Let's talk about Judith Butler

[Novelafemme]

Originally Posted by dark_crystal

I am taking a literary theory class, and this week is "Feminism week," so our assigned readings included "Gener Trouble," by Judith Butler
I found it very triggery! And I am kinda feeling like holding her responsible for a lot of the "shoulding" i went through throughout the 90's

Basically, what i think she says in "Gender Trouble" is that there is no innate masculinity or femininity and we are all just performing arbitrary social constructions

I feel like she is telling me i don't exist! That my butch does not exist! That transitioning FTMs/MTFs are putting themselves through surgery for nothing!

I need to be ready to discuss this by Wednesday, and I see that she has written a lot more since "Gender Trouble"- so maybe it is possible that she refined her views?

I am kinda crowd-sourcing this inquiry since I have to write a paper about Nietzsche's "On Truth and Lies in a Nonmoral Sense" this weekend and so I do not have time to follow up on Butler like I would like to

So I am asking ya'll- does anyone else feel this way about that piece? Does she revise her views later on?

How am I going to talk about her as a theorist without personalizing the issue?

What that really be so bad if i DID personalize the issue?

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.

[mariamma]

hmmm.... this is all a bit disturbing for me. While I know part of what has been said is true I'm not in agreement with all of it. The fact of the matter is, gender identity is based on estrogen and testosterone. These hormones influence the brain in utero. If one feels like a girl or a boy or both or neither....it will be because of the individual's hormonal balance and because of hormonal levels in utero as well as hormone levels while growing. Why do men have such a difficult time understanding women and vice versa? It's because gender is significant, because of the action of gender-creating hormones. Now there is no normal....but there is gender.

[EnderD_503]

Originally Posted by mariamma

hmmm.... this is all a bit disturbing for me. While I know part of what has been said is true I'm not in agreement with all of it. The fact of the matter is, gender identity is based on estrogen and testosterone.

This is not the "fact of the matter." There are no studies which show this conclusively. In some ways similar to the studies that have, for decades, been trying to "prove" that men are "logical," women "emotional."

Originally Posted by mariamma

Why do men have such a difficult time understanding women and vice versa? It's because gender is significant, because of the action of gender-creating hormones. Now there is no normal....but there is gender.

Pure stereotype. The stereotype of "men don't understand women" is one that is cultivated into a child since the beginning. It's self-prophesising. In some languages and cultures there is no concept of gender, only sex. The differences in the approaches to trans rights in English and French Canada are a very good example of the above.