Reddit reviews Gender Trouble: Feminism and the Subversion of Identity (Routledge Classics)
We found 16 Reddit comments about Gender Trouble: Feminism and the Subversion of Identity (Routledge Classics). Here are the top ones, ranked by their Reddit score.
Routledge
> From a scientific point of view
From a scientific point of view, you're an ignoramus. You know nothing about biology if this is what you actually think.
Instead of just pulling things out of your ass and calling them "le science," try reading an actual academic journal on the subject in one of any of the relevant fields, or take a class, or talk to a PhD. Do something. Or, you know, just don't open your mouth. That is, unless you want to keep making an ass of yourself and broadcasting your ignorance.
e: Look, if you want to say that the dick makes the man, I know of at least two vets who lost what you would consider their manhood to IEDs. I could get you their contact info if you wanted to present your ideas on gender to them.
Or you could reassess what you've learned from the far right propaganda shithouses on reddit and youtube.
Here. This book is arguably the cornerstone of the modern academic understanding of gender. If you read this you'll have a basic understanding of probably the most widely accepted theory of gender in academia. I wouldn't consider this all you'd need to know for a thorough understanding, but it is probably the place to start if you're confused.
>Haha fuck off.
Logic and reason, presumably?
>I don't have all day to hang around reddit, and even if I did, I wouldn't care enough to go searching through threads to find reasonable comments that have been downvoted,
So you admit to making a politically motivated judgement based on incomplete data?
>Do you believe that no reasonable, or correct opinion has been downvoted for the way it was said in, Qeraeth?
Everything gets downvoted here, unfortunately.
>with me saying that if you have XY-chromosomes, you're born man, and XX, born woman. That is absolutely my entire point, and I'm not discriminating.
I explained at length why those conclusions are entirely inaccurate, ground in social ideas and not science, and that biological essentialism is inextricable from the discrimination trans people face. It is scientifically inaccurate (i.e. pop science), and it buttresses discrimination. So, no, you cannot escape the title of 'bigot' any more than a modern day phrenologist would.
>For the purposes of that statement I'm excluding all of the weird medical cases
Weird? My intersex friends send their regards to your arbitrary normalness.
>abnormal (which doesn't mean bad) chromosomal conditions.
You cannot separate the judgement of "weird" and "abnormal" from the implication that they are wrong, less-valid, or bad. Your disclaimer does nothing other than show the fact that you're trying very hard to have it both ways: cling to unscientific social ideas while saying you're all for equality.
You exclude intersex people (who are a lot less rare than you think) because they are an inconvenience to your argument. What makes them abnormal per se? Inability to reproduce? No, actually they can do that as long as surgeons don't butcher them at birth (you know, because they think they're weird and abnormal, and that there should only be two sexes). They empirically exist and for you to exclude them from any analysis of sex seems bizarre and table-tilting.
>Explain to me exactly how that makes me a woman-hater and a transphobic please.
Because it is not a fact.
You are going to discover that how we sex people is considerably more motivated by social ideals and politics and not purely objective science. You keep pretending your chromosome fetish is some kind of fact. It isn't, simply put.
Others might say you are "technically fact" (whatever that means) because we all still live with an understanding of essential sex, but others will tell you that there is no 'technical maleness' about trans women other than what people like yourself choose to project onto them. You cannot argue that trans men are essentially women or that trans women are essential men and not be called a transphobe.
You don't get to decide what transphobia is; the people who suffer from it do, (I know it's shocking, really, but the people who actually live with it may just know it when they see it).
It also makes you misogynist/misandrist because you're essentially defining women and men by their body parts rather than their selves. You'll probably wave your arms and go "but gender gender!" Gender and sex are both distinct and connected, and in a society where we tend to give more ontological weight to what we define as sex, it is problematic when you elect to label people against their will in these matters.
The essential idea that XY chromosomes or penises essential make men is not scientific. That's just how we chose to label things. The presumed essential sex is really just a laundry list of body parts, and as I said in my prior comment to you on the matter, even that changes when it comes to trans people.
I notice you also ignored the question about political correctness. Or have you realised that it's an empty concept used to bludgeon people who have a hard time being automatically respected on their own terms?
http://plato.stanford.edu/entries/feminism-gender
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https://www.amazon.co.uk/Gender-Trouble-Routledge-Classics-Judith/dp/0415389550
http://lauragonzalez.com/TC/BUTLER_gender_trouble.pdf
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gender_Trouble#Summary
Oooooh, child, there is a lot of great stuff out there for you. Don't worry about not finding material.
He looks at drag from a cultural/ethnic perspective. Great read. Not all chapters would be applicable to your paper, as his scope is much larger than drag (as is Butler's), but he does devote a significant portion of his writing to Vaginal Davis.
Let me know if you have any questions! I love this stuff. Good luck on your paper!
