Judith Butler's Gender Performativity, Part 2: What is "Performativity?"

[@JonasMaria]

Thank you for your work, you explain everything so well! Me and Zac are now well informed.

[@filmandmediastudieschannel]

Thank you, Jonas! That means a lot.

[@RC-qf3mp]

@@filmandmediastudieschannel maybe you should do a follow up video of Butler’s contribution to the ideology that promotes castrating and sterilizing children, now that the latest and greatest science from very liberal countries like Sweden, Finland and the UK are totally against such ‘care’ for minors? Maybe read the Amicus Briefs sent to the Supreme Court regarding the Skremetti v. US case on Tennessee’s ban on child abuse (ie, so called ‘gender affirming care’). I particularly like Kara Dansky’s amicus brief, on behalf of women, on how misogynistic this whole ideology is that says a man can become a woman by changing pronouns. She’s a former senior attorney for the ACLU. Ultimately, Butler’s ideology is pseudoscience.

[@gabitzy3136]

This is so incredibly helpful!!! I’ve listened to many videos trying to understand this. Yours is by far the clearest and most likely to be remembered.

[@filmandmediastudieschannel]

so glad to hear it!

[@AnnoyedKitten]

Thank you! I am right now doing a bachelor thesis in Literature around Queer readings and Butler is kinda essential to include in such a work. This explained SO much better what she actually means. Thank you! Thank you! Thank you!

[@filmandmediastudieschannel]

i love to hear it - thanks for the comment!

[@cassiecroix1708]

THANKS A LOT!!!! i've been trying to ejemplify this for a thesis and your video saved me Greets from Mexico

[@vale5664]

I do not work on this field neither a similar one but you make people interested and happy to learn about it

[@filmandmediastudieschannel]

thank you!

[@Fernando-ox5mo]

Great video. Thanks so much. I still find it difficult to get used to that singular they and it throws me out for a bit every time you say it, but I guess I´ll learn that too.

[@SimoniousB]

It is. I suppose the singular term for they (thee) is out of favour.

[@ADUAquascaping]

​@@SimoniousB I will use thee, thou, thy, and thine as my pronouns

[@ADUAquascaping]

Why can't you just use the word you when talking directly to them. They/them when they are not around and use you or their actual name when you are talking directly to them. I guess I don't get your point?

[@ADUAquascaping]

Saying, "they are late" is pretty common in modern English regardless of genderism, so what do you mean? But saying directly to them, "Are they feeling OK?" as you are speaking directly to them makes no sense whatsoever. And if this is what they expect, then they can press charges against me because that's utter nonsense 😂 What, are they implying that they have 2 or more personalities? Great, go see a psychiatrist 😂

[@ADUAquascaping]

​​​@@SimoniousBWhy can't we use the word you? 'You were late' is acceptable. Why would I say 'they were late' directly to them? If using the word you offends someone, then maybe they need to leave society 😂 You can also just use their actual name in all cases. Saying, "they are late" is pretty common in modern English regardless of genderism, so what do you mean? But saying directly to them, "Are they feeling OK?" as you are speaking directly to them makes no sense whatsoever. And if this is what they expect, then they can press charges against me because that's utter nonsense 😂 What, are they implying that they have 2 or more personalities? Great, go see a psychiatrist 😂

[@calibratedape7044]

This is so insightful. I try to understand various gender theories for some time now, and as you said there is a lot of misconceptions rooted even in examples Butler gave herself. This explanation (and previous episode) were both in depth and compacted very well. Thanks! Side note: KZbin's algorithm can be super useful if one trains it correctly ;)

[@filmandmediastudieschannel]

That's a really nice thing to say - thank you!

[@rgng]

Idk how you do it but you just make sense. Have seen these definations so many times but only today are they making soo much sense.

[@filmandmediastudieschannel]

I love to hear this - thanks!

[@sophiecairns4604]

This was so formative and helpful!!!! Thank you!!!!

