Butler's Notion of Gender? Or General Identity?

                Our discussion of gender has lead us into discussions of identity.  Identity of the individual quickly makes the jump to existential inquiries. Once such conceptual territory is breached, we realize that so much of the world around is taken as granted. When I say “granted” I mean granted in the sense that it is indubitably true, real, concrete, unchangeable, and, in a sense, essential.  It would be clearer if I borrowed Sartre’s term “facticity.” Questions like:  Am I really a soccer player? Am I really a trumpet player? Am I really a man? Am I really the thing I take myself to be? Namely, Pierce. What does it mean to be a Pierce? We take so much to be facticity, but from my vantage point—when analysis is actually done and what it means to be is more thoroughly clarified—it seems that nearly we all we take to adhere to the realm of facticity simply should not be placed in that category.

                Butler proposes that gender is purely a performance, but a performance that gives rise to the view of itself as something essential. To what else could this idea be held up as an explanation for? Many things we know in relation to some category that may well be a socially constructed category concealed by a notion of essence.

                Another relevant idea—and I will attribute it to Sartre because I learned of it through his texts—is the idea of “setting a project for oneself.” My understanding of Sartre’s understanding of existentialism is that the existence of the human being precedes its essence. That is, the human being possesses no essence or that its essence is nothingness. The idea of “setting a project for oneself” is the idea that we are not actually anything we claim to be in the sense that some material object like an inkwell is. For example, if I claim to be a waiter, I am not actually a waiter in essence, but I am setting for myself the project of acting, behaving, and being as a waiter. I could always choose to transcend that “role” and assume another “mode” of being—mode of being in the sense described in relation the project of being a waiter.

                When I say that I am Pierce (some Identity), then, I am only setting for myself the project of being  this identity. This is an extremely interesting idea.  In the assertion, “I am Pierce,” I am implying an individuality of the self. That is, no one else can set for themselves the project of being me. Also, “I” am not a clearly defined thing. That is, my traits and attributes do change over time. Everything about myself, in some sense, is then rendered the sort of performance that also defines the constitution of myself. I am being what I am and what I am is only so by virtue of the actions that contribute to what I am. If that seems a bit confusing, I intend to claim that our identities hold a similarity to Butler’s description of gender. It seems an appropriate connection since gender is concept we use to identify ourselves and others.

Just some interesting ideas. 

In Response to Pierce's Existential Crisis

Just as a starting point, this is how I remember that part of class:

Pierce brought up the point that if we accept that gender is a social construct and begin to include myriad gender titles then so much of our daily life will be rendered incomprehensible. From my point of view, it seemed like Pierce's existential crisis was stemming from the idea that everything that our gender-related structures touch (which is a lot) might be torn down, leaving our identifiers shrunken and useless. If he was explaining it differently... whoops. This is what I took away.

Regardless, during the ensuing classroom discussion a question popped into my mind; the question seemed too broad (and possibly off-topic) to pose to the class; therefore, I will ask it here:

Do we, as humans, ever bother categorizing anything if we are not planning on or already making value judgments about the contents of those categories?

I have been considering this question mainly within the boundaries of characteristics about human beings themselves, for as Frye said in her essay on oppression,

"One is marked for application of oppressive pressures by one’s membership in some group or category. Much of one’s suffering and frustration befalls one partly or largely because one is a member of that category."

However, this idea seems to apply to almost everything in our daily lives. We sort things into groups so we can make value judgments about those groups, and vice versa. At this point, the question that immediately comes to my mind is whether or not we need those categories in order to live our lives in  a manner that is substantially efficient. My guess is that, yes, we do; however, the hierarchical structure that those judgments often seem to form, especially as the judging is related to human qualities, are what seem to be the most dangerous and objectionable offsets of this habit.

I would love to know about what any of you think about this idea- I am sure of the possibility that I may be trapped in a circle of thought that is making me incapable of thinking of exceptions to this connection between categorization and value judgment. Also, to clarify, because categorization obviously entails some sort of judgment, here I have been referring to "value judgment" as judgment focused on the aspects of some thing or quality that make them better or worse than their counterparts. Hopefully that is clear.

I'm just leftovers. Wait, what?

            Our discussion of Butler’s “Performative Acts and Gender Constitution” engendered, for me, a general confusion about the way that I ground my identity. Without grounding, the question of what is “real” within our identity reasserts itself at the forefront. Effectively what has happened is the loss of terms that we thought could help us secure a story of the self, and without these words, we lose what little grasp we had on ourselves as “self.”

