What does Judith Butler Mean by the Social Construction and Performativity of Both Sex and Gender - Research Paper Example

What does Judith Butler Mean by the Social Construction and Performativity of Both Sex and Gender? Introduction Judith Butler is a prominent theorist of power, gender, sexuality, and identity. She is a philosopher and has made significant contributions in the fields of feminism, queer theory, political philosophy, and ethics. One of her outstanding contributions lays on poststructuralists efforts within Western feminist theory, where she questions “presuppositional terms of feminism.” Feminism is a movement that pursues to end women’s oppression (Barker 2005, p.22). “Woman” in this case is a gender term that hinges on both social and cultural factors. Her academic prowess is evident in the many books she has authored. In one of her most influential book, Gender Trouble: Feminism and the Subversion of Identity (1990), Butler maintains that feminism has made a phenomenal mistake by attempting to assert that women were a group bearing universal characteristics and interests (Kirby 2006, p.19). She argued that this approach executed an unconscious regulation of gender relations, reinforcing a dual view of gender relations whereby human beings were categorized into precise groups, male and women. This plugged opportunities and prospective for a person to create and decide their own identities. Therefore, Feminism had closed down options for formations of identities instead of opening them up (Butler 2011, p. 81). Most of Butler’s work incorporates four prominent theoretical perspectives; psychoanalytic, feminist, Marxist, and poststructuralist. The theoretical frameworks have had a significant impact on her formulations of identity (gendered and sexed identity). Most of her books ask questions dwelling on the formation of identity and subjectivity; they trace the processes by which people become subjects. Similarly, she probes the assumptions of the gendered/ sexed or raced identities, constructed for and by the people amid the power structures (Kirby 2006, p. 20). When interrogating “the subject,” Butler questions the processes by which the subjects come into being, by what means as well as how the constructions work and fail. Butler looks at psychoanalysis as a grand narrative concerning on shaping of “woman” as a sole category. According to Butler, psychoanalysis is a configuration about origins and ends with the qualification and exclusion of some aspects. The narrative avails a false sense of legitimacy and uniformity to a culturally distinct and in some cases a culturally domineering version of gender identity (Varela, Dhawan & Engel 2011, p. 46). Butler perceives gendered subjectivity as a history of identifications whereby some parts can be brought into play at certain contexts (Salih 2002, p.6). Hence, gender as the identification with one sex or one object as is the case of the mother, is mere fantasy. It is a deposit of internalized images but not a deposit of aspects overseen by the body and its organ configuration. Importance of Judith Butler as a Thinker Butler avoids resolving problems and issues she raises in her discussions. Instead, Butler regards dialectic as an open-ended process; she rarely avails answers to the questions she poses. In fact, Butler considers resolution as treacherously anti-democratic since ideas and theories that present themselves as self-evident truths end up becoming mediums for ideological assumptions (Barker 2005, p.15). Hence, they oppress groups of people in the society, especially the minority or those living on the margins. For instance, the right-wing notions of homosexuality as wrong, abnormal, deviant, and as something that ought to be proscribed and punished. Butler’s work has transformed the manner in which we think about sex, sexuality, gender, and language. She brilliantly interrogates identity categories and is immensely influential in various fields such as ethics, political philosophy, and feminism (Salih 2002, p. 2). Such attitudes, she suggests, may illuminate themselves as truthful or self-evidently correct in some religious, moral or ideological premises. Part of Butler’s project is to illuminate such terms by contextualizing and examining their claims to truth and availing them to interpretation and contestation. The terms that can be explored to this respect include gay, straight, bisexual, transsexual, black, and white as well as perceptions such as truth, right, and norm. Much of Butler’s ideas are strategically open ended; her contributions continue to challenge contemporary thought making the reader employ a critical rethinking of the subject of queer theory, feminist theory, and gender performativity (Salih 2002, p. 4). Her other work includes Bodies that matter: On the Discursive Limits of Sex (1993) whereby she avoids settling the debate on sexuality purely as the derivation of pleasures and how bodies execute them. Nevertheless, she takes bodies as constantly already gender non-specific and destabilizes their performatives to demonstrate the shaping of bodies by gender, ethnicity, status, and sexuality. She also demonstrates the undermining of categories within the performative (Jagger 2008, p. 2). Butler’s other prominent works include Undoing Gender (2004), which incorporates her reflections on