Judith Butler’s 1990 book, “Gender Trouble: Feminism and the Subversion of Identity” is a founding and influential document on queer theory and feminism. In the book, Butler explores how gendered identity is socially produced through repetitions of ordinary daily activities. Butler’s “goal is to uncover the assumptions that ‘restrict the meaning of gender to received notions of masculinity and femininity.’ In opening up ‘the field of possibility for gender,’ Butler aims for a feminism that avoids ‘exclusionary gender norms’ in its portrayal of acceptable identities.” Butler’s novel is credited with creating the seminal notion of gender performativity and is considered to be one of the canonical texts of queer theory and postmodern/poststructural feminism.
Butler insists that nothing is natural, not even sexual identity, and that even anatomical differences can be defined only through categories and expectations set out by the culture’s signifying order, so that this in turn means they are not mapped out at all because they are mere expectations and generalizations created and enforced by social and cultural groups. These social and cultural expectations placed on anatomical differences and more specifically expectations about desire, posits that there are two sexes and that desire runs from one sex to another, in “compulsory heterosexual” cultures (a term Butler borrows from Adrienne Rich). Butler argues that American culture’s understanding of sexuality is ill-equipped, and therefore Americans cannot understand the bends that may exist in sexuality and gender because of their conformities and the “naturally” female, and “naturally” male roles that exist.
Butler argues that these seemingly “natural” roles are actually socially constructed and, thus, dependent on one another, as the view of modern culture is, mistakenly, that sexuality and gender are what defines people. Butler tries to motivate that these established and conventional connections between anatomy and desire are open to revision, or “resignification,” although not easily achievable because these very roles and notions of gender are engraved into our psyches and furthermore institutionalized through political and social life. Humans grow into these gender roles and are taught to navigate gender through the specific lenses of “girl” and “boy,” and “woman” and “man.” For example, boys learn to aspire to masculinity and that crying is not socially acceptable for them as they should be masculine creatures, girls on the other hand learn that tomboy tendencies should be changed into feminine ones, therefore encouraging them to dress the part of “femininity.” This is because these roles are so engrained into people as they are slowly established throughout life. Humans experience this process as discovering their identities when Butler argues that in reality, they are merely discovering the singular and unwavering identity that has been picked out for them based on their gender.
People who then diverge from these established gender roles, referred to “deviants,” are forced to pay the price for their desires and acts in the currency of guilt and exclusion from society. Butler calls for a fluidity of categories and a relaxation on the fixation on the identity that people are taught rather than learn. Through her arguments, Butler proves that she herself has adapted this relaxation because although her work grows out of feminism, she is against the “identity politics” that come along with the political grouping and belief of feminists that is ground in a shared identity, which is precisely what she wants to avoid. In this way Butler takes a revolutionary stance on feminism. Whereas feminism was viewed as revolutionary itself, Butler strives to show that the very institution of feminism is grounded in a shared identity that takes feminists further backwards than forwards in that they are then politically grouped, taking away the individuality in them.
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