              Admittedly, the presentation of the performance identity theory has weighty argumentative clout. But if what I am is either a.) what You make me, or b.) what I make myself for You, then what aspect of myself is left for simply Me? Performances require actors, but the actors are forgotten agents of the stage, and we are likewise ignored in our performances within the social theater. Performative identity takes away the agency of the character, but don’t we see agency as a particularly indelible aspect of identity when we contemplate the question “Who am I?” 

             I get that the relational capacity in which we are viewed has more impact on our behavior than we could ever possibly expound. I get that They are equally as indelible to identity as I believe agency to be, and that the performance of identity likely only ends with death. But is there a “me” in there somewhere that is just and only me? We briefly discussed that phenomenology swats away at this kind question, a question of noumena, a question of who I am as myself, because of the impracticality of exploring these kinds of questions without perceptual influence. But what if there’s another way? Maybe a phenomenal exploration can lead us to a noumena-leaning phenomena. Distinction-queer. Difference-maker confused. I could go on, but let me explain.

              There is a way in which I view myself as a person. That way is influenced by certain social factors from the get-go, but that way is essentially mine in that my view engages with my (socially-bounded) agency. In so many words, I have the tools with which to see and conceptualize myself, but my dirty-mean-creepy patriarchal uncle gave them to me. (These are my tools, there are many others like it but these tools are mine.). They are mine because of the unique way in which I received them. (Notice now that I’ve limited my essence as an agent to the narrative history of experiences I’ve had. I’m not sure I like that.)

              There is also a way in which the social-stage views me as a person. They also have a collective set of tools, determined mostly by the predominant understanding of how these tools work. They use their tools in, broadly, the same method because of social dominance.

              Both of these viewpoints, my own and the social, are adulterated by perspective. This adulteration is additive for both perspectives (imagine it like the telephone game, or like the progression in dueling carls).  Where this two viewpoints or categorizations of Me overlap, I approximate the closest thing I can get to a ‘me’ essence as described by the parameters of a conformed society (Society, man.). But where they differ, well, that’s where the magic happens.

              Inconsistency between the two conceptions describes the areas in which the actor deviates from their performative character, and that is what is left for Me. Society, (Society, man.), is the most likely to hold and maintain a pure conception of the requirements of the performer via conformation. So why is my view different, why does it differ? You rebel you. You’ve just identified your identity-critical factors. These factors are identity-critical because they are unique to you in the way you arrived, and hopefully eventually became aware of (I think this part is the most fundamental in personal identity), these differences. Your view differs because your conclusion did not follow from strict conformation with the methods of the whole. Your agency was directly involved in the application of the tools you were given, your agency distorted the tools via your perception of them, and your agency was engaged in the recognition of differences. Identity thus becomes a cycle of evaluation. Your personal viewpoint of yourself is suppressed by the social conception of your identity when you cease to engage your agency in acts of discernment. You most closely approximate yourself as yourself when your performance of the character-identity demonstrates blatant reflection upon how well that character is explanatory of you, or how much you think your identity approximates that of the character. 

              But still, identity is a verb. It remains an activity of the individual, and activity implies interaction, action and reaction. Agency always ends with us back upon the stage.  What’s left for the actors is the remnants of the performance that are left out from the mold of the character that the audience took away. Still, it seems pretty unfair that the answer to the question “Who am I?”, on this conception, is leftovers. 

Uncanny Valley

In our last class we talked about the uncanny valley. The uncanny valley is how when things get more and more realistic, they become creepier when we know that they are a simulation. At the bottom of the two different lines on the graph, moving and unmoving, there are corpses and zombies. Both of those are supposed to make a person feel very uncomfortable because they have an exact resemblance to the human body, while not doing what a human is supposed to do. So this has a lot to do with race and sexuality because when people see a different race or sexuality simulating another one, it makes them feel uncomfortable because we know it’s a simulation. An example of this is with the couples that changed clothes for the different pictures. In the second picture we would automatically feel a little unsettled because the couples had completely reversed normal gender clothes and we know that it is a simulation of what a normal heterosexual couple does. I had a nagging question throughout all of this talk about feeling uncomfortable with a simulation. So if it is natural to feel uncomfortable with a simulation to close to the real, then is it natural to feel uncomfortable with the transgender on the bus? I kept thinking about that, knowing the answer was no, but I couldn’t think of  why until now. The whole concept stems from our idea of what a “normal” and “real” person or couple is, and how they should act. So we wouldn’t feel uncomfortable with the transgender on the bus next to us, if we didn’t know that he was doing something different than what our accepted social constructs of what a man is supposed to wear. Because he is simulating what a “real” woman is supposed to wear, while also obviously being a simulation it makes us uncomfortable. But if we had no pre conceived notions about what a woman was supposed to look like than it wouldn’t make us feel uncomfortable.

