Five Gender
Theorists
Judith
Butler:Gender is performative.It
is a “doing” that makes gender what it claims it is.We
are not a gender, we do or perform a gender:We
make gender by repetitive action through time (what anthropologists call
‘habitus’).
Steven Smith:Communities stipulate what counts as a male or female body, what norms of character and conduct are associated with these bodies, and who is male or female
Suzanne Kessler and Wendy McKenna: Ideas about gender construct our seeing and understanding of biology rather than biology enabling our construction of ideas about gender.Biology and gender are both cultural.
1)There
are two and only two genders
2)Gender
is invariant
3)Genitals
are the essential signs of gender
4)The
male/female dichotomy is natural
5)Being masculine or feminine is natural and not a matter of choice, etc.
Oyeronke Oyewumi:Gender
for westerners (Western feminists included) is based on a Western biological
determinism, a Western way of thinking about bodies as being superior to
other bodies based on favored parts (men vs. women; whites vs. blacks,
etc.).
Transsexual:a person who identifies with the sex other than that assigned to him or her at birth.
Transvestite:Clinically, this is defined as a form of fetishism typified by periodic cross-dressing.Anthropologically, the term refers to a person who dresses in clothing appropriate to the opposite sex, without any psychological or sexual orientation implied.
Transgender:This
is the broadest term, and refers to at least two things:
1)It
refers to a movement in the West which is dedicated to going beyond the
traditional Western assignment of two sexes/two genders; and
2)It
refers to an anthropological literature documenting cross-cultural alternatives
to a fixed, binary system of sex and gender identity.
Transgender Case Studies Discussed in Lecture
North America:Two-Spirit (Navajo and Mojave)
Oman (Saudi Arabia):Xanith (han.eeth)
Northern India:Hijra (topic of Nanda’s book)
Tahiti (Polynesia): Mahu
Tonga (Polynesia): Fakaleiti
Philippines:Bantut
1)Does
it represent a true alternative, resulting in a multi-gender system?
2)Does
it represent a form of gender crossing that actually supports a
binary sex/gender system? or
3)Does
it represent a liminal category that has no impact on the binary system?