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Gender issues in literature
Gender issues in literature
Gender issues in literature
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Conceptualizing Becoming “One is not born, but rather becomes a woman.” Arguably Simone de Beauvoir’s most famous quote, it raises questions about womanhood and identity that we struggle to grasp and accept even in todays society. To Beauvoir, this statement in her writing questioned the very entity of what it meant to be a woman, highlighting the idea that societies expectations and norms imposed the idea of womanhood on a young women. This issue of becoming is even further discussed by authors like Judith Butler, who applies this idea to her own lesbian identity, and how it defines her relationship to society. In Beauvoir’s “The Second Sex”, the woman’s place in relationship to men is often discussed. She asserts that women are seen as the other, juxtaposing man’s place as the self, the main point around …show more content…
Is there a true gender, or is gender something imposed upon us by society? This can be answered by her thoughts on gender performativity, and her opinion on “drag”. In some aspects, drag is often seen as taboo, and is commonly seen as an activity in which men dress as women. In this context, Butler argues that drag in an essence doesn’t really exist, because there is no proper gender to dress yourself as. This idea of a proper gender comes from society, and the societies imposed ideals of what proper gender is. Butler says “there is no original or primary gender a drag imitates, but gender is a kind of imitation for which there is no original”; thus, there is no true gender., no ideal to be imitated through drag. Gender, according to the text, is simply a performance we put on every day. We become the gender we chose through our daily decisions, through our hair cuts and clothing choices; these choices are also influenced by what the society deems is gender appropriate (p.312). As she states, “the notion of proper operates …improperly installed as the effects of a compulsory
Judith Butler’s concept of gender being performative focuses on how it creates a sequence of effect or impression. Human have a consistent way of talking about their gender as if it were something that is simply a fact. People go about their lives following patterns that are interconnected with their male or female appearance. They get very settled in the expected behaviors and common attributes of male or female, without recognizing that gender is a social construction. It is difficult to wrap your head around the idea that gender is always changing and being reproduced because it is conversation that often goes unnoticed. Butler realizes that it will be a struggle to get people to grasp the idea that nobody actually is their gender and that
Since the dawn of the Victorian Era, society has perpetuated unrealistic gender performance ideals that supposedly find their roots within biological sexual differences. Judith Butler has spent a lifetime seeking to break the mold todays social constructions, specifically surrounding gender and sexuality. The theory this pioneer pegged is now known as Queer Theory, and brought forth in the education system through Queer Studies courses. In the text Sexing the Body: Gender Politics and the Construction of Sexuality by author Anne Fausto-Sterling, gender and sex are similarly challenged on both a social and biological level. When reviewing Fausto-Sterling’s work in conjunction with Queer Studies and Human Sexuality, an efficient and effective format is loosely based upon a Critical Literary analysis.
Bartky says that “femininity is artifice…a mode of enacting and reenacting…gender norms” (Bartky, 313) while Butler’s near famous statement concerns the idea that “gender is performative [and] it constitutes as an effect the very subject it appears to express” (Butler, 319). Going back to the example of women’s business formal, and even in some cases business casual, attire we can see both of these statements within the same issue. Women dress in these particular and uncomfortable ways because it is a social and gender norm for them to do so while it is also a costume that they are putting on in order to perform a certain role. Few women truly enjoy some of the material trappings forced upon us: heels are uncomfortable for long hours standing, most skirts offer low mobility, etc. Women are required to put on this costume though because they are required to perform to an adequate degree to the expectations around their gender, they must perform their gender for those around them in order to be considered effective at their
“What makes for a livable world?”, and what constitutes the human?”, are two questions Judith Butler inquires in her opening paragraph and throughout her writing that determine the mindsets of individuals throughout our society. Both of these arguments are answered differently, by different persons, within different cultures, yet play a dramatic role in Butler’s view of herself, the LGBT community, and most of all, every other human
Gender is a performance according to Judith Butler . All bodies, she claims, are gendered from birth; sometimes even earlier now we can determine sex in the womb . For Butler society dictates ones gender and the individual reinforces that gender through performance . “The deeds make the doer” in Butler’s words; there is no subject prior to performance. Butler’s concept of gender, however, leads us to question: what of those who are incapable of performing the gender ascribed to them? If one is unable to perform are they left genderless, lacking subjectivity and social identity? If no human is without gender , as Butler claims, then where does this leave her theory? Either gender is more than simply performance or one can exist without gender.
Jenna Tamisiea Elser Sex and Rep March 30, 2014 Final Paper- 1/3 DRAFT Marguerite Gautier was chaste of heart. She was also a courtesan. She was diseased yet desirable. As Alexandre Dumas, fils’ consumptive heroine in his 1852 play, La Dame aux caméllias, Marguerite Gautier comes to represent “Everywoman, required to be both virtuous and alluring, and compelled to find identity in worldly suffering and the promise of otherworldly redemption”.
