Judith Butler Informative Acts And Gender Constitution Summary

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Recommended: Essays on gender identity

Judith Butler’s piece “Performative Acts and Gender Constitution: An Essay in Phenomenology and Feminist Theory” focuses on the relationship between body and gender, and how the two influence one another. The “various acts by which cultural identity is constituted and assumed” (Butler 525) serve as the foundation upon which we can start to dissect the reality behind how “bodies get crafted into genders” (Butler 525). Butler believes that “the body becomes its gender through a series of acts which are renewed, revised, and consolidated through time” (Butler 523) because she compares gender to “an act which has been rehearsed” (Butler 526), one that has been performed “invariably, under constraint, daily and incessantly, with anxiety and pleasure” (Butler 531). …show more content…

Correctly showcasing one’s gender fuels the belief that gender is not meant to be fluid. According to Butler, gender is the “cultural significance that the sexed body assumes” (Butler 524), and by choosing to transition from an individual’s expected gender, or even an individual’s expected sexuality, it is unfavorable for society in terms of reproduction and the profits that may follow. When members of society follow the status quo, they “guarantee the production, exchange, and consumption of material goods,…[as well as] the channeling of sexuality into various modes of heterosexual marriage” (Butler 524). I don’t agree with any of this, and I don’t think Butler does, either. Butler is providing a discourse on a shitty reality: gender roles are “enforced though…modes of punishment and reward” (Butler 526). Historically, humanity has always resisted change, and deterring from social norms is a part of

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