Butler Blog

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While I read Gender Trouble, I continued to draw connections between what I do in my classrooms with pre-service teachers, and what I’ve experienced in the secondary schools in which I have worked.

One focus in my classes is that we all have different experiences, perspectives, and beliefs. What may be acceptable to some is completely abhorrent to others. However, we have to be willing to challenge our beliefs (and those of others) so that we might gain a greater understanding of ourselves and others.

Butler certainly encourages thinking outside of the traditional box, for me. According to Butler, she aims to “open up the field of possibility for gender without dictating which kinds of possibilities ought to be realized.” (viii) She goes on to state that “no one who has understood what it is to live in the social world as what is ‘impossible,’ illegible, unrealizable, unreal, and illegitimate is likely to pose [the] question” of the “use of opening up possibilities’.” This is exactly what we do in one of my classes. Push yourself into the unfamiliar and/or the uncomfortable. Reflect on what you know/accept, and expose yourself to that which is unknown, or new territory.

Some of what I was unfamiliar with was the concept of a distinction between gender and sex, or that one does not logically adhere to the other. The notion that one’s sex doesn’t necessarily determine his/her gender is one that we briefly addressed earlier in the semester, in our Cultural Studies (gender as performative). Butler addresses the question the stability of gender, and the fact that sexual practice has the power to destabilize gender (xi). She further asserts, as would many feminists, that there is a distinction between gender and sexuality, refusing a causal or structural link between them. She believes that heterosexual normativity ought not to order gender. (xiv)

This has great implications for the teaching, learning, and socializing that takes place in our midst (the classroom/school). Knowing this, it is imperative that we enter all arenas with an open mind, and no agenda of categorizing individuals (of course this is easier said than done, but who needs easy?). I’ve observed many classroom and school situations in which the preconceived notions of gender, on the part of staff and students alike, fit right into a “traditional” heterosexual mindset. This way of thinking places limitations on us (regarding our perceptions, and expectations) as educators, and on our ability to recognize the potential of each of our students.

Butler expresses that we must explore what society dictates about gender, so that all people (and more specifically those whose lives do not fall lovely into place where sex and gender walk off together into the sunset—thank you Mica Pollock, in Colormute, for getting past the “all” label.) can live THEIR normal life. How must we think the ideal morphological constraints upon the human such that those who fail to approximate the norm are not condemned to a death within life? (xxi)

Bourdieu resonates with me as I read Butler. The idea of educational institutions perpetuating society’s social constructs can be applied to what Butler says about subjects regulated by such structures (juridical notions of power) are, by virtue of being subjected to them, formed, defined, and reproduced in accordance with the requirements of those structures. (3)

Butler confirms my beliefs on the power of language in labeling or assigning power/domination. For feminist theory, the development of language that fully or adequately represents women has seemed necessary to foster the political visibility of women. (2) As Wittig states, the “straight mind,” evident in the discourse of the human sciences, “oppress all of us, lesbians, women, and homosexual men” because they “take for granted that what founds society, any society, is heterosexuality.” (157) A reminder of the need to be precise in our words and cognizant of their implications.

Even though Butler recognizes that the claim of universal patriarchy no longer enjoys the kind of credibility it once did, the notion of a generally shared conception of “women,” the corollary to that framework, has been much more difficult to displace. (5) To me, this means that strides have been made in the right direction, but there is still a long way to go. In our teaching and learning processes we have to continue to pose questions: Are the specificity and integrity of women’s cultural and linguistic practices always specified against, and hence, within the terms of some more dominant cultural formation? (6)

Butler reinforces the idea that the sex/gender distinction suggests a radical discontinuity between sexed bodies and culturally constructed genders. (9) This outlook epitomizes the saying that you can’t judge a book by its cover….you can’t create your own norms for others. It underscores the reality that we cannot prescribe rules for people and/or their lifestyle, based on their biological sex.

More to follow soon…