keep you at the bottom but tease you with the uppercrust you get it then they move it so you never keeping up enough

here is a review i wrote for judith butler's "undoing gender"

Judith Butler's, Undoing Gender (2004), is a collection of essays dealing with various issues surrounding societal constructions of gender, the body, and norms that mandate how we see ourselves. Many of these essays deal with the exclusion of trans, intersex, or those who do not fit into the binary systems of gender and sexuality in currently in place. Her essays focus on the ways in which gender must be continuously reinforced and how our body is at once a site in which to contest gender, but also, a place in which others perceive and make judgments about us. Her purpose in these essays is to understand what it means when one does not fit into the standards we have set as normal—whether that is something like gay, intersex, Trans, incestuous, or polyandrous. In other words, what does it mean for people who do not explicitly fit into a certain lived experience; an experience grounded within a framework of limiting categories? She argues that gender is something that we must perform over and over in order to maintain its legitimacy. So, gender is not a fixed category but rather it is fluid, permeable, and contains room for revision or negotiation. This also implies that the normative categories we use are not natural.

She argues that in our desire for recognition (as people), we are placed outside of ourselves and within a social norm that we do not choose (33). In other words, when we speak about our sexuality and when we speak about our rights, we must do so from a specific place evidenced by our bodies. But then, what does it mean if we do not fit into the binary boundaries that gender and sexual norms provide? How do we maintain life within our lived experiences when to be a human being, we must supposedly fit into these predefined boundaries? She argues that, “When we start with the human as a foundation, then the human at issue in human rights is already known, already defined” (37). There are a set of assumptions that go along with who we include as human. So, what does it mean for someone who does not fit into the standard definition of what is livable? How can we constitute ourselves as beings if we are already excluded from these preexisting definitions?

In chapter four, Butler discusses the irony of the diagnosis of gender identity disorder. She points out that some insurance companies will only take the large cost of sex changes if the person can prove that the sex change is medically necessary (75). So, on one hand, a diagnosis is valuable because it allows for the transition, but on the other hand, it continues to view gender identity as a disorder--a pathological problem. Furthermore, it requires one to act within these expected boundaries even if this may not be the case; one must subscribe falsely to these sets of expectations in order to prove the sex change is absolutely necessary.

Butler argues that instead of viewing gender identity issues as a pathology it should, instead, be considered one of various options an individual should have in determining gender oneself. Additionally, the connection between gender identity and sexual orientation does not have clear boundaries. For instance we cannot claim to know what one's sexual orientation will be given their gender. She says, “The narrative is not captured by a category, or it may only be capturable by a category for a time. Life histories are histories of becoming, and categories can sometimes act to freeze that process of becoming” (80). In other words, the attempt to stick someone in a particular category according to gender or sexuality can potentially harm the process of being. Butler wonders (as Michael Warner did) if in an attempt to be recognized by established norms requires that we delegitimate the lived sexualities that are outside of the bonds of marriage. In other words, by trying to fit into the mainstream, are we then delegitmizing single people, the non-married, those not interested in marriage, or those that are polyandrous (109)? Must marriage be the only answer?

In the chapter entitled “Bodily Confessions,” Butler is reminiscent of Foucault when she speaks about the religious confession and the power play between the confessor and the listener. She says that after confession, “Not only has one done the deed, but one has spoken of it as well, and something in speaking, a speaking that is before another and, obliquely, to another, a speaking that presumes and solicits recognition and constitutes the first act as public, as known, as having truly happened” (165). She goes on to say that in the confession, the bodily act that one is describing, becomes different from the act that is being confessed. It is the same body, but when relayed verbally, the body is acting again. She asks if bringing this first act into play means that one is putting it into play between the confessor and the listener then. Finally, she says that once this deed has been spoken, it somehow places it in the past and finishes it. It is over. So, the confessor is both reenacting the transgression, but also letting it go and the body is implicated in this process.

I think she sums up an important argument when she says, “The point to emphasize here is not that drag is subversive of gender norms, but that we live, more or less implicitly, with received notions of reality, implicit accounts of ontology, which determine what kinds of bodies and sexualities will be considered real and true, and which kind will not” (214). Her point here is that we have these accepted notions of gender that we perform daily and by adhering them in the expected way. We take part and help to facilitate these behaviors and live them as reality. In fact, we are reinforcing and maintaining them as real when they clearly are not. The solution lies in transgression. When someone does perform as expected, are these performances still real? Are they true? Do people get recognition for being if they do not conform? How do we exclude people in our maintenance of these 'acceptable' categories? Not only that, but how does someone's lived experience counteract the notions of normality that we give to being explicitly masculine or feminine? Butler raises excellent questions about what we consider normal, who gets constituted as normal, how lived experience does not always conform, and how we can begin to think about undoing the binary system of gender in place today.

Our readings have dealt with a variety of ways that people articulate their gender and sexuality. For example, Han discusses gay Asian men and the ways in which mediated images play out in the everyday presentation of self. Asian men construct their identities and behaviors in relation to what they see in the popular media. They absorb these images and learn about how they are supposed to act as a gay Asian man. Han points out the ways in which Asian men are feminized, as well as their attraction to white men because of their supposed masculinity (109). Furthermore, Escofflier discusses situational homosexuality in the making of gay pornography. The men that take part in this work have to negotiate their sexuality and their behaviors within a society that is largely heteronormative (130). Similarly, the men and boys that post on Craig's list looking for another male to masturbate with must negotiate their own sexuality, and they do so explicitly in many of the ads. The posters do not consider themselves gay while others who read about these ads might think differently (Ward, 27). All of these examples indicate ways in which people must negotiate their own lived experience when it is in direct conflict with the binary categories of gender and sexuality in society. Butler would argue that these experiences are shaped by our normative categories and expected behaviors, but that they are also in contrast to them; and despite their divergence, these lives and lived experiences should still be recognized as real and valid.

References

Butler, Judith. Undoing Gender. New York, NY: Routledge, 2004.

Escofflier, Jeffrey. “Gay-for-Pay: Straight Men and the Making of Gay Pornography,” in Sex

Matters: The Sexuality & Society Reader. eds. Stombler, Mindy; Baunach, Dawn; Burgess,

Elisabeth; Donnelly, Denise; Simonds, Wendy; and Windsor, Elroi. Boston, MA: Pearson

Education Inc. publishing as Allyn and Bacon, 2010.

Han, Chong-suk. “Geisha of a Different Kind: Gay Asian Men and the Gendering of Sexual

Identity,” in Sex Matters: The Sexuality & Society Reader. eds. Stombler, Mindy; Baunach,

Dawn; Burgess, Elisabeth; Donnelly, Denise; Simonds, Wendy; and Windsor, Elroi. Boston, MA:

Pearson Education Inc. publishing as Allyn and Bacon, 2010.

Ward, Jane. “Straight Dude Seeks Same: Mapping the Relationship between Sexual Identities,

Practices, and Cultures,” in Sex Matters: The Sexuality & Society Reader. eds. Stombler, Mindy;

Baunach, Dawn; Burgess, Elisabeth; Donnelly, Denise; Simonds, Wendy; and Windsor, Elroi.

Boston, MA: Pearson Education Inc. publishing as Allyn and Bacon, 2010.