gender, sex, sexuality, and psychoanalysis. In the latter, she revisits and refines her notion of performativity and refocuses on the issue of deconstructing the limiting normative perceptions of sexual and gendered life. In addition, she has authored the book Giving an Account of Oneself (2005). Butler’s theoretical analyses of “the subject” and the developments of subject formation make up critical and theoretical interventions in multiple academic fields. In her analysis, Butler borrows heavily from Hegel’s writings, especially Phenomenology of Spirit (1807) as well as Michael Foucault’s historical analysis of variable constructions of sex and sexuality in multiple societies and contexts (Kirby 2006, p.18). Social Construction of Gender Identities Many people typically seem to think that sex and gender are coextensive. Feminists have historically differed and endorsed the sex/gender distinction. Provisionally, sex denotes differentiation based on biological features such as chromosomes, sex organs, and hormones, among other physical features. Gender, on the other hand, designates identity based on social and cultural features such as social roles, positions, behaviour, or identity. The social construction of gender identities occurs through socialization. The feminine and masculine traits that people possess mostly stem from nurture compared to nature. Social forces have a casual function in forming gendered persons into a reality or shaping masculinity or femininity (Butler 2004, p. 40). Social construction of gender departs from socialization as the root of gender difference. Thus, people do not simply internalize gender roles, but rather, they respond to changing norms within the society. As children grow, they learn to categorize themselves by gender. The learning spotlights the manner of displaying and performing gendered identities such as masculine and feminine (Butler 2004, p.40). Some of the factors that influence gender development include the environment in which children are brought. Butler argues that being female is not natural but appears natural only through repetitive performances of gender. The performances replicate and delineate the traditional categories of sex or gender. The deconstruction of the demarcations of gender dissolves the significance placed on masculine or feminine traits and behaviours. Nevertheless, the eradication of the categories complicated the derivation of any comparisons amid the genders (Butler 2004, p. 44). Some of the assumptions of social construction of gender include perception of gender as accomplishment whereby what one is or does is dynamically produced within social interactions. Gender is fluid and gender roles within cultures are perpetually changing. Butler’s Distinct Approach to Gender and Sex Previously, feminists held that gender translates into cultural roles, which differed across times and societies. One of the prominent distinctions between Butler’s ideas from those of previous feminist theorists lies in the fact that, whereas earlier feminist thinkers thought that sex translates into biology and was predetermined, Butler asserted that even sex or biology is accorded diverse meanings depending on the times. Consequently, this makes it to a degree a social construct. She notes that feminists dispelled the idea that biology is destiny, but then proposed a take on patriarchal culture, which was implicit that masculine and feminine genders would indeed be constructed by culture upon male and female bodies (Carver 2009, p. 128). This suggests that their destiny was inescapable. Thus, the argument advanced by feminists leaves no room for choice and diversity; neither does it leave room for resistance. Butler’s proposition to remedy this anomaly hinges on historical as well as anthropological positions that conceive gender as the contextualized relations between socially constituted subjects. Therefore, gender should be regarded as a fluid variable, which swings and is altered in diverse contexts and at diverse times. Practically, the very fact that men and women pronounce that they feel like a “woman or a man,” indicates that they experience an already gendered cultural identity. Butler argues that sex, either male or female, is regarded to cause gender, which is classified as either masculine or feminine (Carver 2009, p. 126). This is regarded as the origin of desire towards the other gender. Hence, it is some form of continuum. Butler suggests that particular cultural configurations of gender have adopted a hegemonic hold. This calls for dissident action in the topical gender trouble, which translates into the mobilization, rebellious confusion, and proliferation of genders and subsequent identities (Butler 2011, p. 82). In summary, she argues that gender is a set of signs internalized, psychically entrenched on the body and one’s psychic sense of identity. In conclusion, gender is not a primary category, but a quality; a collection of secondary narrative effects. Performativity Butler explores the means of creation of social reality. Social reality is not merely given but is perpetually constructed as an illusion via language, gesture, and other means of symbolic, social signs such as illocutionary speech acts that do something rather than merely representing something (Jagger 2008, p. 1). For instance, the speech “I pronounce you man and