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bbqxaxiu's review against another edition
3.0
3
okay, there's a LOT going on in this book and a lot of things i took away from it. i'm only giving it 3 stars because ultimately, the writing is extremely inaccessible in many places, there are places where butler had the opportunity to substantiate an argument that would've totally changed the way someone thinks about sex/gender but they didn't have the right follow through, etc.
alas, i will still point out things they said that i thought were rly interesting:
1. gender is not something you are, but something you do.
it is a daily performance, a decision you make about how you show up in the world, how you carry yourself, how you dress, how you talk, how you engage with those around you. i rly rly like that way of thinking about gender, and i feel like i think about gender in a very similar way. it's like, hm...who do i feel like being today? what performance do i wish to put on today? what clothes will i wear? will i be a "boy" or a "girl"? i have the anatomical body that i do, but everything else is a decision that i make about how i will show up in the world: this is gender. because of that, something i've been thinking about lately is how, instead of telling ppl our "pronouns are X or Y", we should rly be saying, our "pronouns are X or Y *today*" LOL. cause idk sis, tomorrow i might feel differently about what performance i wanna put on!
i do recognize, though, that everyone's relationship to gender is different. but we cannot deny that it is a pre-formed category that exists and is chosen for us from birth. some of us may claim the gender we are given and, in a sense, "become" the gender we have been given. others may try and expand the category or qualify it in some way to make it work for their lives ("oh, to me, being a woman REALLY means X or Y, not that"). but all the same, we cannot deny that there is an implicit assumption that you will perform SOME gender by virtue of simply existing. kinda crazy, though, that some ppl cling so closely to the performance they were assigned. like do you really think you need that category to live? that same category that has done so much violence to others (e.g. trans women, trans men, etc)?
and if gender is a performance, then heteronormativity is just a mandatory performance that we're all forced to put on. in Butler's words, "[heteronormativity [is] mandatory, backed by law or doctrine, forming the horizon of the thinkable, the limits of the imaginable--and the livable." sooo like...what ways of being exist that we've never even considered? what ways of loving and forming kinship exist that we've never even considered? do i *always* have to marry a man and have kids and live in a house with them? why not living in a house with friends? why not marrying someone who is the same gender as me, has a similar anatomical body to me? queer forms of kinship certainly exist, but they're just not backed (and rewarded) by society in the way that heteronormative forms of kinship are. your every day "heteronormative married couple with kids living in a house somewhere" is getting government assistance (tax breaks, etc), social recognition, and cultural validation (via media, literature, religion, etc) in a way that other forms of kinship are not.
2. gender is not the only social construct—sex is, too.
ok ok ok, hear me out. i really LIKED where they were going with this argument, and some points they made definitely made sense and were sound, but i don't feel like they completely won me over with this one. i would need to read more to really say that i "accept" the argument that sex is socially constructed, too, but alas, i thought it was an interesting point they made. see one of their arguments for this point below:
"if we claim that a person is born with a specific hormonal constitution [which defines their sex], or we identify what happened in infancy or in puberty, and conclude that what happens later in life—in sports, for example—is determined by those prior levels, we fail to account for all the interactions that activated and made sense of those hormones [....] one reason we cannot be satisfied with explanations that reduce adult athletic capacities and self-understanding to prior developmental stages is that we have no idea what the interactive life of that hormonal situation was in the interim."
for example, let's take testosterone, which we commonly use to define who is "male" from who is "female." Butler points to studies that show that underlying testosterone levels are meaningful in sports only when they interact with training (which, i may add, requires access to sports clubs and gyms). it is THIS interaction of testosterone with a wide range of social practices and institutions, many of which are class-based, that makes for strong muscle, good bone density, and endurance. ok ok ok, so like...they're saying that maybe it's not "'male' equals 'strong and fast'", but it's "'has good access to gyms' equals 'strong and fast'"? which makes me think about how gyms and fitness training is inherently so much more accessible to men (gender). they're marketed to men, men feel more comfy in those spaces, they're validated and encouraged by society to pursue athleticism more than women (gender) are, etc.
but at the same time, i feel like i don't totally buy this argument yet because, if you took someone who is "male" and someone who is "female" and gave them the same access to training, would the "male" not be stronger? i've seen this in my personal life a lot. i feel like i could work out A LOT but still not be as strong as one of my "male" friends who don't work out at all. but Butler bringing this up is still VERY interesting and i wanna learn more. it reminds me a lot of this article published by vox (https://www.vox.com/videos/2023/2/23/23611947/world-south-koreans-people-getting-taller), where they say that south koreans are getting so much taller in the last couple years, and the reason is because of increased nutrition and the country becoming richer. that makes me think about how we always accept that white men are taller than east asian men...but like...maybe that's because european countries b colonizing the fuck out of everything? lol, which means their people have way more access to nutrition and healthcare, which would explain why they're taller.