[@filmandmediastudieschannel]

glad to hear it!

[@Alanoudsehli]

The video helps understanding deep topics in an easy way, thanks

[@grybu_karas]

Amazing videos! Where is part three of this series?

[@criquetvert749]

Please post part 3!!!

[@simran19951000]

I really needed this video! Thank you so much for explaining this so simply!

[@eijuude]

Excelent video! I pretty much had the idea of what Butler meant when I read Gender Trouble, but I wanst really abble to explain it to others. You were abble to make so clear that I'm confident I can make somene else understand it too. Great work!

[@filmandmediastudieschannel]

thanks! that's sort of exactly how I felt about it, too.

[@Gaby-rl3lq]

Thank you so much!!! This was so well explained! It was also really helpful to see the examples of Zac and Judith that you used. I feel like I have a better understanding of this topic now :)

[@cpstudying]

Thank you. Performance and performativity = acting and actions.

[@falkilicious8571]

This video really helped me a lot, thank you!

[@camerongh_]

Oh my god the clouds have parted and the sky is blue again thank you so much

[@dislocational]

Thank you!! This is great! I am really enjoying your lectures. Do you have plan to make lectures on V. Flusser?

[@josephpolz5881]

Amazing Explaination!

[@RC-qf3mp]

How do you know if the explanation is any good? You’re just trusting this nobody YTer.

[@Youremythrill18]

Thoughts on camille paglia

[@monicadaniels784]

This is perhaps above my pay grade to understand, but to me you helped to explain her definition of what gender is. It would appear to not go into why someone deviates from the gender that society would assign to them. I am one such person. The world around me set in motion every expectation that my gender should be masculine/male, yet I found this to be an impossibility while keeping any sense of happiness or sanity. I don't know whether it is worth reading on with her further. Apparently she deviates from gender norms as well.

[@filmandmediastudieschannel]

This is a really good point, and one that maybe clarifies Butler's aims in the concept of 'gender performativity.' The concept doesn't so much try to explain gender deviation (or rather this is not its primary goal) as it tries to explain the social structures that create and enforce gender conformity. But it's very important for Butler that those social structures aren't _deterministic_ in the way some might imagine biological norms to "determine" sexual characteristics and thus gendered characteristics. Butler writes in _Bodies that Matter_ "it will be as important to think about how and to what end bodies are constructed as it will be to think about how and to what end bodies are _not_ constructed" (16). The importance of making a case for the social construction of gender, as opposed to the deterministic functioning of gender, is to reveal its malleability. "Nature" can't be changed, but "society" can be. On Butler's account, I might imagine they'd say that gender nonconforming folks have always existed (indeed as you say, Butler is nonbinary so is one of them), and will always continue to exist, because social construction isn't absolute; it isn't, in their words, a "cultural determinism." The phenomenon to be explained, for Butler, isn't gender deviation or gender variance, but a world that enforces gender conformity and does violence to those who deviate from the norm. All this being said, this is just my impression from what I've read of Butler and what I understand of them, which in the scope of their body of writing and thought, is very little. It's also worth acknowledging that Butler is only one theorist, and there are others working in queer theory that might be more concerned with what one might call an explanation of the phenomenon of gender deviation. In my previous video on Butler, for instance, I play a clip from Philosophy Tube explaining the position of trans theorist and geneticist Julia Serrano, who, as a scientist, provides an account of gender variance (she'd prefer variance, not deviation, I'd imagine) that is rooted in empirical research and statistics: kzbin.info/www/bejne/ZompmGucZriHgs0

[@monicadaniels784]

@@filmandmediastudieschannel That is a comment that I was thinking of as well. I think it more appropriate to say deviation rather than deviance. The former is descriptive, while the latter has a strong negative connotation.

