This post is about loving
Judith Butler even though I don’t understand anything she says.
I love Judith Butler –
though I rarely understand what she’s saying. I have yet to actually attempt a
full piece of her writing, but I look forward to reading Gender Trouble with equal parts excitement and dread. I read an
excerpt from “Subversive Bodily Acts” for a course titled Sex and Gender I took
a while ago and have reread it multiple times since, and I am only now beginning
to piece out concepts from the three-page excerpt that I actually understand. In
the case of Sandy Stone this same dense academic language felt unnecessarily
pretentious, but for some reason with Butler it feels like an exciting
challenge. It may be Butler’s background in philosophy that makes it feel somehow
justified, or just my mild obsession with her that allows me to forgive what I
fail to understand.
There is something about
the hyper intense grounding in academia that simultaneously goes way over my
head and draws me in. Butler’s references to Sartre and Beauvoir and use of
phrases like “social temporality” and “appearance of substance” give a sense of
history and depth in the concepts she introduces. Butler shows the receipts of
gender’s social construction, and perhaps that is what makes my own strange
feelings around gender feel justified. Even when I don’t understand most of
what I’m reading, there are always bits and pieces of her work that I read and understand
deeply, and I find that comforting. Many dispute the dense academic jumble that
is Butler’s work, an article that appeared in NY Mag quotes philosopher Marth
Nussbaum as taking issue with “Butler’s version of feminism” stating that Butler
was ignoring the “material suffering of women.” To me, this reads as ignoring
the sexist and homophobic experiences of the queer community and is a
misunderstanding of academia. The academy is not a space where great social
changes get made in an instant. Academia is a place for theory, and
institutionalizing the idea that gender is a construct is vitally important for
both feminist and queer theory. I see how Butler’s work can by isolating, but I
also know from my own experiences how the kind of radical thought she has
introduced to the academy has been hugely important and eye opening to me.
As I mentioned, my first
introduction to Butler was a gender theory course which opened my eyes to so many
new ways of seeing gender and introduced me to the concept that perhaps gender
was an idea that has been whispered into our ears all of our lives by people
insisting it was real but is actually not inherent to our experience in any
way. Learning this, especially in an academic setting, was thrilling to me and
set in motion the series of thoughts that led to this very project. Butler’s theories
on gender and sexuality, the way she presents, and her grounding in theory of
all kinds are all very inspiring to me. For instance, in discussing the use of
gendered language Butler states both that “I have not been in the struggle for
this long to be called a ‘lady’” and “sometimes I’m with folks, born to various
genders, who want to be a lady. For them it’s fabulous to be a lady. . .I’m
glad we live in a world in which there are ladies.” It is this kind of dichotomy
that I love. She acknowledges that ladies exist, and they are great, and that
she is not one. Affirming that gender isn’t real, but we still have to live with
it, regardless of how we identify. In “Subversive Bodily Acts” Butler explains that
“discrete genders are part of what ‘humanizes’ individuals within contemporary
culture . . .we regularly punish those who fail to do their gender right” (96).
This is reminiscent of Susan Stryker saying that “a lot of the violence
and discrimination trans people face derives from a fundamental inability. .
.to see [trans people] as fully human” (Transgender Studies Today Interview). This
really shows the fundamental truth that while we can see that gender is a
construct, it is still something that we have to contend with, in a very serious
manner, every day. One flaw Butler herself
sees in her work is that she “didn’t take on trans very well” in Gender Trouble. This is definitely true in
that it seems to be largely focused on binary gender identities, but in my opinion,
it also covers so much of what the basis of trans studies is and the ideas of gender
performance and performativity align well with a trans identity (I say having
yet to read it). Butler says that she “would like to remain ‘permanently
troubled by identity categories’” which I would argue is a central belief to
queer, trans, and feminist studies. It is when we become comfortable in the
categories in which we have been placed that radical thought and the political
fight end. I see how Butler can be a polarizing character, but I also see
someone who has been “in the struggle” for years and is still keeping the fight
alive.
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