kinda makes me think about how there is no such thing as "pure" nature or "pure" nurture, because the two influence one another and your environment SHAPES your nature! (i'm thinking about epigenetics here!) and if that is the case, that your environment SHAPES your nature, then noooow we gotta get in to racism/sexism/colonialism/all the isms that affect people's nature. for example, lol, why is it that poor people have asthma at disproportionate rates? is it bc there's something in our genes that's fucked up, or is it just because air quality in poor neighborhoods is made to be worse (via highway construction, factories, etc)? like come on sis...everything is a social construct...including science. science is a social construct my guy. Butler ends this section on why everything is a social construct beautifully:
[everything is a social construct bc] "depending on who and what is there to support the infant's life, the infant will breathe and eat and sleep and move. without basic support, the organism cannot survive, so when we speak about the 'organic' character of an infant or child, we are already talking about the social organization of needs or, as is too often the case, the disorganization or the failing infrastructure of care that puts infants in peril, that is registered in the bones, the heart, the lungs. how that organization of basic care worked or failed to work inhabits them not only in infancy but also throughout their life as incorporated material, implicating the organic dimension of the time of life in both social and psychic structures." i rly resonated with the phrasing of how the 'disorganization of care'--which is just code for poverty, racism, etc lol--is registered into the very bones, heart, and lungs of a being. the body keeps the score m8.
3. the "creation" of gender (and sex) has racist/colonial legacies. love that Butler included this and is trying to broaden minds to the way that all the isms are tied together. the point they made was how much of colonization was fueled by Christianity/Catholicism, religions which identify the creation/proliferation of the faith-abiding "family" as the ultimate goal, which of course requires heteronormativity. interesting...very interesting....
cause like. imagine if it was countries with other belief systems that colonized the world. like east asian ppl, for example, who r very Buddhist. afaik there is no notion of the "nuclear family" in buddhism...so like. if it was east asian ppl that colonized everywhere else, there would have been no need to create the heteronormative societies we now live in. bc there is nothing in that religion that benefits from that social creation. very very interesting...
i will end all of this by saying that, if gender is just a way of being, then there's gotta be infinite genders. like artistic kids can be a gender, sporty kids can be a gender, annoying academic kids can be a gender. lol, annoying academic kids--me--gotta be top 10 genders of all time tho. (there's a underlying genius to that meme format after all, i'm now understanding, hehe).
okay, there's a LOT going on in this book and a lot of things i took away from it. i'm only giving it 3 stars because ultimately, the writing is extremely inaccessible in many places, there are places where butler had the opportunity to substantiate an argument that would've totally changed the way someone thinks about sex/gender but they didn't have the right follow through, etc.
alas, i will still point out things they said that i thought were rly interesting:
1. gender is not something you are, but something you do.
it is a daily performance, a decision you make about how you show up in the world, how you carry yourself, how you dress, how you talk, how you engage with those around you. i rly rly like that way of thinking about gender, and i feel like i think about gender in a very similar way. it's like, hm...who do i feel like being today? what performance do i wish to put on today? what clothes will i wear? will i be a "boy" or a "girl"? i have the anatomical body that i do, but everything else is a decision that i make about how i will show up in the world: this is gender. because of that, something i've been thinking about lately is how, instead of telling ppl our "pronouns are X or Y", we should rly be saying, our "pronouns are X or Y *today*" LOL. cause idk sis, tomorrow i might feel differently about what performance i wanna put on!
i do recognize, though, that everyone's relationship to gender is different. but we cannot deny that it is a pre-formed category that exists and is chosen for us from birth. some of us may claim the gender we are given and, in a sense, "become" the gender we have been given. others may try and expand the category or qualify it in some way to make it work for their lives ("oh, to me, being a woman REALLY means X or Y, not that"). but all the same, we cannot deny that there is an implicit assumption that you will perform SOME gender by virtue of simply existing. kinda crazy, though, that some ppl cling so closely to the performance they were assigned. like do you really think you need that category to live? that same category that has done so much violence to others (e.g. trans women, trans men, etc)?
and if gender is a performance, then heteronormativity is just a mandatory performance that we're all forced to put on. in Butler's words, "[heteronormativity [is] mandatory, backed by law or doctrine, forming the horizon of the thinkable, the limits of the imaginable--and the livable." sooo like...what ways of being exist that we've never even considered? what ways of loving and forming kinship exist that we've never even considered? do i *always* have to marry a man and have kids and live in a house with them? why not living in a house with friends? why not marrying someone who is the same gender as me, has a similar anatomical body to me? queer forms of kinship certainly exist, but they're just not backed (and rewarded) by society in the way that heteronormative forms of kinship are. your every day "heteronormative married couple with kids living in a house somewhere" is getting government assistance (tax breaks, etc), social recognition, and cultural validation (via media, literature, religion, etc) in a way that other forms of kinship are not.
