David Reimer Case - Literature review Example

DAVID REIMER CASE Objective: The paper aims to explain the Butler philosophical ideology of inter sex and human life. UNDOING GENDER Judith Butler explains us the idea of intersex and human life in her own philosophical way in the book "Undoing Gender". We can say that Butler knows the art of saying ordinary things in extra ordinary way. In this book he focused on the question that "what it might mean to undo restrictively normative conceptions of sexual and gendered life" (Butler 2004, 1). In this regard author says that,"sometimes a normative conception of gender can undo one's personhood, un determining the capacity to persevere in a livable life". We all want to live our desired life and the only factor that is important for a gender to be livable is to be recognized; we want a social status, we want ourselves to be accepted by society but the question that arises is what actually makes us human The author says that' "the terms by which we are recognized as human are socially articulated and changeable" .So there are some factors involved in making human a human and there are certain humans who are not human at all. You may be born as a male or female. Another important factor that should be noticed is that sexuality does not determine the gender of a person it is actually the gender that determines what kind of sexuality a person will have. May be a stage came when you lost your personhood and became inhuman. This is the stage when you fall into the category of people who are living unlivable life. Have you ever thought why sometime we compare a person with an animal You might have heard a word "inhuman" or have heard someone saying around you or in news that he/she has done an inhuman act and had disgraced humanity and then people commenting that the certain person is not human we can't call him human after what he did. Didn't you ThinkWe do so when a person did any cruel, brutal or nasty act. A human being is said to be human because he has feelings, emotions, power to make decisions, to think and when he make a decision that is inhuman somehow, while having all his senses in order is said to be inhuman. Once you create such image in society people will start avoiding you and one day you will realize that you don't have any social life. Man is said to be a social animal and when you lost your sociality what else will remain .an animal. So we can also say that it is one of the symptoms that will make you think where are you standing What is your social status How are you being recognized Whether you are known as person or a human According to author," A life for which no categories of recognition exist is not a livable life, so a life for which those categories constitute unlivable constraints is not an acceptable option". What comes next important to humanness, whether it is sexual difference or racial and ethnic differences In this regard Butler says that "those who believe that sexual difference are no more primary then racial and ethnic differences are right". In order to prove her statement she says that rapists or one night sperm donors can't be called "fathers" in social sense. Such person is called accused not a father. Keeping all the things mentioned above just think for a while about a person who doesn't know his identification, whether he is a male or a female This is what exactly happened with the hero of Butler's book named, David. We have mentioned above that a person is born to be a man or women and then comes being human or inhuman but what about a person who even don't know about his gender. One, who is born as a boy, brought up as a girl and again started living as a boy, a person who has lived both genders, what would be his feelings, was his life livable Being human or inhuman is far away in such cases, a person kept on fighting to make his recognition, to make his status in society. A person who is being criticized for nothing, he has done nothing inhuman so why people are commenting on his gender Why he seems unfit to them It is because of inhuman acts done by others who are responsible for ruining his life. A doctor who played with life of a person in order to do an experiment, in order to upgrade technology, for him David was just a subject of his experiment.a botched experiment. An experiment that tried to challenge the nature perhaps failed. There is a strong relationship between human and Intelligibility. Human beings always want to know his power, his limits, what he can be What he could do David's doctor might want to know that and this might be the reason of doing the inhuman act he did. . When David was told about his real gender at the age of 14 he said, "Suddenly it all made sense why I felt the way I did. I wasn't some sort of weirdo. I wasn't crazy." All this shows that he know that he was a man. Make it clear that David was not inter sexual nor transsexual. If he would be inter sexual he wouldn't have married a woman. He knows that he is a man and wanted to live like a man. David's case is enough to prove that nature cant be changed, human remains what he is born to be, human can make biological changes but he cant change the psychology of a person. If we take example of David, his doctor and parents tried their level best to change his gender but they fail to do so. If they had taken him as a human being who breaths