Butler addresses Julia Kristeva’s theory that claims maternity is how women subversively rediscover themselves and understand themselves in a patriarchal world.

Feminist theory often strives to reclaim what it means to be a woman. As a result, there is no true understanding of man or woman. įurthermore, Butler also states that our ideas of gender are culturally influenced. Butler emphasizes the illogicality of the “master gene” study because she posits: “If external genitalia were sufficient as a criterion by which to determine or assign sex, then the experimental research into the master gene would hardly be necessary at all”. Page and his colleagues affirm the oppressive, heteronormative assumption that genitalia determine male and female. They labeled it “TDF” (testis determining factor) in contrast, Butler asserts that it is “precisely the designation of male and female that is under question and that it is implicitly already decided by the recourse to external genitalia”. For example, David Page of MIT and his colleagues influentially claim to have found the “master gene” that determines sex. As humans, we frequently put our trust in the orthodoxy of science, but this orthodoxy is deceptive. To her, sex is a construct which is attributable to the creative power of scientific discourse.

She disputes the popular argument that sex is biological. Not only is the term deficient, but Butler further suggests that sex and gender are social constructs. Consequently, the term women, as used by feminist theory, is inadequate because it essentializes a gender binary. Butler argues, “If one is ‘woman’ that is surely not all one is the term fails to be exhaustive, not because a pregendered “person” transcends the paraphernalia of its gender, but because gender is not always constituted coherently or consistently in different historical contexts, and because gender intersects with racial, class, ethnic, sexual, and regional modalities of discursively constituted identities”. People, categorized as women, have varying experiences and face different degrees of oppression based on their contexts. She challenges the understanding of the category of women, asserting that there is much more intricacy to the category women than is commonly represented by the term. She offers a new understanding of these concepts and urges us to trouble the oppressive, commonly held norms of sex and gender.īutler maintains that one of the foundational assumptions of feminist theory is erroneous. Judith Butler impacted the world by arguing that we have been deceived in regards to sex and gender. We are constantly molded and formed by many forces including social norms and our social locations we are repeatedly inundated with input from a variety of media. Things are not always what they seem! Our minds have been influenced to conceive many ideas that indeed may not be true. My whole childhood world was rocked! If the Santa example does not hold any significance for you, take a second and think of how you felt when the Great and Powerful Oz was reduced to a mere unimpressive mortal. I saw the empty plate where I left cookies. I sat on his lap a week ago and stroked his big, fluffy beard. I wailed as tears cascaded down my cheeks! It just couldn’t be true.

Judith butler 2016