(6) Simone deBeauvoir, The Second Sex, translated by H.M. Parshley (New York: Random House, 1972) p. xxx
The construction of gender is based on the division of humanity to man and woman. This is impossible ontologically speaking; because the humans are not divided, thus gender is merely an imaginary realm. It only exist in the language exercises, and the way that cultural products are conceived in them. This essay is a preliminary attempt to offer an analysis of ‘One Is Not Born a Woman’ by Wittig and ‘The Second Sex’ by Simone De Beauvoir holds on the language usage contribution to the creation of genders and the imagined femininity.
Judith Butlers book entitled ‘Bodies that Matter’ examines and questions the belief that certain male-female behaviors are natural within our society. The behaviors that Dr. Butler has distinguished between in this book are femininity and masculinity. She believes that through our learned perception of these gendered behaviors this is an act or performance. She implies that this is brought to us by normative heterosexuality depicted in our timeline. In which, takes on the role of our language and accustomed normalization of society. Butler offers many ideas to prove some of her more radical idea’s such as examples from other philosophers, performativity, and worldwide examples on gender/sex. Some philosophers that seem to be of relevance to her fighting cause are Michel Foucault, Edmund Husserl, Maurice Merleau-Ponty, and George Herbert Mead. Her use of the doctrine of constitution takes ‘the social agent as an object rather than the subject of constitutive acts” (Performative). In other words, Dr. Butler will question the extent to which we as a human race assume the given individualism between one another. She has said that “this will constitute him-or herself” (Butler 13). She also wonders to what extent our acts are reputable for us, rather, by our place within dialect and convention. Dr. Butlers followings being of a postmodernist and poststructuralist practice, decides to use the term “subject” rather than “individual” or “person” in order to underline the linguistic nature of her position. This approach should be of credit to philosopher Jacques Lacan because symbolic order gives the system and signs of convention that determines our perception of what we see as reality.
De Beauvoir Simone. “The second sex” Ch.1. 2009. Science Fiction Stories and Contexts. Ed. Stephen A. Scipione and Marisa Feinstein. Boston: Bedford/ St. Martin's, n.d. 119-34. Print.
There has been a long and on going discourse on the battle of the sexes, and Simone De Beauvoir’s The Second Sex reconfigures the social relation that defines man and women, and how far women has evolved from the second position given to them. In order for us to define what a woman is, we first need to clarify what a man is, for this is said to be the point of derivation (De Beauvoir). And this notion presents to us the concept of duality, which states that women will always be treated as the second sex, the dominated and lacking one. Woman as the sexed being that differs from men, in which they are simply placed in the others category. As men treat their bodies as a concrete connection to the world that they inhabit; women are simply treated as bodies to be objectified and used for pleasure, pleasure that arise from the beauty that the bodies behold. This draws us to form the statement that beauty is a powerful means of objectification that every woman aims to attain in order to consequently attain acceptance and approval from the patriarchal society. The society that set up the vague standard of beauty based on satisfaction of sexual drives. Here, women constantly seek to be the center of attention and inevitably the medium of erection.
When a child is born, a gender is given. This child is officially labeled as a male or female based on its anatomy. Simone de Beauvoir once said, “One is not born, but rather becomes a woman”. What does this really mean? Many people believe that if you are born with female anatomy, you are automatically going to grow into a woman.
Simone de Beauvoir, in her 1949 text The Second Sex, examines the problems faced by women in Western society. She argues that women are subjugated, oppressed, and made to be inferior to males – simply by virtue of the fact that they are women. She notes that men define their own world, and women are merely meant to live in it. She sees women as unable to change the world like men can, unable to live their lives freely as men can, and, tragically, mostly unaware of their own oppression. In The Second Sex, de Beauvoir describes the subjugation of woman, defines a method for her liberation, and recommends strategies for this liberation that still have not been implemented today.
de Beauvoir, Simone. "The Woman in Love." The Second Sex. New York: Vintage Books, 1989. . Print.
Therefore, gender brings is the action through which what it names is brought into being; masculinity or feminism. It is the language that constitutes and construct gender identities meaning gender comes after language. The extent to which a person performs the gender determine how much real a gender is. An outside gendered self or a self-preceding isn’t there; gender identity is not necessarily constructed by “I “or “we”. Social conventions enactments which is due to our retrospective reality results in subjectivity characterised by self-willingness and independence as contended by Butler. From this we learn the prerogative nature of gender identity, is determined by the situation in which one is in like society, contact etc. therefore certain social positions can potentially produce a privileged