gender identity as performance - humbox性别身.PPTVIP

Language and Gender Identity as Performance The Work of Judith Butler Butler draws on a very wide range of different theorists (Hegel, Freud, de Beauvoir, Althusser, Foucault, Derrida) Her style is very dense and allusive and can be hard to follow If you are interested in finding out more about her, read her most famous work Gender Trouble (1990), and perhaps Sara Salih’s guide Judith Butler (2002) Three important ideas from Butler: Gender is not something we are automatically born with, it is something we continually “perform” This means that we have to stop thinking of gender as a “natural” category But subversion of the gender order is possible We tend to think of gender as natural: When babies are born, one of the first things we want to know is “boy or girl?” Whenever we fill in any kind of form, one of the first questions we’re asked is “male or female?” As we grow up, we become very skilled at telling men from women J.L. Austin and Speech Act Theory When we speak, we don’t just describe the world around us or convey ideas to each other. What we actually do is perform acts that bring about changes in the world. So when a vicar says “I now pronounce you man and wife” he is actually joining two people together legally. Butler argues that in a similar way we continually perform gender: “Gender is the repeated stylization of the body, a set of repeated acts within a highly rigid regulatory framework that congeal over time to produce the appearance of substance, of a natural sort of being.” Performing Femininity: “The fact is many men are simply repulsed by excessive hair on women. And it’s obvious why – hairiness is a masculine trait and most blokes like their women to be feminine.”The Metro 26/10/05 Let’s just think about that … It is true that men are, on average, naturally hairier than women on many parts of their body (e.g. chin, chest, legs) However, all women naturally have quite a lot of underarm hair, and some hair on their legs And culturally we expec