Judith Butler Quotes About Gender

Quotes about: Gender

• We act as if that being of a man or that being of a woman is actually an internal reality or something that is simply true about us, a fact about us, but actually its a phenomenon that is being produced all the time and reproduced all the time, so to say gender is performative is to say that nobody really is a gender from the start.

  Judith Butler

  Reality, Men, Facts

• I think we won't be able to understand the operations of trans-phobia, homophobia, if we don't understand how certain kinds of links are forged between gender and sexuality in the minds of those who want masculinity to be absolutely separate from femininity and heterosexuality to be absolutely separate from homosexuality.

  Judith Butler

  Thinking, Mind, Heterosexuality

  "The Difference Between Sexuality and Gender". bigthink.com.

• To say that gender is performative is a little different because for something to be performative means that it produces a series of effects. We act and walk and speak and talk in ways that consolidate an impression of being a man or being a woman.

  Judith Butler

  Mean, Men, Different

  "Judith Butler: Your Behavior Creates Your Gender". Big Think Interview, bigthink.com. June 06, 2011.

• Gender is not something that one is, it is something one does, an act... a "doing" rather than a "being". There is no gender identity behind the expressions of gender; that identity is performatively constituted by the very "expressions" that are said to be its results. If the immutable character of sex is contested, perhaps this construct called 'sex' is as culturally constructed as gender; indeed, perhaps it was always already gender, with the consequence that the distinction between sex and gender turns out to be no distinction at all.

  Judith Butler

  Sex, Character, Expression

• ... that gender is a choice, or that gender is a role, or that gender is a construction that one puts on, as one puts on clothes in the morning, that there is a 'one' who is prior to this gender, a one who goes to the wardrobe of gender and decides with deliberation which gender it will be today.

  Judith Butler

  Morning, Clothes, Choices

• There is no original or primary gender a drag imitates, but gender is a kind of imitation for which there is no original.

  Judith Butler

  Kind, Imitation, Gender

  "Gender Trouble: Feminism and the Subversion of Identity". Book by Judith Butler, www.huffingtonpost.com. 1990.

• There is no gender identity behind the expressions of gender... identity is performatively constituted by the very 'expressions' that are said to be its results.

  Judith Butler

  Expression, Identity, Gender

  Judith Butler, Maxine Elliot Professor of Comparative Literature and Critical Theory Judith Butler (2002). “Gender Trouble: Tenth Anniversary Edition”, p.33, Routledge

• Gender is not something that one is, it is something one does, an act… a doing rather than a being.

  Judith Butler

  Doe, Gender, Gender Identity

• Our notions of what a human being is problematically depend on there being two coherent genders. And if someone doesn't comply with either the masculine norm or the feminine norm, their very humaness is called into question.

  Judith Butler

  Two, Feminine, Gender

  Interview with Jill Stauffer, www.believermag.com. May, 2003.

• I am much more open about categories of gender, and my feminism has been about women's safety from violence, increased literacy, decreased poverty and more equality.

  Judith Butler

  Safety, Feminism, Poverty

  Udi Aloni, Slavoj Zizek, Alain Badiou, Judith Butler (2011). “What Does a Jew Want?: On Binationalism and Other Specters”, p.205, Columbia University Press

• It seems to me that "Gender trouble" will always be important to try and open up our ideas of what gender is. So, I don't know if it's revolutionary, but maybe it still has something to say to those issues.

  Judith Butler

  Ideas, Issues, Important

  Source: ilga.org

• If you have a conversation "Why is it you think masculinity is linked with heterosexuality? Or why is it you think masculinity is linked with sexual dominance or the sexually active position in the sex act?" If you start to ask people those questions, then they realize "Maybe gender is not one thing. Maybe I have collected a number of things under one category and I've made a mistake".

  Judith Butler

  Sex, Mistake, Thinking

  Source: ilga.org

• If gender is eradicated, so too is an important domain of pleasure for many people. And others have a strong sense of self bound up with their genders, so to get rid of gender would be to shatter their self-hood.

  Judith Butler

  Strong, Self, People

  Source: transadvocate.com

• Gender is a kind of imitation for which there is no original; in fact, it is a kind of imitation that produces the very notion of the original as an effect and consequence of the imitation itself.

  Judith Butler

  Facts, Kind, Imitation

  "Inside/out: Lesbian Theories, Gay Theories". Book edited by Diana Fuss, 1991.

• If we think about sexual life for a gender life, it seems to me that we have to allow for certain kinds of changes or certain kinds of ways of reconceptualizing ourselves.

  Judith Butler

  Thinking, Way, Kind

  Source: ilga.org

• The United States are such a large place. And there are some states and some cities where the questions of gender or sexuality would not be asked, or where scholars or academics are working in small little corners of the universities trying to raise these questions and being told that either that they're strange or not appropriate or being actively opposed. There are other places where there is very active scholarship going on. Certainly on gender.

  Judith Butler

  Cities, Trying, United States

  Source: ilga.org

• I think we have to accept a wide variety of positions on gender. Some want to be gender-free, but others want to be free really to be a gender that is crucial to who they are.

  Judith Butler

  Thinking, Want, Gender

  Source: transadvocate.com

• I think I never expected "Gender trouble" to have any particularly revolutionary effect so whatever effects it has, I'm always surprised.

  Judith Butler

  Thinking, Revolutionary, Trouble

  Source: ilga.org

• It's not my concern. It's your concern. I just keep working. I keep posing certain questions and I think there are times when people think "What happened to the Judith Butler I used to know?" or "She's not doing gender trouble. Does that mean she refuses it or she's disavowed it?" And I would say no. I have not refused or disavowed anything.

  Judith Butler

  Mean, Thinking, People

  Source: ilga.org

• I have also been invited to talk to psychologists and psychoanalysts and I liked that very much. Because, they are the ones who are bringing a lot of very, you know, problematic ideas about sexuality and gender into psychiatric and psychological settings. And I like having some influence there.

  Judith Butler

  Ideas, Influence, Psychological

  Source: ilga.org

• Intersectionality has made an important contribution to social and political analysis, asking all of us to think about what assumptions of race and class we make when we speak about "women" or what assumptions of gender and race we make when we speak about "class." It allows us to unpack those categories and see the various kinds of social formations and power relations that constitute those categories.

  Judith Butler

  Thinking, Race, Class

  Source: transadvocate.com

• Gender is an identity tenuously constituted in time, instituted in an exterior space through a stylized repetition of acts.

  Judith Butler

  Space, Identity, Gender

  Gender Trouble: Feminism and the Subversion of Identity pt. 3, ch. 4 (1990)

• I think we have to ask, not, what "Gender trouble" is today but where "Gender trouble" is today.

  Judith Butler

  Thinking, Today, Trouble

  Source: ilga.org

• I have simply taken some of the same questions and reposed them in new ways. But, you see, I must live. Right? I mean I can't stay the same for everyone to be consumed as the author of "Gender trouble". I have to continue to live and that means I have to "reposer les questions".

  Judith Butler

  Taken, Mean, Way

  Source: ilga.org

• Gender assignment is a "construction" and yet many genderqueer and trans people refuse those assignments in part or in full. That refusal opens the way for a more radical form of self-determination, one that happens in solidarity with others who are undergoing a similar struggle.

  Judith Butler

  Determination, Struggle, Self

  Source: transadvocate.com

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