Undoing Gender

In defining what is human, Butler discusses the way grief undoes the individual. Discussing feelings requires the stopping or unraveling of the self. Discussing one’s own gender or sexuality involves a dispossession of self, mixing the ideas of relationality and autonomy. Butler points to the fundamental dispossession of birth, in which the infant is explicitly brought into a world, culture, and society that has already pre-defined the limits of “human,” decided elements of the child’s identity like sex and gender, and prearranged certain possible paths toward a “viable” life for that child.

Butler critiques the “we” used in discourse; it means identifying with other individuals while distinguishing the individual from others. Violence ultimately confirms the dependence between individuals. Butler wonders how grief might enhance an international feeling of common humanity. The pattern of violence is that a person is dehumanized, then violence is used to confirm that dehumanization, and some lives appear unworthy of grief. These lives are the “unreal.” Autonomy has ethical value in relation to what is “normal,” and normative behavior is not always inclusive. Loves and losses of those operating outside this norm are often discarded as “unreal.”

Butler cites Michel Foucault in determining how power and knowledge influence what is “true” or “real.” The line between these concepts is where transformation through “illegible” claims can happen. Fantasy establishes both the boundary of reality and the path toward refashioning reality. International gay and lesbian movements insist on both the existence of gay and lesbian individuals and their inclusion in reality. Butler desires new terminology and legitimacy for the many genders that already exist.

Combining Baruch Spinoza’s principle of self-persistence and Hegel’s claim that all desire is desire for recognition, Butler explains how those who are unrecognizable cannot persist. Rights pertaining to sexuality require recognition within what is “real” for humans. Citing their time on the board of the International Gay and Lesbian Human Rights Commission in San Francisco, Butler notes how some people are motivated to violence against others. Quoting Adriana Cavarero’s paraphrase of Hannah Arendt, Butler notes how people use violence to eliminate those whom they do not understand. The human is constantly being revised, and Butler notes how the possibility of what could be human needs to be considered in ethics, such as international concerns regarding human rights. Using the example of phrasing such as “women’s human rights” or “gay and lesbian human rights” (37), Butler shows how differences in identity beg the question of how different identities figure into a totality of “human.” The idea of “livable” depends on what people need to live, and determining these conditions requires a democratic openness to investigate the human.

Butler cites Foucault on how regulations enforce regularity on a subject and create subjects within the regular space. Specifically, gender norms make gender legible. To exist outside the norm is paradoxical because the norm allows gender discourse. Butler insists that “masculine” and “feminine,” as norms, restrict discourse regarding gender to a binary. Citing Luce Irigaray, Butler adds that the rejection of the binary does not mean adding new genders but viewing gender as beyond quantification.

Butler cites Jacques Lacan’s idea of the “symbolic,” such as the symbolic “positions” of mother, father, son, and daughter which regulate the sexual barriers between individuals. Claude Levi-Strauss acknowledged that this incest taboo is purely cultural, but the Lacanian idea of the symbolic position cannot be altered, restricting any attempts at social reorganization. The Lacanian position is tautological, adding that attempts to change an assumed law will fail. Gender norms are conceptual idealizations of behavior that are reproduced by the repetitions of actions that approximate the norm. Citing both Foucault and Francois Ewald, Butler notes how norms are independent of the law, though legislation often perpetuates norms. Norms function both as a set of constraints and a mechanism by which those constraints regulate.

Mary Poovey finds normalization in the social sphere as early as the 18th century. Ewald claims that normalization includes deviation, meaning that nothing is outside the norm. Citing Pierre Macheray, Butler argues that the norm is repeated through actions, though it cannot be reduced to its instances or located separately from its instances.

Norms constitute the foundation of reality, and individuals are regulated by gender norms. Deviating from the norm provokes institutions to reinforce the norm by pathologizing the deviation, such as via “corrective” surgery for intersex children. Citing Catherine MacKinnon, Butler suggests that sexual harassment in the workplace, in which men most often harass women, highlights two diverging elements of queer theory. First, gender and sexuality must be separated, allowing that people of any gender might participate in any sex act. Second, gender is inherently unstable and variable, a point that rejects any causal determinism between sexuality and gender. Sexual harassment is another instrument through which gender is reproduced. Katherine Franke argues that the sexual harassment paradigm is an expression of the systemic efforts to regulate gender. Regulation inherently recreates and sustains the norms by which individuals are identified and regulated.