Discussion of Whether Butler's Idea of Gender Performativity is Anti-essentialist

Introduction

Judith Butler, born in 1956, is a prominent American philosopher and a key figure in third-wave feminism. Butler's work on gender explores how gender is formed or exists. Is gender a preexisting entity we have a natural instinctual understanding of from birth? Is it performative, derived from the repetition of ‘acts’? A simulacra, not born from the biological differences of male and female. This seems to point towards the conclusion that gender is not something one is; it is something one does, an act, or more precisely, a sequence of acts, a verb rather than a noun, a “doing” rather than a “being”.

Understanding Gender Performativity

To determine whether Judith Butler's idea of gender performativity is considered anti-essentialist, one must understand what essentialism is in gender studies. Gender essentialism is the theory that a person's ‘essence’ is not created or influenced by external circumstances of culture and social background, but rather a pre-existing awareness as a result of biological or neurological differences between males and females, thus stating the idea that gender is internally fixed. Anti-essentialism examines an alternative to the origins of gender. Within their article ‘Gender and Society,’ West and Zimmerman claim that gender is not something we are but something we ‘do’ (West & Zimmerman, 1987). Butler expresses that our society has restrictive ‘norms’ concerning gender identity, which in turn leaves people who don't conform to becoming ostracized from society and its need to categorize. Everything in our society is built around this boy-girl binary that resides in this biological essentialist perspective: “...Women and Men possess distinct chromosomal and hormonal variations that impact on their specific social roles- the ‘essence’ of masculinity and femininity” (Butler, 1990). To be fixed within the category of ‘girl’ provides little to no room for someone who does not associate themselves exclusively to fit within this prohibitory group. “A not girly-girl is called a tomboy teaches us how restricted 'girl' can be as a category of emergent personhood” (Butler, 1990). Butler reaffirms that to assume someone's gender by their biological traits is inaccurate and unethical.

Influence of Phenomenology

Phenomenology is shown to be one of Butler’s primary influences. The Oxford English Dictionary defines phenomenology as “A method or procedure, originally developed by German philosopher Edmund Husserl (1859-1938), which involves the setting aside of presumptions about a phenomenon as an empirical object and about the mental acts concerned with experiencing it in order to achieve an intuition of its pure essence” (Oxford English Dictionary). Butler explores the theory of phenomenology, in particular, what it is to experience gender. To aid her argument, Butler analyzes the work of Luce Irigaray and how she perceives Simone de Beauvoir’s view of ‘one’ and ‘other.’ De Beauvoir suggested that there is a choice that women must make, as woman is not something you are; it is something you become. She says you can choose between the body and freedom. “For both Beauvoir and Maurice Merleau-Ponty, 'The Body in its Sexual Being,' in The Phenomenology of Perception, the body is understood to be an active process of embodying certain cultural and historical possibilities” (Butler, 1990). Butler addresses at length the idea of Cartesian dualism, which argues that there is an inherent split between the material mind and the material body. This belief tends to dispute that there is a sense of identity/self that is present or pre-existing in the mind that is separate from the material bodily experience. This idea resonates in the nature versus nurture or culture versus nature debate.

The Performative Nature of Gender

Acts of gender are performative acts. Without these acts, gender wouldn’t exist at all. Because gender is not ‘a fact’, according to Butler, the acts that we do create the idea of gender. The notion that gender is ‘created’ proposes Butler's performativity theory to be anti-essentialist. The notion that gender is not only socially constructed/established, it's also performed (and thus fluid, ever-changing, always already an imitation). Butler argues that the acts of performing gender are what ultimately create our gender. “As performance which is performative, gender is an ‘act’ broadly constructed, which constructs the social fiction of its own psychological interiority....I am suggesting that this self is not only irreversibly ‘outside’ constituted in social discourse, but that the ascription of interiority is itself a publicly regulated and sanctioned form of essence fabrication. Genders then can be neither true nor false, neither real nor apparent” (Butler, 1990). You could consider gender to be a simulacrum, an image without an original, not created by an existing essence but formed from this performative concept.

Critique and Possibilities

Considering gender essentialism, Butler holds the opinion that it limits a person's expression of their identity. Being aware of performativity, however, will not solely ignite change to our gender oppressive culture. Butler calls for “...a politics of performance gender acts, one which both describes existing gender identities and offers a prescriptive view about the kind of gender reality there ought to be. The redescription needs to expose the reifications that tacitly serve as substantial gender cores or identities, and to elucidate both the act, and the strategy of disavowal which at once constitute and conceal gender as we live it” (Butler, 1990). Where, then, does that leave the possibility to criticize gender norms? How can we create a performative that is critical of gender norms? These are questions that are prominent within Butler's work and present themselves often within "Gender Trouble" (1990). “Gender is an impersonation . . . becoming gendered involves impersonating an idea that nobody actually inhabits” (Butler, 1990).

References

1. Butler, J. (1990). Gender Trouble: Feminism and the Subversion of Identity. Routledge.
2. West, C., & Zimmerman, D. H. (1987). Doing Gender. Gender & Society, 1(2), 125-151.
3. Oxford English Dictionary. (n.d.). Definition of phenomenology.