Judith Butler is the major theorist and the key role in promoting gender justice and feminism. Her name is always mentioned in university curriculum , especially in streams like Cultural Studies, Social Science and Gender Studies. Her book Gender Trouble: Feminism and the Subversion of Identity and Bodies That Matter: On the Discursive Limits of Sex suggested the concept of gender performativity and challenged the traditional concept of gender, and had influenced a lot of queer people.
To mention a few thoughts of her, gender is the social construct or what some people call the regulative discourse . In other words, one’s masculine gender or heterosexual desire in male bodies are actually unnatural. This is a huge fightback for the heterosexual hegemony when most of the people say homosexuality is unnatural. Gender is often a set of performative acts that are passed through generations. Butler pointed out that we should not take it for granted and neglect the wide spectrum of gender performativity. In the meantime, one should be able to be granted choices, in terms of gender performativity and sexual orientation.
Butler’s theory also influenced the world , according to Pope Benedict XVI, her work ‘on gender, sex, sexuality, queerness, feminism, bodies, political speech and ethics has changed the way scholars all over the world think, talk and write about identity, subjectivity, power and politics. It has also changed the lives of countless people whose bodies, genders, sexualities and desires have made them subject to violence, exclusion and oppression’.
Butler also contributed to the visual arts, psychoanalysis, film, literary and performance studies, making her an icon for the modern feminists.
Written by Chan Wan Yu