Judith Butler

Lorde and Butler Society has a strange fixation with placing anything and everything into one category or another. Talking to any person today can show just how different and similar one can be to another. For instance, when you think of a writer, how many varying faces and personalities’ rushes through your head? Audre Lorde and Judith Butler are two such writers that share a connection through their craft and their meaning. Though they may have these general similarities, they have their own approaches to specific problems and issues. In society, people are thrust into categories previously developed to further relate one to another. For both of these theorists, the groupings that individuals are thrown into are lacking to say mildly. Judith Butler believed that feminism had made a mistake when its claim of being the union of all women. In this, she states that by claiming this, feminism is agreeing to the binary structure of gender that society has constructed. By doing this, feminism is effectively ignoring the differences and choices people have made by forcing them into a category that it to broad to truly express who they are. Audre Lorde refused to be put into any category, instead, she created her own, “a…

Critical review of the article Performative Acts and Gender Constitution: An Essay in Phenomenology and Feminist Theory by Judith Butler Gender is a difficult term to define. Some people might think it is the external characteristics of a person what marks it, others believe it is what it is what you feel inside, and another may hold that is what society imposes them. This critical review examines an article that argues that “gender identity is a performative accomplishment compelled by social…

In this article Judith Butler demonstrates the two extremes of the strategy for bestowing through the made word that is, one should create using straightforward tongue or one should use more troublesome tongue. She states that the people who assume that the standard target of forming is affecting, thus, to persuade it is more fit to use facilitate regardless, able articulations. If one appreciates an area, one is affected more adequately. More troublesome written work may frustrate the…

The 1965 Barbie advertisement supports Judith Butler’s theory in Gender Trouble of gender performativity. In the performativity of women, certain actions associated with femininity have been repeated to form a concrete idea of what a true woman is. Butler supports this idea with the statement that the “expectation produces the very phenomenon that it anticipates” (Butler xv), meaning that the constant pressure for women of all ages to be feminine, demure, and motherly creates the idea that there…

This, however, does not excuse man’s blatant disregard for the woman’s humanity and perceived inferiority. Judith Butler argues that sex is a matter of interpretation and contrary to Beauvoir, it is not natural. Perhaps the most or one of the most famous quotes in Beauvoir’s the Second Sex, “One is not born, but rather becomes, a woman” further dives into the stance that femininity is not biological, psychological or intellectual. One becomes a woman from social and cultural constructs, learned…

Since the advent of civilization, society has tended to experiment with codes that regulate human morality in conformance with established norms and expectations (Halperin, 1990). Of particular interests to societal institutions is sexuality, which for the better part of the centuries leading to the 20th century has been governed by codes drawn from religion and civil laws (Foucault, 1979). Society has continuously normalized heterosexism as the appropriate form of sexuality that should be…

Beginning in the 1990’s, a new movement emerged alongside postmodernism known as Third Wave Feminism. After fighting for legal and social equality by standing up against patriarchal oppression, the goals of feminists broadened to break down concepts of gender, sexuality, and the body (Rampton). Queer Theorists such as Judith Butler branched from this new movement in Women’s Studies to examine the reality of identity and attack the problematic perception of heteronormativity, the belief that…

changing and dependent on multiple factors. Judith Butler, an important precedent for Preciado, proposes the phrase of gender trouble to explain this instability. Gender trouble is the subversion, mobilization and proliferation of genders, and therefore identities that Preciado performs. We can also see how the queering of oneself, for B.P, is directly linked to troubling dominant theories. Preciado is exploring new ways of inhabiting bodies, “I carry the cock that I didn’t need to cut off in…

Feminist theory is a fairly new approach to the IR discipline and the aim is to produce knowledge that helps inform practices to improve the lives of women. Feminists use the experience of women to make research that is beneficial to women. In doing so they believe that their viewpoints might uncover aspects of reality that is hidden by more conventional approaches. Feminists believe that by paying attention to experiences of women IR theories might be reformulated and the understanding of world…

– Simone de Beauvoir (Butler 1). At first glance the answer to the question – “What is a woman?” – appears simple, for is the female body not the marker of womanhood? (Conboy 1) This is one of the fundamental philosophies that has made Judith Butler iconic in the gender-queer community. Ripping down the basics of gender and rebuilding a new ideal. Which is in theory no ideal. Giving rise to the idea that transgender studies and gender-neutrality have scientific links. Her books and lectures have…