Judith Butler Gender Roles

846 Words4 Pages
Judith Butler argues gender roles are arbitrary and artificial concepts. She argues that Feminism brings attention to gender roles. Butlers’ main argument is that “Gender is put on, invariably, under constraint, daily and incessantly, with anxiety and pleasure.” Judith Butler argues her main “concern is that sexual difference not become a reification which unwittingly preserves a binary restriction on gender identity, and sexuality.” Butler asks us to rethink the use of arbitrary gender assignments. Butler argues that words like womanhood and Feminism are words that have some value as a utility, but we need to remember they are arbitrary assignments and there is no absolute feminist. Gender is something that we put on, we are taught gender as we grow up. When the gender role is not performed it does not change our physiological sex, but instead, Butler argues it changes our role. Gender cannot be understood as a role. Gender is an act. Feminism is accused of essentializing what it is to be a woman and what womanhood means. The larger category of women has indeed been a threat to a woman as an individual. Women have indeed been a threat to the individual woman. Every woman is individual just like every man is an individual. To say that women have been oppressed is an oversimplification and it is a category that has been arbitrarily for the purpose of representing this womanhood that it is as though she does not already exist. There is a historical essence of women that has been oppressed. The voice of women, that has been oppressed, is there and that voice needs to be found. Not every woman is looking through the same conscience, existence in cultural experience or linguistic experience. The individual woman loses her essence when categorized in the group of women. There is no absolute womanhood, every individual has their place. Butler argues it is useful,
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