[@Bob-wx1op]

Great video. I am wondering how will Gender Performativity Theory react to preserve the integrity of subjectivity of a gender minority whose gender identity is fundamentally at odds with social recognitions out of cultural conventions.( e.g., a person who does what a culture thinks a typical cis man does but still nevertheless identify herself as female) Normatively, of course, the culture in question should move on as a whole, with gender cultural changes over time, but is there any theoretical instrument (relevant or related to Gender Performativity Theory) by which this person's inner identification of her gender can be theoretically valid?

[@filmandmediastudieschannel]

Hi Bob - good question. So I understand your question to be asking about cases of gender identity where gender expression doesn't match the culturally normative picture of gender expression in a given society. And if the theory of gender performativity is basically a theory about why and how gender as a phenomenon emerges through *normative* forces in society, what does that same theory have to say about these cases of non-normative gender expression? So if I have that right - and if I do have that right this is a fairly common question that I've received on these videos - my response is usually something like this: the theory of gender performativity sets out to explain the phenomenon of gender as something that *tends toward* recognizable norms and which is often policed by individuals who want to maintain those norms. What the theory of gender performativity is not is an explanation of gender variance. That's because, for Butler, gender variance is not the thing that needs explaining; the forces of normativity are what needs explaining because it's the forces of normativity that are 1. guiding gender essentialist views and 2. leading to real harm to people. My sense is that, for somebody like Butler, whether the gender of the person you described is 'theoretically valid' is simply not the question they want to answer. In fact, Butler might say that looking to verify the 'validity' of one's gender is precisely something that only arises from the understanding of gender that Butler is trying to overturn. But your question might be getting at something slightly different, which is Butler's emphasis on gender as a function of what we see and hear (manifested in one's style of being) vs gender as that which is felt personally despite how one might be gendered by others. I tried to address this with a clip from Philosophy Tube in my first video on the topic (link below), where theorist Julia Serrano is cited for her theory that actually tries to explain (in somewhat scientific terms) why individuals *feel* their gender in one way or another. I'm not sure it's necessarily at odds with Butler; it may simply be a different focus. Butler's performativity is *mostly* interested in gender as a normative social construct and how that construct is maintained by individuals in a society (kind of like language). It's less interested in gender as a subjective experience, but there's plenty of interesting work that takes a more phenomenological approach to the topic.

[@Bob-wx1op]

@@filmandmediastudieschannel Thanks for answering. I read some parts of Gender Trouble and I get a sense that Butler is saying: Gender Performativity Theory is primarily a theory to explain and describe the interactions the cultural norms of gender and individual gender performativity. I have the sense that Performativity Theory does not formally entail justify the subjective local queerness or the lack of conformity to hegemonic cultural forms. Is it correct to read Butler's theory of gender concerned with social beings and politics of gender, which could be amoral. I remember Martha Nussbaum claiming Butler's theory is purely academic and detached from the real world, and thus unable to protect gays and lesbians in legal settings. Do you think it is correct to say Butler didn't go as far as Nussbaum(and other theorists) to suggest the disintergrate the theoretic difference between power-knowledge and ethics and claim the problem of norm vs. queerness an ethical issue? ( I was thinking about Foucault emphasizes the ethical aspect of governing of the discourse of truth on sexuality. I am wondering if Butler made any similar claim in her theory of gender.)

[@archangelcharlie]

This is the guidance I needed with this text. Thank you so much for this work. I am excited to see part three of this series! Additional question - do you have any other recommendations of resources that would provide further assistance in queer studies? Any creators you follow or recommend, or papers and books you like? Thanks again!

[@filmandmediastudieschannel]

hey thanks! so for really big channels that explore queer theory topics that you're probably already familiar with, i like contrapoints and philosophy tube. for a more academic review of texts/thinkers, i recommend Theory & Philosophy, which is bare bones in production but generally very good and has an incredible amount of stuff, including queer theory texts. as for books/papers that i like, i like Sara Ahmed a lot, especially Queer Phenomenology, The Promise of Happiness, and The Cultural Politics of Emotion (I believe all three of these are touched on in Theory & Philosophy channel). I also like the writing of Mari Ruti, who is a refreshingly clear writer in a discipline that has some of the most difficult writing in the humanities.

