COMM 1010 Lecture Notes - Lecture 8: Judith Butler, Gender Trouble, Cisgender

• School: Fordham University
• Department: Communication and Media Studies
• Course: COMM 1010
• Professor: Dijana Jelaca

Document Summary

Cisgender: sex and gender align is gender a natural category? theorists say it"s not. Butler"s complicated argument is often reduced to one conclusion: that gender is performed (no) Performativity: the capacity of speech, communication and behavior not simply to communicate but rather to act or consummate an action, or to construct and perform an identity. Performativity does not mean we are free to perform any gender we want from one moment to the next, or that we do it consciously. Social constraints limit the possibilities of gender identity, and people who don"t conform to existing norms of masculinity and femininity face stigma and discrimination. Gender is not a natural category, but the way we are socialized into particular roles. Stonewall riots, 1969: start of lgbt rights movement. Critique of 1970s second wave feminism as catering mainly to white, middle-class, heterosexual women. Emerged as a field in 1980s and 1990s.