Here's my list so far. It's a mix of FTM-specific, general trans, and gender studies books, including essays, memoir, and more academic works. In no particular order:
Gender Trouble by Judith Butler
Gender Outlaw: On Men, Women and the Rest of Us by Kate Bornstein
Gender Outlaws: The Next Generation by Kate Bornstein and S. Bear Bergman
Nina Here Nor There by Nick Krieger
Female Masculinity by Judith Halberstam
Nobody Passes - Rejecting the Rules of Gender and Conformity edited by Mattilda Bernstein Sycamore
Whipping Girl by Julia Serano
How Sex Changed: A History of Transexuality in the United States by Joanne Meyerowitz
Becoming a Visible Man by Jamison Green
Queer Theory, Gender Theory: An Instant Primer by Riki Wilchins
PoMoSexuals: Challenging Assumptions About Gender and Sexuality edited by Carol Queen
Genderqueer: Voices From Beyond the Sexual Binary edited by Joan Nestle
From the Inside Out: Radical Gender Transformation, FTM and Beyond edited by Morty Diamond
Second Son by Ryan Sallans
Why are Faggots So Afraid of Faggots? by Mattilda Bernstein Sycamore
and the must-read fiction:
Stone Butch Blues by Leslie Feinberg
I'll edit this if I can find any others, I'm probably missing a couple. Been a big non-fiction reading year for me!
EDIT: Edited to add links, and a few more on my wish list I haven't picked up yet.
Letters for my Brothers: Transitional Wisdom in Retrospect edited By Megan M. Rohrer, M.Div. & Zander Keig, M.SW.
That's Revolting!: Queer Strategies for Resisting Assimilation edited by Mattilda Bernstein Sycamore
Transgender Voices: Beyond Women and Men by Lori B. Girshick
Just Add Hormones: An Insider's Guide to the Transsexual Experience by Matt Kailey
The Testosterone Files: My Hormonal and Social Transformation from Female to Male by Max Wolf Valerio
Here's a few in the ballpark(?). Casting a wide net here, as your query could go in any number of directions:
Sylvia Federici -“Patriarchy and Accumulation on a World Scale: Women in the International Division of Labour,”
Rosemary Hennessy – Profit and Pleasure: Sexual Identities in Late Capitalism
Judith Butler – Gender Trouble
Nancy Fraser – “Heterosexism, Misrecognition and Capitalism: A Response to Judith Butler”
Jose Esteban Muñoz – Disidentification
J.K. Gibson-Graham – Queer(y)ing Capitalism in and out of the Classroom
I took a number of women's studies courses. When I worked on my 2nd bachelors, I completed almost all of the requirements for the degree with women's studies classes.
If that is out of your price range (I had a lot of needed pre-reqs for a masters degree I had to hammer out anyway), perhaps they have some advice for a reading list.
Some books you may find interesting to read (your local library may have them):
Being Boys; Being Girls. This one is about how boys and girls learn masculinity and femininity as various ages.
Men's Lives. I had an earlier edition in one of my sociology courses. This one is about the construction of masculinity - how boys become men.
Gender Trouble. I had an earlier edition of this book in my gender courses. Butler's argument is basically that gender is a performance. We're all copying something of which there is no original. Could be confusing to read.
Whipping Girl. I recommend this one because it is a very readable book about becoming a transwoman. One way to understand how our society treats men and women differently is to see how things change as someone changes gender. It is the same person, but now how we treat them based on what is/isn't between their legs.
Ain't I A Woman. One of the influential works on Black Feminism. Some black feminists feel that the feminist movement is a bit too much focused on white women. The word "intersectionality" is frequently used to describe situation where racism and sexism collide - and that things get more complicated than just sexism or just racism happen.
As others have mentioned, I would recommend staying away from most blogs/tumblrs and sticking to published books and papers.
It being performative and constructive doesn't necessarily signify any degree of choice by any means. Most (hardcore) constructivists concede that, though we may recognize the ways in which we socially construct concepts, that doesn't at all mean we can change them on a whim; they're not objective values, but neither are they subjective values, they're intersubjective. Which means a constructed social conception is far from implying any sort of "choice".
I reckon you probably know it already, but this book comes very highly recommended in case you want to look more into the concept of constructivism within queer theory/gender studies, and an insight into the performativity of gender.
My discipline is Geography, so one of my favorites is Feminism and Geography by Gillian Rose, which I think is actually great even for non-geographers. Feel free to skip the bits about the academy. As for the list I mentioned in an earlier comment, Feminism is For Everybody by bell hooks is probably the most accessible and general book that I'd recommend. It should be on your bookshelf. I wouldn't try tackling Judith Butler if you're not in the mood for an academic slog (even though her work is phenomenal), but Gender Trouble is probably her best-known book. A Field of One's Own by Bina Agarwal is a stellar look at farming economies in South Asia through the lens of feminism. A Cyborg Manifesto (PDF link) by Donna Haraway is fairly polemic among feminists, but she's a name that's almost invariably brought up when talking about posthuman/transhuman theory. She's somewhat problematic, but I personally like her writing style.
you cant control culture? are you serious? you just said the social science equivalent of "climate change aint real". also, I just read your name and lost all desire to argue with you. I am going to leave you with some introductory reading material, do with it as you will. And if you actually have a wife and daughter (red pill not wirking for you?) and you care about them a bit, ask them if they have ever been catcalled, groped or molested by anyone. And then square that with their constitutional and legal rights.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Feminist_theory
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Feminist_legal_theory
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_abortion_law_debate
https://www.amazon.com/Gender-Trouble-Feminism-Subversion-Routledge/dp/0415389550/ref=asap_bc?ie=UTF8
http://www.amazon.com/Good-Feminism/dp/0415389550
This
That
And so many more things... like common sense.