[@thrishalakaumadi370]

Thank you so much!!! this helps out a lot

[@ahlem9185]

Hello. Thank you very much for this insightful explanation indeed. Please, how can we apply this theory on a literary text. For instance, how can we read a text from the prism of Butler's theory of gender performativity?

[@ahlem9185]

I would really appreciate it if you may help

[@filmandmediastudieschannel]

Hmm that’s a tough challenge, but there are many examples that you could look at of literary analyses citing Butler’s ideas. You might even look at my video that weaves Butler’s ideas into a reading of a popular film: kzbin.info/www/bejne/a5mQhWWJh9h2mLM

[@cosplay-welt]

I am not an english native speaker. But, is it like when a physicist cannot get along with the years of calculating the universe and starts getting to strange conclusions and explainations about some part of the universe? And Judith is the same here with human behaviour?

[@thestainedglass]

Hi! No… so, butlers theory is specifically analyzing real life social constructs. She’s studying the way that we walk, talk, act a certain way based on our gender and the constructs our society has around that. It’s important to remember this is more of a western viewpoint…. It is not fully inclusive as heteropatriarchy DOES change and look different in each culture. The way men act in my native country’s culture might be different to how yours do. That’s what she wants to study. Hope this helps ❤

[@SimoniousB]

Just thinking out loud. Are there “objective” performative practices that are unconscious? Using, for example, ‘I do’ versus ‘they do’ or she/he do, does or did (through time)?

[@filmandmediastudieschannel]

i'm honestly intrigued by your question but i'm not sure i fully understand. do you mind elaborating?

[@SimoniousB]

@@filmandmediastudieschannel I suppose I’m pointing to gender, race and class. Often ‘fundamentalised’, if you will, to male/female, black/white and rich/poor dichotomies. I think performativity could be used to investigate or observe self reinforcing structures across all three domains. This is why it interested me how unconscious interior postures, which are positioned as performative, are constructed socially or ‘from’ the objective. Not just through institutional conscious enforcement, but also portrayed as a sense making framework, to appear natural. Sorry, if I’m being too dense or obscure in my writing but I find I express limited clarity without some thought and further editing.

[@filmandmediastudieschannel]

@@SimoniousB Ah ok so by 'objective' you mean what is materially present in the world, say in the manner of someone's walking, rather than an idea. So you're interested in how 'gender' --as a set of ideas--follows from, or is reinforced by, the 'objective'/material acts that people make all the time, more or less unconsciously. And you're interested in how this might be applied to race and class as well. So your question made me think of other theories of ideology that try to push back on the notion that ideology is all immaterial stuff - i.e. ideas - but is also constituted through action. Louis Althusser comes to mind, and it's because he probably has the most cited theory of ideology outside of Karl Marx. But if I recall correctly he uses a memorable quote from Pascal - "kneel down, move your lips in prayer, and you will believe" - as a way to communicate the precedence of action (objective material stuff) to belief. Althusser isn't mentioned in Butler's Gender Trouble but there's an academic paper about Butler and Althusser that makes it seem like he's mentioned in their other work - www.cambridge.org/core/journals/hypatia/article/abs/subjected-subjects-on-judith-butlers-paradox-of-interpellation/5625F287D0E2F0F4FE48C1E16237760F There's also some work on race that applies Butler's performativity, and seems to make similar arguments that you're hypothesizing about here: link.springer.com/chapter/10.1007/978-3-319-73365-4_5 Though I think it's clear how some would want to push back and think about aspects of race and class that make those categories markedly different from gender, and I imagine one could use performativity as an example of how the categories are different.

[@SimoniousB]

@@filmandmediastudieschannel that’s great. Thanks for such a detailed response and for taking the effort. I follow the links, especially the race performativity paper.