wife” during a marriage ceremony heralds a fresh marital reality to the couples, whereby the person speechifying alters the couple’s status amid the intersubjective community. Butler notes that, within speech act theory, a performative refers to a discursive practice that endorses and generates that which it names (Jagger 2008, p.4). The linguistic constructions generate reality through the speech acts that people participate in on a daily basis. Thus, in the performative act of speaking, people incorporate that reality by enacting it into their bodies, but that reality always remains a social construct. Authoritative words both say and do at the same time. Hence, as people embody the fictions into their actions, they transform the artificial conventions and make them appear as natural and necessary. Thus, just as performance, which is performative, gender is an act that constructs the social fiction of its own psychological interiority. Butler epitomizes gender as “a corporeal style” that has no relation to essential truths concerning the body, but which is sternly ideological. The cultural norms influence the stylization of people’s traits and behavior (Salih 2002, p. 10). Such norms are oppressive as the person’s social legitimacy and normalcy hinges in conforming to one of the twin genders. In a nut shell, performativity refers to the idea that gender is a daily, consistent, learned act grounded in cultural norms of femininity and masculinity. Butler asserts identity is performatively shaped by the same expressions perceived to be its results (Butler 2004, p. 25). Butler illustrates the ways that a person’s learned performance of gendered behaviour (masculinity or femininity) is an act of sorts, a performance, which is obligated by normative heterosexuality. Thus, she roots for a far-reaching use of the doctrine of the constitution that incorporates the social agent as an object rather than the subject of constitutive acts. Butler queries the extent to which people can assume that a given individual can be perceived to constitute him or herself. Her primary contention is to what degree people’s acts can be determined by themselves rather than the place within language and convention. Identity is performatively constituted by the exact expressions perceived to be its results. Therefore, gender is a performance or what people do at certain times rather than universal. Moreover, she argues that gender as an objective and natural thing never exists; gender reality is real as long as it is performed. Butler suggests that specific cultural configurations of gender have gained a hegemonic hold whereby they have turned to be natural in most cultures. For Butler, sexuality in itself is an unstable construct (Kirby 2006, p.52). Gender is never tied to material bodily facts but is purely a social construct. It is an invention and open to modification and contestation. Hence, gender is never a fact; the diverse acts of gender construct the idea of gender and devoid of those facts gender will never exist. Butler’s arguments concerning performativity of gender are grounded in the premise that public manifestation of identity significantly shapes a person’s private identity. For instance, for one to be regarded a lesbian, she needs to play the performance role of a lesbian as approved by heteronormative values. Only through certain acts is a person defined as a lesbian or any other sexuality for that matter; the genesis of identity is not corporeal but performative (Kirby 2006, p.48). Thus, lesbianism or any other sexual identity is a set of social constructs accepted and represented unknowingly via performative acts of gender. She argues that any sexuality, such as lesbianism, can exist as a replica or a derivative as long as a person admits the notion of any sexuality as a “copy” devoid or original. This was an attempt to critique normative heterosexuality as well as penalizing rules (social, familial, and legal) that make people match to the hegemonic, heterosexual standards for identity. Normativity A common approach to gender realism highlights various perspectives on gender such as gender as either feminine or masculine sexuality. For instance, women are expected to share certain characteristics or features, experiences, common conditions or criterions that shape their gender and the possession that makes individual women or men (Gauntlett 2002, p. 141). Butler critiques the sex/gender distinction on two main grounds. The first critique is informed by her normativity argument, which spells out two claims. The first claim stipulates that unitary gender notions fail to spotlight differences amongst women; hence, they fall short of recognizing the diversity of cultural, social, and political connections. Her second claim rests on the premise that such misleading gender realist accounts are normative. Thus, in their effort to secure feminism subject matter, feminists unconsciously defined the term “woman” in a manner that infers that there is some definite way to be gendered a woman. The definition of the term woman is rigid supposedly functioning as a policing force, which breeds and legitimizes certain practices or experiences while delegitimizing others (Jagger 2008, p.3). According to Butler, gender identity categories, like that of women, are by no means descriptive, but always normative and as