Your Behavior Creates Your Gender
JUDITH
BUTLER
Your Behavior Creates Your Gender
Before watching this video, read Judith Butler’s essay “Beside Oneself: On The Limits of Sexual Autonomy.” (p. 000 of the print book) As you watch the video, take notes with the following questions in mind.
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Credit: Judith Butler: Your Behavior Creates Your Gender [video interview] http://bigthink.com/ideas/30766. Used by permission of The Big Think, Inc.
Source: http://bigthink.com/videos/your-behavior-creates-your-gender
QUESTIONS FOR A SECOND READING
1.
Question 22.1
2.
Question 22.2
3.
Question 22.3
ASSIGNMENT FOR WRITING
1. 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 |