Understanding and Troubling Genders

            Judith Butler. What can I say about Judith Butler? I have a love/hate relationship with anything written by them. I say this because I find the text extremely difficult to get through but I know that there is probably something mind altering or earth shattering hiding inside. Honestly, most of the time I end up missing the core content because I am stumbling through the language and examples provided. Again, with this particular text, Gender Trouble, I am struggling to get to the ground-breaking content that has helped paved the way for Queer Theories to come into existence and flourish into the field it is today.

            One of the things that I really appreciated in this book is finally getting to read some of the foundational material that leads to the understanding that gender is socially constructed and performative. I struggled a little with some of the questions they were asking about whether a person can “possess” a gender or whether some on can “be” a particular gender. While I think these are critical questions, I don’t know that I fully understand the context in which they are to be answered.

            Another piece that I found really interesting is the groundwork that was laid in the beginning of the book about the way that feminism has intersected with this particular topic and question surrounding gender. It was really interesting to see the way that different theorists have applied theories in different ways to question the social construction of gender. I question, though, how many of these other theorists were actually trying to question the construction of gender and how many were making political statements about the differences between man and women. I don’t think, that at this time, I have done enough of my own self-educating to know which is true.

            As multiple theorists were brought into the text I really have questions about the way that Freud interplays with all of this. The concept of “mourning and melancholia” (78) is really throwing me for a loop. I don’t understand what this means or how it directly relates to the concepts being presented by Butler.

            There is one thing in particular that I would love for us to have a class discussion about and that is about one particular statement made by Butler: “There is no gender identity behind the expressions of gender; that identity is performatively constituted by the very “expressions” that are said to be its results” (34). I am really confused here because my understanding is that one’s gender identity is how they innately feel but their gender expression is what was being performed on a daily basis in an attempt for the world to view them in a particular fashion. But this statement by Butler muddles that understanding. Am I correct in believing that Butler is claiming that because gender identities are typically aligned with the socially constructed binary system they are not innately inherent within one’s identity?

            I am really disappointed that we are not meeting in class this week because I feel like I really need to externally process this and get some questions answered. Honestly, while I know that it would not be representative of all the queer theories, I feel like we could spend an entire term working through this text and trying to dissect and interpret what it is that Butler is saying. I apologize for my not putting more critical analysis in this critical response, but due to my inability to really understand what is being said, I have tried my best to bring forth what I was able to take away from the text.