Nina Flyvbjerg 14-04-2014
Student number: 672054 Thinking Sex
Gender Performativity
Butler argues that gender should be seen not as an identity but instead as a form of 'performativity'. What does she mean? Explain the key points of Butler's concept of performativity, and discuss what you see as the most important implications of this theory for understanding sex, gender and sexuality.
This essay will demonstrate the way in which Judith Butler argues that gender should be seen as a form of performativity constituted through the individual's acts. Furthermore this essay will discuss the heterosexual matrix and argue that the idea of performativity makes it possible to challenge the heterosexual matrix.
Gender as a form of performativity
In Judith Butler's work on queer theory she differs between sex and gender. Butler's term sex refers to the biological differences between men and women but shouldn't be understood as something natural and unchangeable but understood and located within a set of historical and cultural discourses.
English: Judith Butler's heterosexual matrix. Pols...
Gender Queer
End Gender ViolenceThe idea about the complete natural sex is therefore impossible (Lloyd, 2007:38). Gender refers to the socially and culturally constructed gender that is changeable depending on the context it is played out in (Butler, 1990:6). Butler does not see sex as being determinative of gender since gender can be constructed in many different ways and be described as liquid and changeable (Butler 1990:6). Gender does not denote a substansive being, but a relative point of convergence among culturally and historically specific sets of relations (Butler 1990:10).
According to Butler gender should be seen as a form of performativity, meaning that gender is something that is done unconsciously through acts. Gender is performative because it only exists in the act which constitutes gender (Lloyd, 2007:48). Gender is not attached to the body and its anatomy, instead gender is...