http://www.amazon.com/Gender-Trouble-Feminism-Subversion-Routledge/dp/0415389550/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1341194938&sr=8-1&keywords=gender+trouble
Epistemology of the Closet is an interesting and very much classic read that's better than most of the queer theory out there.
if you don't mind the often impossible syntax, Gender Trouble is also good and widely read in some parts of the academy.
and Regulating Aversion is an excellent theoretical reading of contemporary dialogues on tolerance.
Let's try a simple example first.
If I wanted to convince you of the validity of a universal wealth tax, I would recommend [Thomas Pinketty's (that's pronounced Thom-ah) excellent book, Capital in the 21st Century] (http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B00I2WNYJW?btkr=1), of which I'm sure you've heard. It is a huge achievement because Pinketty collected an incredibly large and detailed dataset on international wealth inequality, which is a task requiring a lot of planning, expertise, patience, and funding. His dataset shows I think definitively that the way we currently distribute wealth is fundamentally flawed (not necessarily because of the theory, mind, but because of the various transaction costs and market failures that either theory or policy fails to account for), and will hurt us in the future. As such, his suggestion of a universal wealth tax, which is highly controversial, certainly has grounds for insertion into mainstream discourse, if not yet or ever grounds for implementation. To reiterate: is the universal wealth tax a valid policy that is valid for real consideration? Absolutely. Is it valid in the sense that it is practicable? Probably not. Is it valid in the sense that it will accurately correct the system? Probably not.
If you're still with me, let's try a harder example. If I wanted to convince you of the validity of gender feminism, I would point you towards [Judith Butler's Gender Trouble] (http://www.amazon.com/Gender-Trouble-Feminism-Subversion-Routledge/dp/0415389550), which is perhaps a controversial choice, since Butler is controversial and her writing is a fucking disaster of postmodern proportions, but I think it lays out both the position of gender feminists and the benefits of gender feminism in exhaustive detail. Butler starts with the assertion that both sex and gender are socially constructed categories (forgive me if my shorthand is too broad, but basically, does it matter if you are a male or a female if other people can't tell by looking at you?) and concludes that gender identity is bullshit a priori and we don't need it socially or individually. Most people don't agree with her; most feminists don't agree with her, including, in my experience, academic feminists (although [this book] (http://www.amazon.com/Who-Stole-Feminism-Women-Betrayed/dp/0684801566/ref=sr_1_1?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1414605464&sr=1-1&keywords=who+stole+feminism) by Christina Hoff Sommers, which I would use to convince you of the alternative view, disagrees with me re academia). But this view exists in feminism (it is found in vast quantities on /r/tumblrinaction) because, in part, Butler's logic (given her assumptions) is valid and her argument is convincing to a point. Are her assumptions valid? Who knows. We have no way of testing that except with more philosophy.
I'll finish off with an example for which I will not give you readings because you can find them in your local newspaper. Throughout the economic crisis, people have talked about the benefits of fiscal stimulus versus fiscal austerity. Logically, is either view valid? Of course; both have existed since the inception of macroeconomics. Furthermore, both have been successful in some situations and disastrous in others. Which view is valid given the situation? Depends on who you ask, and depends in a formative manner. For instance, Latvia experienced a contraction shock in 2008-2009 and the IMF were called in to design a policy program for recovery. The IMF are famous for their austerity stance, but in this situation, the Latvian government actually elected to fiscally contract more than the IMF thought necessary (fiscal contraction is when you increase taxes and reduce subsidies - it's political suicide and has potential to seriously harm the economy in the short term). They had the EU to answer to, and they wanted to show that they were in control of their situation and willing to enact such measures as were necessary. I've been wishy-washy in parts, but I'm pretty decided here: if you think that a politician's decision to act on the economy in a certain way is invalid because she is a politician, you are an idiot.
I can't tell you anything about astrology or shamanism because, as I've mentioned 5 times already, I am not qualified to talk about either. But validity in the social sciences and humanities is not a binary situation, and, whereas you're under no obligation to get it, you can at least be civil and shut up when you don't know what you're talking about.
To my knowledge, gender doesn't mean male and female, but masculine and feminine.
http://www.amazon.com/Gender-Trouble-Feminism-Subversion-Routledge/dp/0415389550/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1382651230&sr=8-1&keywords=gender+trouble+judith+butler
Hence, gender roles will always exist and that's not necessarily a bad thing because being masculine and feminine has traditionally been a requirement for being male or female.
If you just look at it and accept that females can be both masculine and feminine and the same for males, then there's nothing wrong with gender roles because it has nothing to do with sex (i.e. being male or female), but gender (being masculine or feminine).
edit: To clarify I'm not saying that women should be relegated to any traditional role, but that a yin-yang dichotomy will still exist of masculine and feminine gender roles and that both males and females are free to take up.