InterminableAnalysis t1_j7u0ayo wrote on February 9, 2023 at 11:58 AM

Reply to comment by ddrcrono in Judith Butler: their philosophy of gender explained by Necessary_Tadpole692

>because of some simple differences in men and women biologically, the greatest of which is chlidbirth, there has been a natural division of labour that's been present in nature since before we were even humans, and, over millenia that difference in division of labour has even caused us to evolve to have some biological differences

To be fair, Butler doesn't deny anything about the distribution of physical traits on bodies, but rather approaches the issue in terms of how an understanding and establishment of the concept of gender and sex are constituted within a culture.

>Yes, people do perform to societal expectations, but people also make choices that are practical, and while that's less dramatic and interesting, I think it's at least part of the truth of the matter.

The performative is not contrasted with the practical, and is also not equivalent to a performance. The operative word, "performative", comes from linguistics and denotes a speech act which, instead of describing something, instead causes an effect or makes some change in the world. An example Butler uses is that of a judge: a judge passes a sentence in a court of law by combining the authority given to them as having power over certain legal procedures with their linguistic capacity to communicate such a sentence, and thereby produces a performative utterance. But just as we wouldn't say that the judge thereby created their own authority or even the law, but are citing cultural conventions, so in the various acts constitutive of cultural conceptions of gender, one "cites" those conventions of gender. That's why, oddly enough, Butler's theory of performativity actually seems to agree with you when you say that we shouldn't go for the position that "it's all just performativity". The kind of freedom that Butler talks about in this regard is to realize that while we may be determined to some extent by our culture and its conventions, we aren't thereby fully determined.

>Overall I'm still quite amenable to the position that a significant amount of gendered behaviour is performative; I just think that saying that all of is is getting overly ambitious

I think the ambitiousness in Butler's work on gender has to do with its approach as, not just a sort of incremental/social theory of gender (which we can find similarly in de Beauvoir, for example), but its particular position on how various acts concerning an understanding and establishment of gender are necessarily tied to the past in a way in which gender, a social classification, comes to be seen as merely natural and original. Though I admit that some of the more mainstream misunderstandings of Butler's work are the overly ambitious kind that you mention.

ddrcrono t1_j7yaju5 wrote on February 10, 2023 at 6:57 AM

My reply to this train of thought is that I would emphasize that I think that practical considerations are not always cultural / performative. Butler uses the example with the judge because her argument leans on the idea of social norms; that is not what I am talking about in my examples.

My line of argumentation is simply that one group of people is better suited to tasks than another for entirely practical, biological reasons.

At the most basic initial level this is in no way performative. It is very much the same as how someone with bigger muscle mass will end up lifting the heavy things and the short person will crawl into difficult to get into spaces. There is nothing of a performance in any sense of the word, merely people doing what they are naturally good at.

I want to re-emphasize that I am not arguing that she doesn't have a point in general. I think that small differences exist in nature and culture, which develops over time comes to emphasize those differences, and what Butler sees may be largely performative, but it is not entirely and solely performative, which is an incredibly difficult kind of case (the "all" structure of her argument, which I think may just be to seem controversial. She may not even truly believe it) to make for even the most modest of claims.

InterminableAnalysis t1_j81msve wrote on February 10, 2023 at 11:24 PM

I apologize in advance for this sounding sarcastic, but I'm really not sure what it is you think Butler is talking about. Butler isn't talking about how physical traits make certain people more adapted to do certain tasks, so I'm not sure how you're addressing their arguments.

>It is very much the same as how someone with bigger muscle mass will end up lifting the heavy things and the short person will crawl into difficult to get into spaces. There is nothing of a performance in any sense of the word, merely people doing what they are naturally good at.

Note that Butler doesn't use the word performance, and this is important. "Performative" refers to an act which produces a series of effects. In a way, a person lifting a box is a performative act, but it is not necessarily a performance. And Butler doesn't argue that people are performing their gender, but that gender is constituted on performative acts that are essentially non-private.

>what Butler sees may be largely performative, but it is not entirely and solely performative, which is an incredibly difficult kind of case (the "all" structure of her argument, which I think may just be to seem controversial. She may not even truly believe it) to make for even the most modest of claims.

Note that Butler does in fact believe that this performative structure is pervasive, but is also arguing this on the basis of a particular cultural phenomenon, not an all-encompassing concept of gender. The point is that gender identity, as a classification, is essentially a public thing and so is something imposed on people, but not simply or solely imposed, as it is possible to break away from cultural conventions with whatever limited success.

I just want to emphasize two points, since I've been frequently recalling them in this thread and it seems clear that many commenters here are attributing positions to Butler that Butler does not in fact hold:

Butler is talking about identity, not some trivial form of classification that biologists (for example) construct in order to indifferently talk about certain things. Butler doesn't deny that bodies come with certain physical traits and properties and that these physical traits and properties effect how people are perceived, how they act, etc. What Butler is saying is that, insofar as this physical dimension contributes to an understanding of gender/sex identities, it is a social construction (= decided on in a public context, it does not mean that these classifications are simply fake). But identity is established socially, so that it moves into the everyday (into relations with family, coworkers, friends, strangers). Any analysis of gender that ignores the various ways that it is constituted is not a good analysis, and insofar as scientists are also people living in a society, they also have a pre-scientific understanding of gender which informs their inquiry.
Performativity is not performance. Butler is not saying that we go out every day and simply act out our gender as though it were a garb one wears or a role one plays on a stage. The term "performative" comes from linguistics and denotes a speech act which, instead of merely describing something, creates an effect. "Open the door" is a performative utterance. On this basis, Butler proposes that gender is a performative phenomenon since, as social system of classification, it is constituted and established in various acts (not only linguistic) which solidify a conceptual determination as if it were an inherent identity (e.g., there is a difference between saying "this person has manly features" and "this person is a man inherently, and expresses manly features due to that fact").