Let's talk about Judith Butler
 

I LOVE Butler and have studied her work extensively. I have to scoot off to class right now, but I'll be back to share some thoughts with you. FYI, her more recent work has been focused on queer theory and neoliberalism. I have a couple of great articles I can share with you written by her partner who also struggles with conceptualizing the performance of gender.

It might be helpful to excerpt a couple quotes from her work to guide the conversation and reponses - quotes like this one -

"If gender is constructed, could it be constructed differently or does it constructedness imply some form of social determinism, foreclosing the possibility of agency and transformation?"

Butler has never believed that 'femme' exists as a gender identity. She (or is it he...I thought she transitioned). Interesting she has moved to denying butch. Post modern blah blah blah

I never liked her or her ideas.

I read her work very differently. I see her as challenging the binary of sexual "normativity" as a social construct in and of itself. She takes the intersectional nature of gender (the social construct of race, class and sexuality) and then deconstructs it by way of questioning its validity and ability to stand on its own without the narrative of performance that inevitably informs it as more than a theoretical abstract. Can gender exist without heteronormative binaries? Can there be an absence of gender? Are male/female gender binaries accessible without acknowledging desire? She very much aligns herself with Foucaultian epistemology by way of defining human sexuality as more than the sum of just gender and sex. She urges her readers to view gender as a performance so that women are not relegated to patriarchal heteronormative constructs based in and on power alone.

She is not attempting to invalidate how anyone identifies, rather she is trying to disassemble the way gender is constructed as a social norm. She wants us to look at gender presentation as a performance based more on desire rather than gender based on sex alone.

These are just my musings. I hope they make a little bit of sense. Sometimes what makes sense in my brain makes zero sense once it leaves my mouth. ;)

And as far as I know, Butler identifies as Butch.

I don't believe she is saying that gender doesn't exist, she is arguing though that it comes into existence through repetition and that we perform gender. Remember it is only theory and there are a lot of competing gender theories.

I disagree. I haven't read anything that would lead me to believe she feels femme as an identity to be lacking in value. My understanding is that she wants to look at gender and desire more fluidly and without the influence of socially constructed acts of gender performance...which are traditionally very heteronormative.

Would she prefer that I do away with my heels, skirts and makeup? I think so! But most intellectuals prefer to deconstruct socially acceptable norms in order to find alternative methodologies. Personally, I love gender-bending no matter what form it takes!

"And as far as I know, Butler identifies as Butch."

I need to correct this (since I have to admit that I pulled it right out of my ass)...Butler doesn't stake claim to any "identity" so to speak. She reminds me of my partner in that she wears mens clothing and sports a very short haircut, but refuses to latch on to any gender recognizable identity. Again, a refusal to adopt socially constructed norms.

I perceive her as invalidating both butch and femme in the selection i was assigned to read. i may be misperceiving

it just sounds too much like the second-wave "butches and femmes are tools of the patriarchy" rhetoric.

i see how it this theory would have been very liberating for cissexed and cisgendered feminine females, esp. the straight ones. Which is ironic to me since the theory is supposed to liberate us from heteronormativity

and i am not butch so i don't know for sure, but i can imagine if you spent your childhood being bullied for being a tomboy, and then got to college and your gender studies professor said you had chosen that, it would be a little hard to take

that helps- the selection we read was more about performance based on social cues rather than desire. desire makes more sense. It makes perfect sense that masculine females would perform a masculine gender from a place of desire. It makes no sense that social conformity would drive this

see, i just have a really big problem with that!!! i think she is just naturally in the middle of the gender spectrum and she is projecting her andogyny on everybody else! Like, if she doesn't happen to feel masculine or feminine then nobody should!

hmmm...she kind of devalues the femme presentation if that femme presentation has been construed in conformity with social norms that weren't questioned the way Butler questions them and then derived through self (rather than though social norms). I also think that to the extent that a femme presentation is made in opposition to something more masculine, that one is then playing into a social polarity that Butler was trying to make us more aware of. does that make sense?

I prefer to think of her as an AWESOME proto-punky badass philosopher and feminist, but not perfect, and not a huge supporter of the femme persona. And certainly she was writing at an historical moment when the notion of an informed, powerful, revolutionized femme was, perhaps, still not quite an acceptable notion amongst feminists. I believe it took later queer theory to open that door.

You do realize that the beginning sentence of each paragraph is a bit contradictory....

you prefer to ignore her devaluing femme and femininity.....okie dokie

her book was Female Masculinity not Female Femininity....just saying....

once again..........post modern blah blah blah.....

you have not convinced me........the devaluing of the feminine and the valuing of the masculine right down to the book title....

uhhhhhhhhhh..............I'm sooooo wrong

I beg a menopausal moment.........

wrong Judith.........I was thinking Halberstein (sp) not Butler........



although the contradictory point sorta is right..........I think.............

ooooo, i would love to take a peak at your dissertation!

*remembering reading and writing on Butler throughout the undergrad and the amount of eye bleed and brain-death which occurred...*

I still say someone get her an editor.

*runs away*

I totally 100% do NOT agree... I have lived with animals and small childrem through my entire life.. gender expression has a basis in brain function balanced with hormonal effect.

Gender Roles, are learned - social constructs, which vary according to the culture of our up bringing.

male and female are not the only genders -

someone who is Neutrois or Androgynous could very well fit the discriptions presented in those quotes. As could someone who is gender fluid.

My gender is not / was not -- a choice.

Well I think Judith Butler would be appalled to learn that her book Undoing Gender is where I learned the word femme and that it applied to me. Then I googled the word, found the dash site and signed myself up as Julie is a femme! Yay!

I am not an academic by any means. Much of the references she makes I do not understand. What I did take away was that gender is not some inviolate thing that cannot be questioned. It is worth taking a look at it as a social construction because that is where it intersects with patriarchy. I found her thoughts (at least those that I think I might have understood) to very helpful to me in exploring my own gender and sexuality.