CP Feminist Perspective on Sex and Gender

“...the mistake...was not that they provided the incorrect definition of ‘woman’. Rather (the argument goes) their mistake was to attempt to define the term ‘woman’ at all.”

Feminist Perspective on Sex and Gender, page 16, quote from Judith Butler, 1999

This is just about my favorite line from this entire piece. 

Up until this point, there was a conglomeration of advocates, both in favor and in contrary of making the distinction between sex and gender, which presented a multitude of various different points of view. Although the points differed in theoretical content, they all had one thing in common: the assumption that what a man and woman is can be defined. 

For example, Nancy Chodorow suggested “...gender is a matter of having feminine and masculine personalities that develop in early infancy as responses to prevalent parenting practices.” (page 8). Props to Chodorow for at least acknowledging that nurture plays a large role in human development, and that nature alone does not determine everything. However, Chodorow put it into simple, definitive terms; gender is a result of something, and can be assigned. How could it possibly be that simple?

Butler’s view that we shouldn’t define what a woman is, is a modern concept in comparison to other ideologies. Although flawed, Butler’s theory at least also takes into consideration the portion of our population that does not identify as the same gender as they are assigned (either in terms of born sex or social classification). This idea that “...the transvestite’s gender is just as real or true as anyone else’s who is ‘traditionally’ feminine female or masculine male.” (page 18). 

Although this point of view is very altruistic, it is still flawed in that even though it doesn’t define the specific gender terms “woman” or “man”, it still assigns gender to physical (or expressed) acts. I find it contradictory that performing gendered activities can then make you that gender. So now, instead of defining the two (typical) gender terms, it is defining (or at least using social definitions) the gender of acts performed? And by performing acts that “make” you a gender, isn’t it then also necessary to at least draw out which acts to perform and how often you need to perform those acts to then become the gender? 

I can agree with Butler that it both should not be done and is unnecessary to define what a woman is. However, it is contradictory to then assign a gender to every performable act and state that gender is made by performing said acts. At least she started off on the right track.