such, exclusionary (Gauntlett 2002, p. 140). The mistake of the feminists, as demonstrated by her critique, was not that they provided an erroneous definition of the term woman. Rather, their mistake lies in their attempt to define the term woman. Butler’s views on gender norms: Heteronormativity Heteronormativity refers to a situation where gender roles conform to cultural norms of all people and heterosexuality as the regular sexual orientation, and which in turn perpetuates patriarchal matrixes of society (Varela, Dhawan and Engel 2011, p. 45). The application of the term heteronormative illustrates a culture or belief system, which presupposes that heterosexuality is the norm. Heteronormativity is subtle and pervasive and results to marginalization of people who do not fit universally held perceptions (Kirby 2006, p. 20). Heteronormativity has an intense impact on gender identity whereby those who explore diverse aspects of gender such as homosexuals and transsexuals encounter problems to navigate in society. Butler roots for a perception of sex, gender, and sexuality as free floating continuums whereby identity based on the rigid categories is a meaningless concept (Varela, Dhawan & Engel 2011, p. 43). The constructionist viewpoint destabilizes the universally held convictions concerning sexuality and gender. Butler’s assertion effectively deconstructs any essentialist notion of sexuality. Butler’s Contribution to Queer Theory The definition of Queer infers that which is at odds with the ordinary, the legitimate, or the dominant. There is nothing in specific that it automatically refers; simply, it is identity lacking essence. Queer does not merely spotlight sexuality such as gay/lesbian or bisexuality or gender, but it also advocates the confines of any identity, which can prospectively be reinvented by its owner. Gender is not merely a state of nature, but rather it is a social construction. Queer theory is directed at transforming public sensibilities concerning relationships between sex, gender, and sexuality within the social context. This alters people’s perception of gender and sexual identities (Gauntlett 2002, p.142). Queer theory is a post-modern line of thought that contests the normative discourse of identity. The theory rejects the defined categories of male or female, man/woman, heterosexual/homosexual. Queer theory deconstructs the hegemonic heteronormative discourse that imposes the intelligible sexes and acceptable identities. How norms regarding gender identity are both maintained and confused or stretched: Queer performances in media culture Media culture reinforces the norms centring on gender identity. Similarly, the media avail a window from which to deconstruct the prevalent understanding of gender identity. This stokes confusion and may as well extend the perception of the gender identities. Hence, the media represent the site upon which semiotic war or a war of symbols or how things are presented takes place. Queering popular culture is directed at changing experiences and understandings of sexuality and subjectivity via manipulation of cultural artefacts and performances (Gauntlett 2002, p. 134). The media exhibits situations and relationships from other people’s point of view with or without the heteronormative identities. A fine example in the media culture is mocking gender and sexuality in movie characters to epitomize the artificially constructed identities, as well as injecting a secret sensibility into the mass market. One of the media celebrities who have strongly brought queer theory to the fore of the masses is Madonna. Madonna’s constant image alterations and her assertion of female power and sexuality have made her an outstanding figure in queer performances within media culture. Conclusion Butler has undoubtedly made a valuable contribution to the field of gender, sexuality, and identity. The extent of personality manipulation by the interaction between social, cultural, and biological factors is one of the prominent focal points of gender studies. Butler has availed significant insights in understanding of gender, which exist on a continuum whereby the midpoint is referred to as androgyny. This is a term that infers gendered behaviour that is neither feminine nor masculine. As a social construct, gender is learned, symbolic, and dynamic. Language is essential to the manner in which people learn about gender and endorse it through communicative acts. References List Barker, C. (2005). Cultural studies: Theory and practice, London, Sage. pp. 15-24. Butler, J. (2004). Undoing gender, Oxfordshire, Routledge. pp. 15-50. Butler, J. (2011). Bodies that matter, New York, Routledge. pp. 81-90. Carver, T. (2009). Sex, gender and heteronormativity: Seeing ‘some like it hot’ as a heterosexual dystopia, Contemporary Political Theory 8(1), pp.125-151. Gauntlett, D. (2002). Media, gender and identity, New York, Routledge. pp. 134-150. Jagger, G. (2008). Judity Butler: Sexual politics, social change and the power of the performative, New York, Routledge. pp. 1-8. Kirby, V. (2006). Judith Butler: Live theory, London, Continuum International. pp. 18-52. Salih, S. (2002). Judith Butler, London, Routledge. pp. 2-10. Varela, M., Dhawan, N. & Engel, A. (2011). Hegemony and heteronormativity: Revisiting ‘the political’ in queer politics, Surrey, Ashgate. pp. 43-50. Read More