Performative Acts and Gender Constitution: An Essay in Phenomenology and Feminist Theory

Butler repeatedly cautions against feminist organizers essentializing womanhood. What dangers can you see in attempting to define women as a natural category? Where can you see these issues playing out today?

Butler details how gender roles are the result of the sedimentation of historical and cultural situations, and then, in the end, says, “Gender is not passively scripted on the body, and neither is it determined by nature, language, the symbolic, or the overwhelming history of patriarchy” (531). Is this a contradiction? If not, what is Butler’s intent in saying that gender is shaped by history but not determined by it?

The idea guiding phenomenology is that the way we experience the world is shaped by our culture, history, and social environment. Aside from gender, what other identity categories are created and shaped by these factors? How so? What complexities exist in embodying these identities?

Butler’s theory is often summed up as “gender is performative.” What incorrect assumptions might people make about their theory from this summary, and why are those assumptions misleading?

Many readers and fellow philosophers have critiqued Butler’s prose style as unclear and verbose. Why might Butler have decided this style was the best way of expressing their ideas?

Tell the story of gender. How are the possibilities of gender within a culture determined? How does a person come to embody them? How can embodying a gender change the possibilities of the culture?

Identifying as nonbinary, agender, or genderqueer is becoming more common. Using Butler’s theory of gender, how does one perform a gender outside the male-female binary? What specific acts create new gender possibilities or disrupt the old ones?

Transness has often been used as evidence for the essential nature of male and female genders, even when they do not match the sex assigned at birth. How does Butler’s theory of gender acts effectively encompass the trans experience?