I could grasp much of what Butler was addressing in her essay Gender Trouble, but often found myself confused as to what things were specifically her ideas. She asks a lot of questions and I didn’t always feel as though she addressed those questions, but she does quote Foucault a lot and his idea of genealogy. I then looked her up on wikipedia to get a little more information on her.
Making not of what I new confused me I then resorted to consulting Barry which slightly helped expand what Butler is trying to say. Butler brings up the concept of inside and outside in relation to homosexuality and heterosexuality. In her essay she is specifically discussing the hegemonic view of homosexuality as dangerous and polluting with regard to the presence of AIDS. She states, “Similarly, the ‘polluted’ status of lesbians, regardless of their low-risk status with respect to AIDS, brings into relief the dangers of their bodily exchanges. Significantly, being “outside” the hegemonic order does not signify being “in” a state of filthy and untidy nature” (2494).
Barry helps clear this up a bit…From what I gathered, He says, in using this concept of inside/outside, Butler is pointing out that the label being either gay or straight is only placing restrictions and gives reason for oppression. “Hence, it might be argued, she says, that the concept of homosexuality is itself part of homophobic (anti-gay) discourse, and indeed, the term ‘homosexual’ is a medical-legal one, first used in 1869 in Germany, and preceding the invention of the corresponding term ‘heterosexual’ by eleven years” (Barry, 144). Butler also explains the inner and outer in her essay in relation to the “other”, or “that which has been expelled from the body, discharged as excrement” (2494).
Her explanation of inner and outer is as follows,
“What constitutes through division the “inner” and “outer” worlds of the subject is a border and boundary tenuously maintained for the purposes of social regulation and control. The boundary between the inner and outer is confounded by those excremental passages in which the inner effectively becomes outer, and this excreting function becomes, as it were, the model by which other forms of identity-differentiation are accomplished. In effect, this is the mode by which Others become shit” (2495).
This is what ties in her idea of that trouble with gender is that they are only imitations of something that there is no original for, “Gender can be neither true nor false, neither real nor apparent, neither original nor derived” (2501). So this leaves me with the question of, Where then is this concept of gender, how women and men are supposed to act and what they are destined to, come from? And how does Drag and cross-dressing really tie into this, other than as a form of entertainment?! And to finish it off, heres a little clip of Butler in action…
Marina, I had the same problem recognizing whose theory she is describing when reading Butler’s article. It seems like half of my notes are something like “really?” or “huh?”, followed by “oh, that’s …’s idea.” As for your last question, where does the concept of gender originally come from, it raises a valid point. If one believes in evolution, it can be assumed that as reasoning ability and consciousness of self and being developed, along with it came the desire to categorize and define specific roles for humanity. The act of sex is necessary, and perhaps masculinist culture developed from the outward and visible signs of sexual power. I, however, do not believe in evolution, and therefore rely upon there being an origin. Well, that’s what this class is all about, the center is not the center!