Sublime

“Learning the rules that govern intelligible speech is an inculcation into normalized language, where the price of not conforming is the loss of intelligibility itself.”

― Judith Butler, Gender Trouble: Feminism and the Subversion of Identity

The effect of gender is produced through the stylization of the body and, hence, must be understood as the mundane way in which bodily gestures, movements, and styles of various kinds constitute the illusion of an abiding gendered self. This formulation moves the conception of gender off the ground of a substantial model of identity to one that... See more

“The effect of gender is produced through the stylization of the body and, hence, must be understood as the mundane way in which bodily gestures, movements, and styles of various kinds constitute the illusion of an abiding gendered self. This formulation moves the conception of gender off the ground of a substantial model of identity to one that... See more

Instead, in her groundbreaking book, Gender Trouble: Feminism and the Subversion of Identity (1990), Butler claims that gender roles are taught and learned—often unwittingly, through socialization—as sets of actions, behaviors, manners, and expectations, and people perform those roles accordingly. Gender, for Butler, is a set of things a person

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“The effort to identify the enemy as singular in form is a reverse-discourse that uncritically mimics the strategy of the oppressor instead of offering a different set of terms.”

― Judith Butler, Gender Trouble: Feminism and the Subversion of Identity

Now, Butler is not denying that biological sex differences exist at all. Rather, she is arguing that any categorization or meaning we ascribe to those differences is a matter of power, not of truth. There’s no good reason, in her view, for seeing those differences as any more significant than differences of hair or eye color. The body, for her,

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