 I think that this is easier to see and understand than the race part of the uncanny valley. I’ve never felt unsettled if somebody “simulates” to be like another race and come really close to it. I understand culturally how, like the example Dr. Johnson used about “act like us, but not too much” but I don’t think I’ve ever seen somebody be weirded out by acting too much like another race.  I guess if it came to what it was in the book that we talked about Black No More and people were switching race without a way to tell what they used to be, people would lose their ability to discriminate. I would think that society would find some other random thing to discriminate against, because I feel like people are always searching for ways to find people similar to you and make outsiders of those who aren’t.

   My high school doesn't have a football team, so our Homecomings aren't the usual American high school homecomings. We obviously don't have a Homecoming football game, so our homecoming court doesn't walk out on the field or anything like that. Instead, the court is voted on the week before, and is not announced until the Homecoming dance takes place. The court is always kept a secret until then.
    Last year, my senior year of high school, the school administration wasn't sure how to handle the court. As votes started coming in, it looked like a transgender boy, my friend Aiden, was going to win Homecoming king. Our principal called Aiden in to her office and sat him down. She told Aiden that it looked like he was going to win, but they weren't sure what to do about that. Aiden didn't understand what she meant, and neither did the rest of his friends when he told us that part of the story. What our principal meant was that if Aiden did come out to be the winner, she wasn't sure that she would announce him as our king--she would announce the runner-up and nobody would ever have to know. As she told Aiden this, she realized what she was saying and seemed to doubt herself.
   Between this day and the night of Homecoming, all we could think about was Aiden winning. The problems were; if Aiden wasn't announced as king, would it be because he actually didn't get the votes, or because the principal decided to give king to the runner up? If he did win, would it be because he actually won or because the principal felt  guilty about what she had said?
  Aiden did end up winning homecoming king, and I won queen. Our schoolmates had no problem with this whatsoever, the backlash came from adults in the community and students from other schools. People said all sorts of things like "What is it like having two queens?" or "Clare, what was it like having to dance with her in front of everyone?" We all tried not to pay any notice, but it obviously didn't sit well with Aiden.
    I think the school did the right thing letting Aiden win fair and square. Normally, the homecoming court is announced  with a picture in the city's paper. This was not done my senior year.
    I suppose the question I have for all of you is this: what would you have done as the school administration? I, as I assume many of us would, would just have announced Aiden as king if he had won and not announced him as king if he hadn't-just as you would had it been anyone else. I also would have put the Homecoming picture in the paper-just as you would had it been anyone else. I have been trying to understand why the school didn't do this for the past year. Friends of mine have told me that the school was just trying to avoid controversy, which I suppose I understand, but do not think is a good enough reason.

How I Learned to Feel Undesirable

A friend just linked me to an NPR article "How I Learned to Feel Undesirable," which I felt would be appreciated on this blog.  The article deals with an Asian man's perceptions of himself with regards to attractiveness.  It is truly a heart-breaking account.  In the contexts of race and sexuality, this pertains to our previous discussions on what (read: who) is considered "normal," how othered individuals internalize negative stereotypes, and how we live in a culture that, in light of controlled heteronormativity, promotes a necessity for exaggerated sexual dimorphisms in order to "belong" or feel attractive.  Examples of that last point include (but are not limited to) requiring females to stay skinny and unmuscular while requiring men to "bulk-up," requiring females to have long hair while men have short hair, requiring women to wear make-up while men should never do so, requiring females to shave all body hair while requiring men to be hairy, and controlling the pitch of an individual's voice as is typically associated with his/her gender.  Yes, the requirements in these examples are no longer hard and fast rules in the modern day but still are the dominant ideologies.

4 Ways to Push Back Against Your Privilege

Check out this post by Mia McKenzie at Black Girl Dangerous about ways to push back against your privilege. I thought this fit well with our discussion last week.