The concept of gender is a difficult notion to split society as a whole in half, but rather something each individual defines for himself. Society has its way of modifying how one perceives gender and how he is ideally supposed to conform. Germaine Greer tells of her pleading stance on the malleability of gender construction to each individual in her piece “Masculinity”. Contrasting this, Judith Butler speaks in “Undoing Gender” of the either pink or blue regulation of gender that she infers the world must be split to and adapted to function normally. Germaine Greer’s argument on the construction of gender roles in society is more compelling than Judith Butler’s stance in “Undoing Gender” because unlike Butler, Greer illustrates a more realistic
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One similarity in both cases is the use of biological facts and research to argue their own stance on gender’s functions. Greer starts her piece with the 1977 report in Nature that argues the concept of masculinity is considered genetic, using the study of Turner’s syndrome, a condition in which individuals are born with only the X of the final pair of chromosomes and the resulting tests from their upbringing to defend her opposing point. Greer speculates, “Despite all the hoo-ha, Skuse and his team had not proved that masculine men are born. They had certainly not done enough to counter the vast amount of research on how they are made” (Greer 730). Greer’s argument on the matter grows stronger as she finds holes in the opposing side’s research. In “Undoing Gender”, Butler proposes the case of David Reimer, an individual born male and medically forced to adapt to a feminine body at a young age under the alias of Brenda, who later choose to remain male. Although fitting to Butler’s argument, the David/Brenda case is only
One similarity in both cases is the use of biological facts and research to argue their own stance on gender’s functions. Greer starts her piece with the 1977 report in Nature that argues the concept of masculinity is considered genetic, using the study of Turner’s syndrome, a condition in which individuals are born with only the X of the final pair of chromosomes and the resulting tests from their upbringing to defend her opposing point. Greer speculates, “Despite all the hoo-ha, Skuse and his team had not proved that masculine men are born. They had certainly not done enough to counter the vast amount of research on how they are made” (Greer 730). Greer’s argument on the matter grows stronger as she finds holes in the opposing side’s research. In “Undoing Gender”, Butler proposes the case of David Reimer, an individual born male and medically forced to adapt to a feminine body at a young age under the alias of Brenda, who later choose to remain male. Although fitting to Butler’s argument, the David/Brenda case is only