Gender, the Body, and Performativity
This area concerns how gender is related to the body, focusing on the theory that gender is performatively produced rather than expressed, and on debates about the materiality of sex.
Definition
The branch of gender theory concerned with the relationship between gender, sexuality, and the body, including the claim that gender is constituted through repeated acts and the debate over the status of biological sex.
Scope
It covers Judith Butler's influential theory of gender performativity, the question of how far the sexed body is itself shaped by discourse and biology, and phenomenological accounts of lived bodily experience. It treats these positions and the controversies among them, including objections that performativity neglects the body's materiality, in a descriptive and even-handed way.
Sub-topics
Core questions
- Is gender something one is, or something one does?
- How far is the sexed body itself shaped by social and discursive forces rather than simply given?
- What can phenomenology contribute to understanding gender as lived embodiment?
Key theories
- Gender performativity
- Butler's thesis that gender is not the expression of a prior inner identity but is produced through the stylized repetition of acts, so that the appearance of a stable gendered self is an effect of performance.
- The materialization of sex
- Butler's later argument that even the materiality of the sexed body is not a pre-discursive given but is materialized through regulatory norms, responding to charges that performativity ignored the body.
- Lived bodily situation
- The phenomenological tradition, exemplified by Young, that analyzes how gendered comportment and bodily experience are shaped within social situations, complementing discursive accounts with attention to lived embodiment.
History
Building on Beauvoir's idea that one becomes a woman and on Foucault's account of bodies and power, Butler's Gender Trouble (1990) made performativity a central concept, refined in Bodies That Matter (1993). Phenomenological feminists such as Young, and biologists such as Fausto-Sterling, brought the lived and material body more fully into the discussion.
Debates
- The materiality of the body
- Whether theories of gender performativity adequately account for the physical, biological body, or whether they risk dissolving it into discourse, a charge Butler addressed in later work.
Key figures
- Judith Butler
- Anne Fausto-Sterling
- Iris Marion Young
Related topics
Seminal works
- butler1990
- butler1993
- fausto2000
Frequently asked questions
- Does performativity mean gender is just a choice?
- No. Butler emphasizes that performativity is a compelled, repeated practice shaped by powerful norms, not a costume freely chosen and discarded at will.