EXAM ESSAY

As part of this unit of work you need to complete the following exam essay, as ever exam essays can be found on the top menu, with feedback from the exam board.

Judith Butler describes gender as “an identity instituted through a stylized repetition of acts”. In other words, it is something learnt through repeated performance.

How useful is this idea in understanding gender is represented in both the Score and Maybelline advertising campaigns?

Your essay needs to be at least 1,000 words and you must complete and submit it by the end of this week. You can submit via email or the blog. You will have time in class to work on this essay. The feedback / mark sheet is attached below:

Useful reading:

Harry Styles sets out to ‘dispel the myth of a binary existence’

Judith Butler: ‘gender as performance’

identity can be a site of contest and revision‘

Butler (2004:19)

In many ways Judith Butler counterpoints earlier ideas of gender representation, for example, some of the ideas presented by Laura Mulvey seem to suggest that gender is fixed – male/female – that it is structured by institutions and those powerful individuals who are able to exert power and control – Weinstein et al. While still recognising those argments presented by Mulvey, Jean Kilbourne, Sut Jhally and others, Butler suggests that gender is fluid, changeable, plural a set of categories to be played out and performed by individual subjects in individual moments in time and space.

Put another, it suggests that we have multiple identities that are performed to different people, in different social settings, under different social conditions. For example, look at categories such as lipstick lesbian, butch and femme, girly girl and so on, which illustrate the multiple, plural nature of identity, representation and performance with feminist critical thinking. Which can be explored and mapped out into similar studies on male identity (again see work by Sinfield, Dollimore and others).

The idea of identity performance is explored further in another post: Representation, Identity & Self. However, to understand the approach of gender as performative is to recognises a ‘phenomenon that is being reproduced all the time‘, which perhaps suggests that ‘nobody is a gender from the start.’ The question for Butler (and for students of media and cultural studies) is therefore: how does gender get established and policed? Which, of course, is why we look at her ideas in subjects like Media Studies.

Interview

Judith Butler: ‘We need to rethink the category of woman’

Jules Gleeson

The author of the ground-breaking book Gender Trouble says we should not be surprised when the category of women expands to include trans women

Tue 7 Sep 2021 11.14

It’s been 31 years since the release of Gender Trouble. What were you aiming to achieve with the book?

It was meant to be a critique of heterosexual assumptions within feminism, but it turned out to be more about gender categories. For instance, what it means to be a woman does not remain the same from decade to decade. The category of woman can and does change, and we need it to be that way. Politically, securing greater freedoms for women requires that we rethink the category of “women” to include those new possibilities. The historical meaning of gender can change as its norms are re-enacted, refused or recreated.

So we should not be surprised or opposed when the category of women expands to include trans women. And since we are also in the business of imagining alternate futures of masculinity, we should be prepared and even joyous to see what trans men are doing with the category of “men”.

Advertisement

Let’s talk about Gender Trouble’s central idea of ‘performativity’. This remains a controversial view of how gender works, so what did you have in mind?

At the time I was interested in a set of debates in the academy about speech acts. “Performative” speech acts are the kind that make something happen or seek to create a new reality. When a judge declares a sentence, for instance, they produce a new reality, and they usually have the authority to make that happen. But do we say that the judge is all-powerful? Or is the judge citing a set of conventions, following a set of procedures? If it is the latter, then the judge is invoking a power that does not belong to them as a person, but as a designated authority. Their act becomes a citation – they repeat an established protocol.

How does that relate to gender?

I suggested more than 30 years ago that people are, consciously or not, citing conventions of gender when they claim to be expressing their own interior reality or even when they say they are creating themselves anew. It seemed to me that none of us totally escape cultural norms.

At the same time, none of us are totally determined by cultural norms. Gender then becomes a negotiation, a struggle, a way of dealing with historical constraints and making new realities. When we are “girled”, we are entered into a realm of girldom that has been built up over a long time – a series of conventions, sometimes conflicting, that establish girlness within society. We don’t just choose it. And it is not just imposed on us. But that social reality can, and does, change.

Approaching and preparing for the essay

1. Make notes on Gauntlett’s 4 categories of representation (this link is very helpful)
2. Make notes on the Harry Styles article
3. Make notes on Butler
4. Revisit your notes on the CSP’s
5. Make notes on Feminist Critical Thinking post.

As ever, put your notes on a separate post and categorise it as EXAM PREP, NOTES, REPRESENTATION etc (essentially whatever helps you to ogranise your blog)

Structure

1. Introduce the overall aim and argument that you are going to make
2. Establish your first main critical approach (I would suggest Gender as Performance by Butler, but you could start with feminist critical thinking, or . . . )
3. Develop this approach by using key words, phrases and quotation (Mulvey, Kilbourne, Moi, Wander, Wollstonescraft, Woolf, de Beauvoir, Woolf)
4. Apply your theoretical ideas to either or both of the set CSP’s
5. Show some historical knowledge about societal changes – particularly to the historical context of post-war society ie 1950’s-1970’s see this link)
6. Establish a secondary theme or idea that you wish to raise (eg 2nd wave feminism)
7. Develop this approach by using key words, phrases and quotation
8. Apply your theoretical ideas to either or both of the set CSP’s
9. Move forward to the present day to show some historical knowledge about societal changes – (ie non-binary world, intersectionality, use of new media etc)
10. Establish a contradictory argument that shows your ability to think and engage
11. Develop this approach by using key words, phrases and quotation (3rd wave feminism Butler, Levy, Dollimore, hooks, Van Zoonen, Raunch Culture, Queer Theory, Intersectionality etc)
12. Apply your theoretical ideas to either or both of the set CSP’s
13. Apply your theoretical ideas to either or both of the set CSP’s
14. Summarise your main arguments
15. Ensure you have a summative, final sentence / short paragraph

Use your own original ideas, words, phrases and sentences. Support your ideas with research and at times, quotation from secondary sources. Make sure you write clear and concise sentences. Make sure sentences connect to each other to form concise and clear paragraphs. Make sure each paragraph connects to a clear and concise argument. You will then have a great essay!