waysofreading10e

Questions and Assignments for Judith Butler’s “Your Behavior Creates Your Gender”

QUESTIONS FOR A SECOND READING

Question

Butler describes gender as “a phenomenon” in this video. She posits the term “phenomenon” as something different from our sense that our genders are “facts” or “internal realities.” She goes on to say that some people find her claim controversial. According to the video, how does Butler differentiate between a phenomenon and a fact? What do you think of that difference? Why do you suppose some people find Butler’s idea controversial?

Question

Toward the end of the video, Butler says she is interested in the ways gender is “established and policed.” Assuming Butler is referring to more than the literal police in this statement, how do you think gender is “established and policed”? Why might some institutions or persons feel that it is their duty to “police” the gender of others? What do you think is at stake?

Question

It might be interesting to watch “Your Behavior Creates Your Gender” again and to think about the video itself as a kind of performative — something that produces a series of effects. What do you make of Butler’s performance — not just her performance of gender, but perhaps of other identities? What other performative effects does Butler produce? From watching the video, whom is Judith Butler constructing as Judith Butler?

ASSIGNMENT FOR WRITING

In “Beside Oneself: On the Limits of Sexual Autonomy,” (p. 112 of the print book) Judith Butler writes, “I cannot be who I am without drawing upon the sociality of norms that precede and exceed me.” “Your Behavior Creates Your Gender” might help us understand Butler’s intellectual project as one that distinguishes between being and doing, between who you are and how you act, between what she calls in the video “an internal reality” and “a phenomenon produced all the time,” between performance and performative. Write an essay in which you explore the nuanced differences between these terms and concepts. You might start by making a chart-like list and forming some notes about what the connotations of each of these terms are. Your list might look something like:

performance	performative
being	doing
internal reality	produced phenomenon

Question

What do each of these terms seem to suggest? How does Butler understand them? You might draw either from her essay or from the video to think through these questions. What do all of these terms have to do with one another? What do they have to do with gender and sexual politics?