pastel-hutt: Judith Butler never said
Oct. 28th, 2016 10:26 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
gravityeyelidsvia http://ift.tt/2eYw2cI:
pastel-hutt:
Judith Butler never said that “trans people aren’t real” wtf
The (paraphrased) quotation “Sex is always already gender” means that:
The construct of “sex,” which is the process of assigning infants as “male” or “female” based on what their genitals look like (or what we imagine that they should look like), is part of the larger institution of gender. Bodies have no meaning in themselves. Sex is the process of reading gendered meaning onto bodies. It serves to reify and essentialize gender. The entire reason why we have those two taxonomic categories, “male” and “female,” is so we can designate which children are “supposed” to become men or women.
tl;dr: Butler’s point is that what we call “sex” is really the process by which we assign gender to people at birth and throughout their lives based on what their bodies look like.
I think…I think some people are just seeing that quotation out of context, and maybe they aren’t familiar with Butler or with critical theory, and they’re assuming that it means “Your assigned sex dictates your gender.” That’s completely antithetical to everything that Butler actually says about what gender is and how it works.
pastel-hutt:
Judith Butler never said that “trans people aren’t real” wtf
The (paraphrased) quotation “Sex is always already gender” means that:
The construct of “sex,” which is the process of assigning infants as “male” or “female” based on what their genitals look like (or what we imagine that they should look like), is part of the larger institution of gender. Bodies have no meaning in themselves. Sex is the process of reading gendered meaning onto bodies. It serves to reify and essentialize gender. The entire reason why we have those two taxonomic categories, “male” and “female,” is so we can designate which children are “supposed” to become men or women.
tl;dr: Butler’s point is that what we call “sex” is really the process by which we assign gender to people at birth and throughout their lives based on what their bodies look like.
I think…I think some people are just seeing that quotation out of context, and maybe they aren’t familiar with Butler or with critical theory, and they’re assuming that it means “Your assigned sex dictates your gender.” That’s completely antithetical to everything that Butler actually says about what gender is and how it works.