and comes in the world with a desire to be recognized, a human who had feelings, had dreams about his life, had some passions then his story would be different. He kept on fighting through out his life to determine his gender. David gets married in 1990.So the effort made by doctors and his parents failed who wanted to make him a girl. The question that arises is who is responsible for his condition, who was the one that ruined his life and make him commit suicide the doctor, his parents or the society who kept on criticizing him. He wanted to live a normal life but was unable to do so because of this cruel society and his destiny. Though his life was really messed up but his death proves that nature can't be changed by making biological changes in human being he will remain what he is. David proves that a child is not that flexible and could not be taught to be a man or women. Some things are beyond reach of medical science it can prove nature by its experiments but can't change nature by their experiments. Butler stresses throughout the book that this process of undoing is not necessarily negative or positive, but is instead caught up in the paradoxical tension between societal-mediated survival and individual agency. Butler reminds us that one does not author one's gender, for its terms are always negotiated within collective social contexts (Butler 2004, 1). In "Un diagnosing Gender," for example, she addresses the tension within transsexual communities around the diagnosis of gender-identity disorder (GID). According to her tension arises because, though the diagnosis is an economic necessity in order for transsexuals to gain access to funds for sex-change operations, the diagnosis is inherently pathologizing in its conflation of transsexual with disorder. Many people in Tran's communities view the diagnosis of GID as an institutional barrier to Tran autonomy, as it forces transsexuals to conform to the discursive power of the medical and psychoanalytic communities. Butler further 'says (Butler 2004, 77) "on one hand we ought not to underestimate the benefits that the diagnosis has brought, specially to trans people of limited economic means who without the assistance of medical insurance could have achieved their goals. On the other hand we ought not to underestimate the pathologizing force of the diagnosis, especially on young people who may not have the critical resources ". Butler's emphasis on the extent to which our bodies have a public dimension reminds us that struggling for autonomy requires a struggle for a conception of the self within a community; "to live is to live a life politically, in relation to power, in relation to others, in the act of assuming responsibility for a collective future" (Butler 2004, 39). "Grief and rage, therefore, have implications for activism, as they allow people to return to a source of vulnerability, to a collective responsibility for our physical lives "(Butler 2004, 23). As Butler contends, queer politics are about resisting assimilation, and remaking reality at the level of the body: "To intervene in the name of transformation means precisely to disrupt what has become settled knowledge and knowable reality and to use one's unreality to make an otherwise impossible or illegible claim" (Butler 2004, 27). Concluding Comments Besides telling the story of David author has discussed many other phenomenon of life as well including gender norms, understanding of the complex relationship between survival and social transformation and normative conceptions of sexual and gendered life. When it comes to the theory that was presented in 1970 that a child is flexible and could be taught to be a man or women seems to be a theory only it cant be practically applied as Dr. Money tried but failed an as a result ruined life of a person because of his inhuman act. Who was responsible to ruin David's life doctors, his parents, people who criticized him and made him realized that he was not normal or cruel destiny When his story was exposed in media he had to face criticism from intersex community and the anti feminist movement. He struggled hard in order to make his life smooth and normal but as it is said destiny is cruel, David's life and his story make us strongly believe that destiny is really cruel. He lost his job, a big investment failed, his marriage split up and the death of his twin brother make him so depressed that he decided to end up his life by committing suicide at the age of 38. No doubt David has suffered a lot during hi life time and when it became unbearable he decided to end up all his sufferings and preferred to go to the valley of death. He was a strong man as he faced the pains of surgeries and also the controversies. It was a difficult decision to reassign his original gender and had painful surgeries but he managed to do so and beside all these sufferings he managed to live 38 long years. It's good to upgrade technology but its better to treat human like a human. Butler writes that, until society is radically altered, freedom will continue to require un freedom, and autonomy subjection. Undoing Gender is thus indispensable not only for feminist, queer and Tran sexed investigations of philosophical and practical social change, but is useful for wider anti-imperialist work as well. References Butler, Judith. Undoing Gender. Rout ledge, 2004. Read More