However, any deviance from this norm is punished. Gender does not possess any underlying nature and is thus illusory. In accordance with her theory, she believes that heterosexuality is a performance that has been repeated so many times that it has become a cultural norm. On her view, our understanding of sex is bound up in notions of what it means for something to be masculine or feminine.īutler disagrees with the idea that heterosexuality is the natural state of being.
She claims that sex, like gender, is socially constructed because of the language used to describe genitalia as either being male or female. Butler goes further, however, and contends that this also relates to sex. These norms position “man” and “woman” as polar opposites with no middle ground. Given that this involves a repeated performance of acts, gender is given the appearance of a fixed identity.īutler maintains that the performance of gender is propelled by repeated acts that reinforce oppressive, socially constructed gender norms, especially the traditional domination of women by men and the oppression of homosexuals and transgender persons. Butler writes that “Gender is always a doing, though not a doing by a subject who might be said to preexist the deed.” A person is not born with a gender that influences her to behave in a certain way instead, she is perceived to have a gender identity because of how she talks, walks, and presents herself. As such, the notion of “performativity” suggests that gender is not something people innately are but is something that they do (i.e. Here she argues that gender is created and sustained through the constant repetition of acts and that when these acts are observed they give the appearance of a coherent and natural gender identity. “My work has always been undertaken with the aim to expand and enhance a field of possibilities… To conceive of bodies differently seems to me part of the conceptual and philosophical struggle that feminism involves, and it can relate to questions of survival” (1).īutler refers to gender as performative, an idea she introduced in her essay Performative Acts and Gender Constitution (1988). Butler explains the purpose of her work as follows,
Judith butler gender performative free#
Within social contexts, they become rules and restrictions on how free a person is to act contrary to societal expectations. These, Butler maintains, play an important role in the creation of gender identity.
Speech, for example, is an act as is non-verbal communication in the form of gestures, body appearances, and behaviours. By “acts,” she means how social reality is created through language and gesture. Foucault believed that social reality is constructed through language and Butler’s Gender Trouble came to emphasize linguistic structures, discourse, and acts. Gender Trouble is a complex text that draws from the theories of philosopher Michel Foucault as well as from the ideas of post-structuralist feminists such as Julia Kristeva. In 1990 she published her most influential work, Gender Trouble: Feminism and the Subversion of Identity. Here Butler noted how the philosopher Simone de Beauvoir provided an important and fresh understanding of gender and how this inspired her own theories on the subject.
Butler was a part of this debate as evidenced by her 1986 paper Sex and Gender in Simone de Beauvoir’s Second Sex. They noted that sex is a biological designation and thus refers to biological differences in men and women, whereas gender refers to social differences. She is outspoken on the topics of feminism and LGBTQ+ issues while some of her later work engages philosophical theories of violence.įeminists of the second wave began distinguishing between sex and gender when discussing differences between men and women. 1956) is a philosopher, third-wave feminist, and reputable proponent of gender theory.
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