding of the significance time is capable of having on relationships between people. When using Beside Oneself as a framework I can conclude that the effect time has on relationships is often the result of many circumstances combined over a period of time. Through applying Butler’s idea

and female. This creates a gender binary with socially constructed norms that design a rigid guide as to how each gender must act and perform in their daily lives. Gender is a social construct and not inherent in our genes. As gender theorist Judith Butler claims, “Gender is the repeated stylization of the body, a set of repeated acts within a highly regulatory frame that congeal over time to produce the appearance of substance.” In other words, society is performing a role of gender every day that

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

We live in a world in which our society influences our everyday routine, behaviors, actions and how we see ourselves. In the article Beside Oneself: On the Limits of Sexual Autonomy by Judith Butler talks about how our society can influence us to make us feel threatened affecting our lives. Our body, for instance, is one of our most criticized possessions in this society which, becomes critical when it begins to affect individuals, making them feel unsure or criticized. Politics take a crucial, part

In Judith Butler’s essay,” Beside Oneself: On the Limits of Sexual Autonomy,” she attempts to clarify what is considered human and what defines a human, and how it applies to the different gender roles and human rights. The difficulty that this essay presents, however, is its ambiguity – the fact that she fails to clearly identify what a human is and sort of challenges the readers to look within themselves to search for their own interpretation of what they believe gives them their own moral rights

film How to Survive a Plague. Judith Butler’s ideas presented in her essay Beside Oneself: On the Limits of Sexual Autonomy can also aid us in analyzing How to Survive a Plague because it deals with the same and similar issues. In her essay, two of the problems that Butler addresses, that are also present in How to Survive a Plague, are the means to which someone is grievable and why it is almost impossible to change the discrimination. At the start of the essay, Judith