Judith Butler’s “From Gender Trouble,” addressed a lot of issues I often find myself wondering about.

“I noted that trouble sometimes euphemized some fundamentally mysterious problem usually related to the alleged mystery of all things feminine” (2488). In this section Butler is talking about society asserts control by threatening one with “trouble.” Trouble has no doubt been associated with the feminine since the beginning of time. Serioulsy. . . who gets blamed for eating the apple first? Eve. Therefore women are perceived as being “trouble.” Even if Eve was hungry, how do we know that’s the absolute truth? Especially since some gospels were not even put into The Bible. So women are associated with trouble, mystery, and unknowability, which kind of makes women sound like Lord Voldemort from Harry Potter, just dark, twisty and scary.

 

“Power seemed to be more than an exchange between subjects or a relation of constant inversion between a subject and an Other; indeed, power appeared to operate in the production of that very binary frame for thinking about gender” (2489). Yes Butler I find myself nodding in agreement to this statement. Power does not only exist between a subject and the other, it also exists in the gender based system (Rubin) that society has constructed. One thing we didn’t discuss in detail but I think is important, is assigning the gender of babies. When a child is born it is told whether or not it is male or female, even in cases in which a child is both. It is fascinating that the mind and body can be complete opposites proving even more, that you are not your body, you are your mind. “If gender attributes and acts, the various ways in which a body shows or produces its cultural signification, are performative, then there is no pre-existing identity by which an act or attribute might be measured; there would be no true or false, real or distorted acts of gender, and the postulation of a true gender identity would be revealed as a regulatory fiction” (2501). I remember reading Woman on the Edge of Time for a Sci Fi class, and one of the practices the society of the future used, was allowing children to go into the forest and choose their name. I can’t remember whether or not they could choose their sex, but it would make sense if they could. Only. . . how would they know if they are male or female? The only way they culd figure this out s to turn back to society’s flawed system and try to sqeeze in wherever they see fit. Then this brings me to the whole biblical aspect of sex; I mean Eve was created from Adam, so therefore we can’t always assume that men are unfeeling brick walls, because they’re not. It’s just some social stigma put on men that they can’t cry or they’re weak, they can’t show emotions or they’re a pussy. It’s all so warped.

 

After seeing Hairspray at Proctor’s two weeks ago, I loved the reference to Divine, which leads into another important part for me, is gender just an impersonation of what we think it is? That’s really sloppy right now, hopefully you can figure out where I am going with this. “Does being female constitute a “natural fact” or a cultural performance, or is “naturalness” constituted through discursively constrained performative acts that produce the body through and within the categories of sex?” (2489) I can’t even begin to phrase this into something that is going to make sense, but that’s ok. Is a woman born female, or constructed into being female because of society. . . is gender performative? To this question I would say yes. I would say that because you are born a woman or a man, that does not make you a woman or a man. Look at the Gwen Araujo story. She was born as a male, but her soul was female, and because of that, she was killed. It’s disgusting how our society is so hell-bent on sticking people in categories. It’s likes some twisted game to ensure that there will always be an other.