2. gender is not the only social construct—sex is, too.
ok ok ok, hear me out. i really LIKED where they were going with this argument, and some points they made definitely made sense and were sound, but i don't feel like they completely won me over with this one. i would need to read more to really say that i "accept" the argument that sex is socially constructed, too, but alas, i thought it was an interesting point they made. see one of their arguments for this point below:
"if we claim that a person is born with a specific hormonal constitution [which defines their sex], or we identify what happened in infancy or in puberty, and conclude that what happens later in life—in sports, for example—is determined by those prior levels, we fail to account for all the interactions that activated and made sense of those hormones [....] one reason we cannot be satisfied with explanations that reduce adult athletic capacities and self-understanding to prior developmental stages is that we have no idea what the interactive life of that hormonal situation was in the interim."
for example, let's take testosterone, which we commonly use to define who is "male" from who is "female." Butler points to studies that show that underlying testosterone levels are meaningful in sports only when they interact with training (which, i may add, requires access to sports clubs and gyms). it is THIS interaction of testosterone with a wide range of social practices and institutions, many of which are class-based, that makes for strong muscle, good bone density, and endurance. ok ok ok, so like...they're saying that maybe it's not "'male' equals 'strong and fast'", but it's "'has good access to gyms' equals 'strong and fast'"? which makes me think about how gyms and fitness training is inherently so much more accessible to men (gender). they're marketed to men, men feel more comfy in those spaces, they're validated and encouraged by society to pursue athleticism more than women (gender) are, etc.
but at the same time, i feel like i don't totally buy this argument yet because, if you took someone who is "male" and someone who is "female" and gave them the same access to training, would the "male" not be stronger? i've seen this in my personal life a lot. i feel like i could work out A LOT but still not be as strong as one of my "male" friends who don't work out at all. but Butler bringing this up is still VERY interesting and i wanna learn more. it reminds me a lot of this article published by vox (https://www.vox.com/videos/2023/2/23/23611947/world-south-koreans-people-getting-taller), where they say that south koreans are getting so much taller in the last couple years, and the reason is because of increased nutrition and the country becoming richer. that makes me think about how we always accept that white men are taller than east asian men...but like...maybe that's because european countries b colonizing the fuck out of everything? lol, which means their people have way more access to nutrition and healthcare, which would explain why they're taller.
kinda makes me think about how there is no such thing as "pure" nature or "pure" nurture, because the two influence one another and your environment SHAPES your nature! (i'm thinking about epigenetics here!) and if that is the case, that your environment SHAPES your nature, then noooow we gotta get in to racism/sexism/colonialism/all the isms that affect people's nature. for example, lol, why is it that poor people have asthma at disproportionate rates? is it bc there's something in our genes that's fucked up, or is it just because air quality in poor neighborhoods is made to be worse (via highway construction, factories, etc)? like come on sis...everything is a social construct...including science. science is a social construct my guy. Butler ends this section on why everything is a social construct beautifully:
[everything is a social construct bc] "depending on who and what is there to support the infant's life, the infant will breathe and eat and sleep and move. without basic support, the organism cannot survive, so when we speak about the 'organic' character of an infant or child, we are already talking about the social organization of needs or, as is too often the case, the disorganization or the failing infrastructure of care that puts infants in peril, that is registered in the bones, the heart, the lungs. how that organization of basic care worked or failed to work inhabits them not only in infancy but also throughout their life as incorporated material, implicating the organic dimension of the time of life in both social and psychic structures." i rly resonated with the phrasing of how the 'disorganization of care'--which is just code for poverty, racism, etc lol--is registered into the very bones, heart, and lungs of a being. the body keeps the score m8.
3. the "creation" of gender (and sex) has racist/colonial legacies. love that Butler included this and is trying to broaden minds to the way that all the isms are tied together. the point they made was how much of colonization was fueled by Christianity/Catholicism, religions which identify the creation/proliferation of the faith-abiding "family" as the ultimate goal, which of course requires heteronormativity. interesting...very interesting....
cause like. imagine if it was countries with other belief systems that colonized the world. like east asian ppl, for example, who r very Buddhist. afaik there is no notion of the "nuclear family" in buddhism...so like. if it was east asian ppl that colonized everywhere else, there would have been no need to create the heteronormative societies we now live in. bc there is nothing in that religion that benefits from that social creation. very very interesting...
i will end all of this by saying that, if gender is just a way of being, then there's gotta be infinite genders. like artistic kids can be a gender, sporty kids can be a gender, annoying academic kids can be a gender. lol, annoying academic kids--me--gotta be top 10 genders of all time tho. (there's a underlying genius to that meme format after all, i'm now understanding, hehe).
s_jw's review against another edition
challenging
informative
slow-paced
3.0
God I wanted to like this book but it felt like drowning in academic terms. This book is great for those with a background in gender studies or a really really good understanding. If you don’t though pick up something else
pandemonic_astrologist's review against another edition
challenging
hopeful
informative
reflective
slow-paced
5.0
The only way forward is for all those targeted gather themselves more effectively than their enemies have, to recognise their alliance, and to fight the phantasms prepared for them…
An insightful analysis on the phantasm of “ gender” and why both sides of the political spectrum invoke it as a tactic of fear and scapegoating
hannah5800's review against another edition
I'll get back to this when I have a bit more free processing space in my brain