[@joshj1012]

This was great, thanks!

[@scarywhale7333]

Thank you so much!

[@postpostpost]

Thanks a lot for this man

[@JT-od9hm]

Super helpful !

[@All_righty]

Great video! I showed it to my class.

[@busdrinker3734]

Wow, I have a lot more respect for Zac Efron knowing that he's read Gender Trouble! 😂

[@jcccheung]

wonderful.

[@jasontorres8080]

If gender is not something we decide to put on one day and change it the next one, does that mean genderfluid people are getting it all wrong? I'm a little confused.

[@filmandmediastudieschannel]

Great question. So when Butler is using the "gender is not merely a costume/outfit" analogy, they're *not* trying to say that gender cannot fluctuate from day to day (as with genderfluidity). Rather, they're trying to say that gender isn't something that you can simply choose on a whim, in the way you might choose to wear a particular jacket or pair of pants. Butler's point in saying this is to emphasize their position as a social constructivist. Butler cares way too much about the role that social forces play in determining one's gender to be misinterpreted as saying that you can simply *choose* your gender on a whim. My sense also--and this is more speculation on my part--is that this would miss the phenomenology of gender, the sense that one feels their gender as right, even if that person is genderfluid. I'd imagine Butler would say that a genderfluid person, even though they may feel their gender differently from time to time, even potentially from day to day, and thus express their gender differently on different days, is not *merely choosing* their gender as if on a whim in a way that is analogous to how we generally choose to wear one jacket or another. How that person feels their gender on any given day is deeper, Butler might say, than a mere choice. (As you can see, there may be limits to this, as one might say, as a genderfluid person, that for them the phenomenology of gender fluctuation feels a lot like *choosing* to wear a particular piece of clothing.) But still if you continue reading the preface after this passage, you'll see that Butler is using the "gender is not merely a costume" analogy in order to anticipate a misreading of their theory as "gender is whatever we choose; it's as easy as wearing different clothes!" Importantly, though, as Butler will explain, their theory of gender performativity has room for the possibility of going against the habits instilled by social construction. In fact, that's kind of the point. Butler wants us to see that gender isn't fixed by *nature* but rather tends toward particular norms because of *culture* - but what's great about culture is that people (often unwittingly) create it and so, in theory, people can also (slowly) change it.

[@vudoomunkyfut]

... and then Black studies enters the conversation and throws all of this off lol.

[@teanaboston-mammah7648]

Please explain who you are referring to here? Do you mean Hortense Spillers?

[@MrStevenMosher]

luckily i studied austin

[@renatajd7758]

You perform to be an intellectual.

[@waterglas21]

I like how you try to express Butlers idea in a simple and concise way and I congratualate you for that!. However I don't think Judith's ideas are very original or insightful: -Bf Skinner wrote years before Austin "verbal behaviour", where he stipulates that verbal behaviour has a function and should not be clasified by its form. In the same way, psychologist have known since the times of behaviourism that conducts have a function and that are changed by how the world works. I just don't think performative theory gives new insights on the topic of gender. Of course gender is not a performance in the way that no behaviour is performed as in stage. That's just obvious.

[@-Knight-Of-Light-]

With this Idea " Performativity = the idea that actions in the world (speech, nonverbal bodily movement, clothing, etc) create this thing called gender, just as 'performative utterances' create things through speech" , she did not convey anything profound. It is simply a general statement about the social construction of gender. And this person is being celebrated as an authority.

[@RC-qf3mp]

Derivative nonsense. Butler is what happens when you misread Division 1 of heidegger’s Being & Time, and apply that misunderstanding to sex, and make up ‘gender’ as distinct from sex. At least Foucault was original and interesting in his misappropriation of Heidegger.

[@Youremythrill18]

Well said

[@emmalovesu2412]

ehrendude

[@mrmatt24]

Her theories are interesting to some degree, but ultimately she is out of touch with reality.