How Judith Butler’s Gender Trouble Challenges Gender Binary and Norms

Judith Butler is a well-renowned American philosopher and gender theorist, who fights against the very foundation that Western thought has built sex and gender around male / female and masculine / feminine. Gender Trouble dives deeply into the established gender binary and its oppressive nature, and follows ideologies put forth by both Foucalt and Lacan to deconstruct our Western understanding of gender and sexuality. Her theory explains that gender is a performance by the individual, to situate ourselves into the gender binary, as either masculine and male or feminine and female, which in turn reinforces oppressive values, and forces us to uphold the gender binary.

Butler uses 20th century French philosopher Michel Foucalt’s theories as a stepping stone in her own theory. His ideas about self-monitoring behavior tie into Jeremy Bentham’s panopticon. Bentham theorized that a prison laid out with a tower in the center of the cells gave the watchmen access to look into any person’s cell at any given time (Barker Scheele 65). This theory suggests its design would deter bad behaviors by inmates because they could know when they were being observed, and therefore wouldn’t want to be caught doing something they weren’t supposed to. Foucalt translated the theory from prison to the everyday, shifting the policing from the warden to the self (Barker Scheele 66). We never know when and by who we are being observed and judged, so to avoid criticism and ridicule, we monitor our own behavior to fit into the norms set forth by society, thus reinforcing their normality.

Butler’s theory focuses on the reinforcement of Western norms regarding gender and sexuality. We as a society are expected to fulfill these gender norms. For men, this could be to have a stable job and provide for a family, and for women it could be developing skills as a homemaker, and desire and skill in rearing children. While we have progressed from the strictness of these archaic definitions of what it means to satisfy gender expectations, Butler insists that society at large is still very much rooted in the gender binary. Though it has become more common for women to not remove their body hair, it is still scrutinized and deemed unhygienic, however normal and expected it is for men to do so. On the other hand, there has been an increase in men styling themselves in typically feminine ways, like wearing dresses or makeup. Even celebrities like Harry Styles and Jayden Smith have come under fire for dressing “like women” and failing to uphold traditional Western gender norms.

Unfortunately, rude, albeit anonymous comments aren’t the only criticisms that those who fall outside gender norms face. For many, there are more tangibly harmful, and even fatal repercussions. Trans people, and especially trans women, are being murdered for their gender expression. This violent pushback is a very real fear, not just for queer folk, but for everyone, as it acts as a subliminal warning of what could happen should we misperform our perceived gender in the world. This self-monitoring behavior stifles us, and simultaneously strengthens existing gender norms, which hurts everyone. Butler’s fight against our binary views on gender are not inherently for queer folk, because Butler argues that dividing people into categories like queer or cishet (cisgender and heterosexual) further acknowledge the difference between us, and continuing the discussion using such terms in turn allow them to control and hurt us (Barker Sheele 75). For example, oftentime the struggle for queer rights ends up benefiting those in the LGBT+ community who are already more privileged, such as cisgender white gay men, rather than those in the community who are still fighting for their lives, like trans women and queer folk in the BIPOC community. This effect is directly caused by solidifying Western gender ideals in a widespread way, forcing us to identify “masculine” or “man” and “feminine” or “female” in these binary terms, rather than stepping away from them and working outside them (Barker Scheele 75).

Butler says that continuing to use binary terms like “man” and “woman,” or “gay” and “straight,” decidedly fixes us in that binary (Barker Scheele 83). Butler argues that the most effective way to fight against the binaries existing in gender and sexuality is to acknowledge that each of these things are fluid, and work all at once. Questioning the source of where our reactions to those who step outside this binary originate is vital to expanding our own understanding and strengthening our ability to push back against existing institutional and societal structures surrounding gender and sexuality. What is so important about Butler’s theory is its immediate impact on our daily lives, affecting the way we understand ourselves and others. Not in a way that forces us to figure ourselves or others out, whether we are man or woman, gay or straight, but to truly explore what it means to be human.

Works Cited

Barker, Meg-John, and Jules Scheele. Queer: A Graphic History. Icon Books Ltd, 2016.