One is not born a woman, but rather becomes one. Simone de Beauvoir’s statement is possibly one of the most interesting quotes used in Judith Butler’s book Gender Trouble. Judith Butler, an American philosopher whom specialises in feminist and queer theory, uses this statement as a means to oppose the general assumptions made by feminists, that there is an idea of a solid feminine identity. Feminism is a social and political movement, its main aim is to define rights for women and establish feminine identity equally across the globe. Butler seeks to understand if feminism can survive without a solid feminist identity, meaning the inclusion of repressed gendered people such as transgender and transsexuals. She achieves this by analysing the
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A Girl Like Me: The Gwen Araujo Story, follow a true story of a women, Gwen, who is born a man. She is bullied and ridiculed by her family and school because she refuses to conform to the social policing put in place by stigma’s and the repetition of gendered acts. The narrative follows Gwen throughout her life up until her murder. The film cuts back and forth between Gwen’s life and the court case of her death, she was brutally murdered by four men in a hate crime due to the ignorance against her gender. The first part of this essay will pay particular close attention to Butler’s distinction between sex and gender and will use her notion of sex being “already gendered” in direct reference to A Girl Like Me: The Gwen Araujo Story. In the second this essay will give an account of Butler’s gender performativity in relation to queer theory and offer argument that Gwen in the narrative of the film is a key example of her notion. The third part of this essay will coincide with what is mentioned in part two, it will focus on subversive bodily act, which means acts which undermine the authority of convention social gendered acts and again how it is used in the narrative of A Girl Like Me: The Gwen Araujo Story, and the final part will concentrate on Butler’s notion of gender representation and how it is forced into place by social policing of gender …show more content…
She starts first by acknowledging that the feminist idea of the term ‘women’ indicates collective identity, rather than a firm signifier of a person’s internal reality, what gender one is on the inside. This is problematic because a collective identity is socially constructed by race, class and other social constructs and not one own personal inner beliefs. These social constructs form what are known as gender. Butler suggests that gender is not something one is born with it is something which a person becomes, which related back to Beauvoir’s Quote that “One is not born a women, but rather becomes one.” Butler names gender representation as “styles of flesh” , which relates to the internal reality of one’s own self, these social constructs falsely make one believe that their gender is natural and an internal reality, whereas it is just a representation created through repetition throughout time. Gender and sex are normally accounted for as the same term, sex is the term which specializes what one is conceived as at birth, male or female. Although this categorizing system doesn’t take into consideration where a new born child is going to be transgender or transsexual, a system has already been put into place which identifies a being based on the
A Girl Like Me: The Gwen Araujo Story, follow a true story of a women, Gwen, who is born a man. She is bullied and ridiculed by her family and school because she refuses to conform to the social policing put in place by stigma’s and the repetition of gendered acts. The narrative follows Gwen throughout her life up until her murder. The film cuts back and forth between Gwen’s life and the court case of her death, she was brutally murdered by four men in a hate crime due to the ignorance against her gender. The first part of this essay will pay particular close attention to Butler’s distinction between sex and gender and will use her notion of sex being “already gendered” in direct reference to A Girl Like Me: The Gwen Araujo Story. In the second this essay will give an account of Butler’s gender performativity in relation to queer theory and offer argument that Gwen in the narrative of the film is a key example of her notion. The third part of this essay will coincide with what is mentioned in part two, it will focus on subversive bodily act, which means acts which undermine the authority of convention social gendered acts and again how it is used in the narrative of A Girl Like Me: The Gwen Araujo Story, and the final part will concentrate on Butler’s notion of gender representation and how it is forced into place by social policing of gender …show more content…
She starts first by acknowledging that the feminist idea of the term ‘women’ indicates collective identity, rather than a firm signifier of a person’s internal reality, what gender one is on the inside. This is problematic because a collective identity is socially constructed by race, class and other social constructs and not one own personal inner beliefs. These social constructs form what are known as gender. Butler suggests that gender is not something one is born with it is something which a person becomes, which related back to Beauvoir’s Quote that “One is not born a women, but rather becomes one.” Butler names gender representation as “styles of flesh” , which relates to the internal reality of one’s own self, these social constructs falsely make one believe that their gender is natural and an internal reality, whereas it is just a representation created through repetition throughout time. Gender and sex are normally accounted for as the same term, sex is the term which specializes what one is conceived as at birth, male or female. Although this categorizing system doesn’t take into consideration where a new born child is going to be transgender or transsexual, a system has already been put into place which identifies a being based on the