Summary Of Gender Trouble

Book Summary: Gender Trouble was first published in 1990. Butler’s explains in the Preface to the 1990 edition that the title is a based on the overall theme of “trouble” in gender studies and concepts of feminism, as well as a reference to John Waters’ film Female Trouble starring the drag queen Divine. Gender Trouble discusses writings of numerous authors, including Simone de Beauvoir, Julia Kristeva, Sigmund Freud, Jacques Lacan, Luce Irigaray, Monique Wittig, Jacques Derrida, and Michel Foucault. According to Butler, concepts of sex, gender, gender roles, and sexuality, are “performances” that are defined by culture throughout history. The “performance” of gender is repeated over time and becomes established as a “core” gender. The establishment (regulatory, judicial, disciplinary schemes) determines what is permissible or socially acceptable.

Butler argues back and forth about the role of sex in establishing a so-called “natural" gender and sexuality, even questioning whether the sex on is born with is without cultural construction. Butler suggests that both “gender “and “sex” are socially and culturally constructed.

Chapter 1: Subjects of Sex/ Gender/ Desire (pp. 1-46)

Butler begins with the question, “What is a woman/ what are women?” Do these terms accurately and adequately portray the group intended to be represented as the subject of feminism? She further questions if this group can truly be a subject well represented in a system which has previously constructed/ misrepresented the term. In considering this term of “woman” through the lens of the genealogy of Foucault, Butler points out that it is skewed by the “heterosexual matrix” and presupposes several inaccurate norms. Furthermore, the term “feminism” may fals...

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...inscription from a cultural source figured as ‘external’ to that body.” Butler then questions that idea and delves into the concept of drag, which serves to alter the rigid binary male/female sexual construct, and demonstrate through exaggerated femininity how gender is a performance.

Conclusion: “From Parody to Politics”

Butler imagines a state of feminism without any gender pronouns, questioning the meaning and usefulness (and on the other hand, negative power) of such labels. Butler suggests that drag can unearth and then blur gender assumptions. Butler suggests that real transformation and freedom from repressive gender politics is possible, stating: “Genders can neither be true nor false, neither real nor apparent, neither original nor derived. As credible bearers of those attributes, however, genders can also be rendered thoroughly and radically incredible.”