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Raine McLeod's Reviews > Gender Trouble: Feminism and the Subversion of Identity
Gender Trouble: Feminism and the Subversion of Identity
by
by
According to Judith Butler, feminism is the reduction of the political invisibility of women but she questions the existence of patriarchy on grounds of western appropriation of other cultures.
“What is sex, anyway? Is it natural, anatomical, chromosomal, or hormonal, and how is a feminist critic to assess the scientific discourses which establish such “facts” for us?” YES. Sex is natural, anatomical, chromosomal, and hormonal. It's also dimorphic and immutable.
In Gender Trouble, JB repeatedly and completely misinterprets de Beauvoir's writing of “one is not born, but rather becomes, a woman.” JB insists that this means that anyone can become a woman through sheer force of will, when really, what de Beauvoir is actually saying is that through the socialisation starting at birth, female humans are shackled from girlhood into womanhood.
JB basically asks since “woman” is so hard to define (it is not: adult human female. BOOM.), does it exist? Which, I mean, this is so stupid. If you're not comfortable in your body, you can't just change the words you use to define reality and then have reality change.
This book is also homophobic, throwing lesbians under the bus of gender, defining them as "not women" or "genderless" because they defy heteronormativity.
God, I have so many problems with this piece of shit.
Apart from the content, it's also just so fucking wordy. 300 4+-syllable words about a shitty fucking idea, that's so archaic as to be ridiculous (WHY ARE YOU TALKING ABOUT FREUD IN FEMINIST THEORY LIKE HE HAD A POINT? LESBIANS AREN'T WOMEN WHO WISH THEY WERE MEN.) but then the phrase "in other words" followed by something that is either a) a shitty analogy or metaphor to couch the terrible idea in reason, or b) another 30 words that are only 3+ syllables of word salad to defend the terrible idea in the same fucking way.
This book is nonsense, it summarises the ideas of a bunch of wrong people who are old and dead and wrong and looked at homosexuality as a defect, it conflates sex with gender AT ALL TIMES, it denies that women exist as a class of individual human beings, and if you want to read an interesting and intelligent book about how gender actually fucking works, read Delusions of Gender by Cordelia Fine.
UGH.
“What is sex, anyway? Is it natural, anatomical, chromosomal, or hormonal, and how is a feminist critic to assess the scientific discourses which establish such “facts” for us?” YES. Sex is natural, anatomical, chromosomal, and hormonal. It's also dimorphic and immutable.
In Gender Trouble, JB repeatedly and completely misinterprets de Beauvoir's writing of “one is not born, but rather becomes, a woman.” JB insists that this means that anyone can become a woman through sheer force of will, when really, what de Beauvoir is actually saying is that through the socialisation starting at birth, female humans are shackled from girlhood into womanhood.
JB basically asks since “woman” is so hard to define (it is not: adult human female. BOOM.), does it exist? Which, I mean, this is so stupid. If you're not comfortable in your body, you can't just change the words you use to define reality and then have reality change.
This book is also homophobic, throwing lesbians under the bus of gender, defining them as "not women" or "genderless" because they defy heteronormativity.
God, I have so many problems with this piece of shit.
Apart from the content, it's also just so fucking wordy. 300 4+-syllable words about a shitty fucking idea, that's so archaic as to be ridiculous (WHY ARE YOU TALKING ABOUT FREUD IN FEMINIST THEORY LIKE HE HAD A POINT? LESBIANS AREN'T WOMEN WHO WISH THEY WERE MEN.) but then the phrase "in other words" followed by something that is either a) a shitty analogy or metaphor to couch the terrible idea in reason, or b) another 30 words that are only 3+ syllables of word salad to defend the terrible idea in the same fucking way.
This book is nonsense, it summarises the ideas of a bunch of wrong people who are old and dead and wrong and looked at homosexuality as a defect, it conflates sex with gender AT ALL TIMES, it denies that women exist as a class of individual human beings, and if you want to read an interesting and intelligent book about how gender actually fucking works, read Delusions of Gender by Cordelia Fine.
UGH.
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Reading Progress
May 28, 2018
–
Started Reading
May 28, 2018
– Shelved
May 30, 2018
–
Finished Reading
