Feminism: A Critical Conversation

In “Bodies that Matter,” Judith Butler argues that gender is a performance. She discusses the concept of drag and how it hyperbolizes the signifiers of gender because they depend on categories of masculine and feminine. By discussing drag, Butler brings attention to the instability of gender roles because drag is an explicit, self-conscious performance of masculinity or femininity.

Men and women perform the heterosexual “norms” expected of them. She explores the reason behind these expectations as a connection between gender and sexuality. Butler explains that sexuality is “regulated” in order to “police” and “shame” gender. There is a lack of support of sexual difference, as it is attributed as a gender difference, not sexual difference, in the form of homophobia. Gay men are called “feminine” and lesbians deemed “masculine.”

In “Sorties,” Helene Cixous explains that differences in the norms of sexuality are only tolerated if they are closeted or expressed. She believes that people repress homosexuality, but it comes out in “various signs” that relate to the individual. She explores the idea of bisexuality being recognition of plurality and the masculine and feminine in one subject.

While Butler is more concerned with the social/cultural construction of gender, Cixous is concerned with hierarchical values in regard to language. She says the binary is created by language and always have the threat of violence in them because they are based on power. Cixous’s argument compares the activity/passivity binary to the man/woman binary, and says that the woman is either passive or does not exist when it comes to roles in relationships; everything always relates back to the figure of the father.

Butler discusses the hierarchal struggle between heterosexual/homosexual, instead of man/woman. She believes that the problem is not solely due to subversion, but sees it as a “struggle.” She states that there are ways in which to deal with the imbalance of power, asking how to go about fixing the problem.

Cixous discusses Freud’s view on the difference between men and women as anatomically based. Cixous disagrees and writes that it is not the parts that matter, but the sexual desire. A woman, and others around her, does not understand where her desire exists. She writes that this is due to phallocentrism, which has no origin, but just simply has always already existed. Phallocentrism, relating to the domination of men in every discourse, is the “enemy” of all, men and women both. From it stems the subordination of women, in that if the man is privileged over the woman, he gains hierarchal power, and therefore gains control. This affects the way the system is run altogether.

In Butler's and Cixous’s writing, there exists a level of stylistic difference when regarding the writing style of each respective author. Butler, who speaks to heterosexuality as an inherent “act” performed by the individuals within hetero-normativity, displays her language as readable, conclusive and dialectic. She orchestrates her essay with an air of “performance.” It is (at times) humorous, inquisitive, and written within the constraints of common jargon. The essay itself is critical and reflexive. Butler emphasizes the role of repetition, thus also emphasizing the play on heterosexuality as a “performance.” This re-illustrates Derrida's theory of iterability (or repletion within repetition).

Cixous’s work focuses on the construct of language itself within the identity of hetero-normative/homosexual idealism. She evocates the problematic circumstances surrounding the word “feminist.” Cixous is highly inventive in her essay. Borrowing many of her ideas from Foucault, she “plays” with the language that she uses. She is intentional vague in her syntax so as to further convey the arbitrary language employed when attempting to identify sexuality.