"All the world's a stage,
And all the men and women merely players;
They have their exits and their entrances,
And one man in his time plays many parts,
His acts being seven ages."
-William Shakespeare
And all the men and women merely players;
They have their exits and their entrances,
And one man in his time plays many parts,
His acts being seven ages."
-William Shakespeare
After discussing Butler yesterday, I kept thinking about this Shakespeare quote. Everyone is living their life in a performance. Suggesting a theatrical element such as Butler did, and Shakespeare suggests in this quote, however, seems to imply that everyone is aware of being actors in a play. Butler's theory gets a lot of criticism because of the engrained idea that certain things are just 'natural'. While discussing 'The Second Sex', most people seemed to agree that there is almost no clear way to 'naturally' define the two sexes other than by sexual organs. And even then, transgendered people and hermaphrodites seem to go against that separation. Even things we tried to attribute 'to most men' can never be universal because there will always be men who do not fulfill that attribute and women who do. At the point that it is a majority thing, the attribute is probably mostly perceptions of the men or just a possible statistical 'fact'.
Based on the fact that women and men act differently depending on culture, not to mention how men and women have progressed in 'normal actions' over the years, Butler's performance theory seems to make sense. People perform their gender and sex as they're taught, rewarded and influenced to act. Now if we continue from Tuesday that there really aren't huge differences to men and women (meaning all men are this thing versus all women are that thing) then other than genetic predispositions, it would seem that almost our entire personality is a performance of what we're 'scripted' to do. Sarah asked this question and I thought about the implications of it during the reading: what exactly do we have control over if everything is purely from influence. At some point we could choose to change influences (new friends, new job etc.) however couldn't that be said to come about based on previous things? It seems to almost undermine all individuality. The reason it is most important for gender is because women, for seemingly no reason other than what sex they are perceived as from birth, are treated differently and oppressively. So, after reading Butler, the big question is: What now?
Is there a solution to our performance behavior, and if so what would that world look like? What implications does this theory have on how the world ought to be? The immediate reactions in class seemed to be: is she suggesting a genderless society? This almost utopian idea (to use Tim's terminology from yesterday) seemed farfetched and problematic. Taking away the concept of gender does not seem like a progressive thing to do, nor way to deal with genders being prioritized or oppressed. To attempt to raise a child genderless, it would seem to necessitate almost raising them 'sexless' until other things change as well. Would anatomy simply just be taught as 'some people have these organs and other have these'? Would pronouns like hers/his she/he be a thing of the past? Would clothing stores no longer have mens' and women's sections? This would have to be applied so wide scale that it just does not seem possible.
So back to: what can we do? Professor Hansen mentioned that she does not think Judith Butler wants the extreme of no gender, but rather more genders. More than the forced binary of: you are man, you are women, which does not even seem to work. To achieve anything like this it would seem to necessitate a lot of community support. Every day articles are written about abuse and bullying against self-identified gays, imagine the reaction to someone claiming to neither be 'male' nor 'female'. Once people recognize they are performing a gender for the sake of approval rather than self-attainment, it doesn't mean they should reject anything typically attributed to whatever gender they are but rather they should be aware of what they do and why they do it. The question of makeup is written about frequently with feminists, but that is just the beginning of gender normative behavior. If people choose to act, dress, be a certain way, the perception of their being should not be based in engrained ideas of gender or sex. I think Butler's ideal society would be about self-awareness and support rather than utopia.
But what about the bathrooms? Tons of universities and places already have unisex bathrooms, the transition would not be all that difficult.
Based on the fact that women and men act differently depending on culture, not to mention how men and women have progressed in 'normal actions' over the years, Butler's performance theory seems to make sense. People perform their gender and sex as they're taught, rewarded and influenced to act. Now if we continue from Tuesday that there really aren't huge differences to men and women (meaning all men are this thing versus all women are that thing) then other than genetic predispositions, it would seem that almost our entire personality is a performance of what we're 'scripted' to do. Sarah asked this question and I thought about the implications of it during the reading: what exactly do we have control over if everything is purely from influence. At some point we could choose to change influences (new friends, new job etc.) however couldn't that be said to come about based on previous things? It seems to almost undermine all individuality. The reason it is most important for gender is because women, for seemingly no reason other than what sex they are perceived as from birth, are treated differently and oppressively. So, after reading Butler, the big question is: What now?
Is there a solution to our performance behavior, and if so what would that world look like? What implications does this theory have on how the world ought to be? The immediate reactions in class seemed to be: is she suggesting a genderless society? This almost utopian idea (to use Tim's terminology from yesterday) seemed farfetched and problematic. Taking away the concept of gender does not seem like a progressive thing to do, nor way to deal with genders being prioritized or oppressed. To attempt to raise a child genderless, it would seem to necessitate almost raising them 'sexless' until other things change as well. Would anatomy simply just be taught as 'some people have these organs and other have these'? Would pronouns like hers/his she/he be a thing of the past? Would clothing stores no longer have mens' and women's sections? This would have to be applied so wide scale that it just does not seem possible.
So back to: what can we do? Professor Hansen mentioned that she does not think Judith Butler wants the extreme of no gender, but rather more genders. More than the forced binary of: you are man, you are women, which does not even seem to work. To achieve anything like this it would seem to necessitate a lot of community support. Every day articles are written about abuse and bullying against self-identified gays, imagine the reaction to someone claiming to neither be 'male' nor 'female'. Once people recognize they are performing a gender for the sake of approval rather than self-attainment, it doesn't mean they should reject anything typically attributed to whatever gender they are but rather they should be aware of what they do and why they do it. The question of makeup is written about frequently with feminists, but that is just the beginning of gender normative behavior. If people choose to act, dress, be a certain way, the perception of their being should not be based in engrained ideas of gender or sex. I think Butler's ideal society would be about self-awareness and support rather than utopia.
But what about the bathrooms? Tons of universities and places already have unisex bathrooms, the transition would not be all that difficult.
I think you're point about control and influence is very important. You stated that all of our actions are defined by previous things which undermines all individuality. Or a more Marxisst way of puting it, all of our actions are defined by history. In that sense there is in fact no room for the concept of the individual. Our individual actions that define our individual personality are consituted by the actions by other individuals that preceded us and will constitute the individual actions of those to follow. So, in that sense, we can really only take small steps. Any deviation we make can only partially abandon our notions of how we present ourselves, but perhaps they can do it enough to effect change in those to follow. We must disrupt the chain of expectations being held together throughout history, and we will have to do this by making ourselves constantly critical of our society and how we are playing into it.
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