Gender Definitions, Racism and Class Theories - Essay Example

Introduction In popular feminist theory, "woman" is regarded as a universal Thus making it an idea that does not account for the differences amongst women (differences of race, class, etc).Judith Butler and Bell Hooks have produced two different theories, both challenging popular feminist notions about gender definitions, racism and class within the folds of feminist ideology. Both types of theories challenge the preset notions of woman. Butler questions the very definition and essence of woman as regarded by a binary society, whereas Hooks questions the feminist issues raised by racist and classist privileged white women. Judith Butler In her most significant book Gender Trouble (1990), Butler contends that feminism had made a blunder by trying to declare that women were a group with common character and interests. That theory, achieved ‘an unwitting regulation and reification of gender relations by enforcing a twofold view of sexual relations in which humanity is divided into two clear groups, women and men. Rather than opening up potential for an individual to form and choose their own identity, feminism had blocked the options Butler says we have to consider "woman" as multiple and alternating, not as a group with "ontological integrity." She refers to psychoanalytic theory to do so. She gives a synopsis of (Freud and Lacan pp. 326-327) as setting up "woman" as timeless intangible universal grouping.(Freud, Sigmund)1. The sexually categorized body, once recognized as a “natural” and unquestioned “fact,” is the alibi for building of gender and sexuality, inevitably more cultural in their form, which can claim to be the just-as-natural expressions or consequences of a more elemental sex. On Butler’s explanation, it is on the basis of the building of natural binary sex that binary gender and heterosexuality are likewise built as natural. In this manner, Butler asserts that without a critique of sex as fashioned by discourse, the sex/gender distinction as a feminist tactic for disputing constructions of binary asymmetric gender and enforced heterosexuality will be hopeless The root of Butlers argument in Gender Trouble is that the rationality of the categories of sex, gender, and sexuality that is the natural-seeming logic, for example, of masculine gender and heterosexual desire in male bodies is in fact culturally constructed through the reiteration of stylized acts in time. These stylized physical acts, in their recurrence, establish the manifestation of an essential, ontological "core" gender. This is the logic by which Butler famously theorizes gender, sex, and sexuality, as performative. She contends that we all put on a sexual identity performance, whether conventional or not, and it is not a question of whether we do a performance, but what outward appearance that performance will take. By deciding to be unusual about it, we might work to change gender models and the binary perspective of masculinity and femininity. The performance of gender, sex, and sexuality, however, is not a controlled choice for Butler, who places the building of the gendered, sexed, desiring subject within "regulative discourses’. These, also termed as "frameworks of intelligibility" or "disciplinary regimes’ decide in advance what treatments of sex, gender, and sexuality are socially permitted to emerge as coherent or "natural”. Regulative discourse embraces within it disciplinary practices which, pressurizes subjects to perform definite stylized actions, thus maintaining the facade of the "core" gender, sex and sexuality said discourse itself produces Butler favors those historical and anthropological positions that comprehend gender as a relation amongst socially represented subjects in specifiable circumstances. That is, rather than being a permanent attribute in a person, sexual identity should be a fluid variable which shifts and changes in different contexts and at different times. Butler says: There is no gender identity behind the expressions of gender; identity is performatively constituted by the very "expressions" that are said to be its results. She believes gender is a performance; its what a person does at certain times, rather than a universal ‘who they are’ (male or female).(Butler, Judith)2 Bell Hooks According to Bell Hooks the "feminist movement", a chiefly white middle and upper class affair, did not articulate the desires of poor and non-white women, thus strengthening sexism, racism, and classism. She hints this is the reason such low numbers of black women participated in the feminist movement in the 1970s( Louis Harris Virginia Slims poll done in 1972 for Phillip Morris) The call for unity and camaraderie prearranged around notions that women constitute a sex class/caste with universal experiences and universal oppression made feminism a structurally unsound theory. Women of color, for the most part black females, some of whom had been mixed up in the movement from its inception, some jointly occupied with womens liberation and black power struggle, called awareness to differences that could not be reconciled by over-romantic evocations of sisterhood. The face of feminism was changed Bell Hooks states that the correlation of sexism and racism during slavery added to black women having the lowest status and worst circumstances of any group in American society. Hooks points out to the fact that white female reformers were more concerned with white morality than the conditions of black women. She contends that the stereotypes that were set throughout slavery still impinge on black women today. She contends that slavery permitted white society to stereotype white women as the pure and virginal and portrays black women as the seductive whore stereotype which in earlier times was placed on all women. This has permitted the devaluation of black femininity which continues to this day. The toil which black women have been required to perform, either in slavery or in a prejudiced work place, that for white women would be non-gender conforming ,has been used against black women as a evidence of their weak conduct. Bell hooks also contends that Black Nationalism was largely a patriarchic and misogynist movement which sought to overcome racial divisions by intensifying sexist ones Bell maintains that even today, patriarchy is offered as the solution to the predicament black people face. Black women face a culture where practically everyone wants them to stay in their place. She says even in feminist circles, individual black women are often subjected to different standards of evaluation than their peers. Many White feminist still refuse to understand the very different circumstances faced by black women, and thus fail to address their particular problems. She dispels the myths that feminist are man haters or inevitably lesbian forcing her audience to realize that feminism goes further than bra burning. Feminism is not a propos wanting to be like a man in fact it is about basic human rights and equality. Bell Hooks dispels the notion that feminism is a theory that is aimed against men but in fact stresses that sexism is the main problem that true feminism deals with. She also illustrates that both men and women can be sexist and bigoted regardless of their purported political beliefs and that these are the great evils of society that all humanity (inclusive of both male and female) should stand against. (Hooks Bell)3 Conclusion Both writers Butler and Hooks have different takes on the popular feminist theory. Both address different but important issues of contemporary gender relations. While Hooks views are practical and based on her experiences as an under privileged black female brought up and rebelling against a typical patriarchal family, Butler is more concerned with the psyche of feminism, challenging the very concept of feminine and masculine denouncing the binary nature of society in general. Judith Butler’s theories raise questions about the fundamental nature of human beings and their sexual orientations, whether they are inborn (natural) or learned, as she believes, due to society’s cultural programming. Bell Hooks focuses on the real world problems faced by a majority of women left behind by the feminist movement of the seventies. She tries to bring out the true meaning and goals of feminism i.e. equality true equality and dignity for all human beings regardless of race, class and gender. Reference 1 Freud, Sigmund., Three Essays on the Theory of Sexuality, 2 Butler, Judith [1990] (1999). Gender Trouble: Feminism and the Subversion of Identity. New York: Routledge, 171-90.  3 Hooks. Bell,. Feminism Is for Everybody: Passionate Politics Read More