Junru Zhou

Dr. McWhorter
WGSS 200, Spring 2019
March 6, 2019

Midterm Essays

1. How does Butler’s understanding of sex and gender differ from Rubin’s? In order to answer
this question, you will need to explain how Rubin understands sex and gender—using citations
from the text—and Butler’s reasons for disagreeing with Rubin and her alternative
understanding—again using citations from the text. Explain their differing positions thoroughly
before you explain exactly how the two views diverge. Finally, which of the two views do you
believe is better—more consistent with facts, more logically coherent, etc.? Why?

What is sex? What is gender? What is the difference between sex and gender? These

three questions are probably the most essential questions to any feminists in the world. This

essay will analyze how two internationally celebrated gender theorists, Gayle Rubin and Judith

Butler, approach to sex and gender, as well as their disagreements.

“Sex is sex, but what counts as sex [gender] is equally culturally determined and

obtained” (Rubin 1975,165). In the article The Traffic in Women: Notes on the “Political

Economy” of Sex, Gayle Rubin states that sex is a congenital given — people are born to be

either biologically male or biologically female. This immutable, compulsive binary system is

defined as sex. Gender, on the other hand, is socially constructed. Unlike biological sex which

can be primarily determined by the presence or the absence of sexual genitals, gender as well as

the constitutions of gender differ in different societies according to their respective cultures.

Gender, therefore, is a conventional manner by which people utilize in order to fulfill the

requirements of their social roles. This further indicates that each society, despite cultural

diversity and value orientation, would inevitably possess a system that standardizes and regulates
people’s behaviors (Rubin 1975, 165). Rubin refers to such system as “sex/gender system” —

“the set of arrangements by which a society transforms biological sexuality into products of

human activity, and in which these transformed sexual needs are satisfied” (Rubin 1975, 159).

She also argues that it is the sex/gender system that transforms one’s biological sex into socially

constructed gender.

To articulate the sex/gender system, Rubin analyzes The Elementary Structure in which

the French anthropologist Lévi-Strauss proposes the idea of kinship system, a relatively more

observable system and an empirical form of the sex/gender system (Rubin 1975, 169). The

essence of kinship systems, according to Rubin, “[lies] in an exchange of women between men,”

and a more prevalent name for this exchange is called heterosexual marriage (Rubin 1975, 174).

During the process of exchanging, women are objectified into “gifts” or “conduit of a

relationship rather than a partner to it” (Rubin 1975, 174). Three major factors -- incest taboo,

obligatory heteosexuality, and an asymmetric division of the sexes -- guarantee not only the

continuous operation of kinship systems but also the steady regime of patriarchy. Therefore, both

sex/gender systems and kinship systems are not egalitarian but oppressive, especially toward

those whose biological sex is female. Rubin then shifts her attention from the gender oppression

to its prerequisite. Utilizing Freud’s Oedipus Hex, Rubin interprets the majority of human

societies as male-genital centred, and the absence of phallus compels female to have “a feeling of

inferiority of their genitals” (Rubin 1975, 194). Profoundly cultivated in both sexes’ mind, this

phallus culture establishes a hierarchical arrangement of sex and rationalizes the gender

inequality in the sex/gender systems.

arguments regarding sex and gender, which is that sex is biologically given and neutral while

gender is socially constructed and oppressive.

Judith Butler, however, understands sex and gender from a different perspective. In her

book Gender Trouble, Butler emphasizes that sex and gender cannot be separated. In fact, both

sex and gender are socially constructed:

Whatever biological intractability sex appears to have, gender is culturally

constructed: hence, gender is neither the casual result of sex nor as seemingly

fixed as sex. The unity of the subject is thus already potentially contested by the

distinction that permits of gender as a multiple interpretation of sex (Butler 2006,

8).

From this excerpt it is evident that Butler regards sex and gender as two inner-related and

parallel entities -- gender is an interpretation of sex, and sex is an interpretation of gender. After

claiming there is no need to distinguish sex and gender in Chapter I, she then devotes full

concentrations on what constitutes gender for the rest of her writing. For Butler, gender is a

series of social signals. “Gender does not denote a substantive being, but a relative point of

convergence among culturally and historically specific sets of relations” (Butler 2006, 14). In

other words, gender only occurs when one interacts with another, and reciprocally speaking,

gender would lose its significance if there is no acts. Thus, Butler proclaims one of the most

crucial points in Gender Trouble, which is gender is performative.

Each performance requires a location, and for gender, its performance takes place on

human body. In this case, body functions not only as a stage, but also as a boundary that
segments space into two distinctive sections -- one within the body, and the other outside of the

body. Butler defines such segmentation as a mere illusion, indicating that the performance

whose audience is the outer society might potentially diverge from one’s inner reality.

The incoherence between the one’s social image and the true self, Butler argues, is caused by the

fact that “gender is a performance with clearly punitive consequences” (Butler 2006. 190). To

escape the penalty, people are compelled to learn how to perform gender properly. As absorbing

these gender knowledges, people are gradually accustomed to certain behavior, which explains

how gender transforms from a performance to a naturalized performance. The process of

naturalization, therefore, can also be described as the process of genderization. This is why

Butler agrees with Beauvoir on the point of which “one is not born a woman, but, rather,

becomes one” (Beauvoir, quoted by Butler, 2006, 11)

After analyzing Rubin’s and Butler’s understandings of sex and gender, it is not

imperceptible that there are two major disagreements: 1) Butler disagrees with Rubin on which

sex is congenitally determined, either male or female; Butler believes that “sex itself is a

gendered category” (Butler 2006, 10). 2) Butler also disagrees with Rubin’s expressiveness of

gender; she suggests that gender is performative and has no correlation with the matter of

substance.

First, the disagreement with sex. Evidently, both Rubin and Butler agree that gender is

socially constructed. Nonetheless, Butler takes one step forward and questions: why is gender,

generally speaking, always constructed into two forms -- such as men and women, masculinity

and femininity -- that seemingly correspond to Rubin’s biologically given sex? If Rubin proposes

that the socially constructed genders are unthoughtful generalizations of all human behaviors and

responsibilities, then Butler wonders if“the sex/gender distinction and the category of sex itself
appear to presuppose a generalization ‘the body’ that preexists the acquisition of its sexed

significance” (Butler 2006, 175). Obviously, Butler considers Rubin’s biological given sex as

another fashion of generalizing human body, and she further believes that:

If ‘the body is a situation,’ … there is no recourse to a body that has not always

already been interpreted by cultural meanings; hence, sex could not qualify as a

prediscursive anatomical facticity. Indeed, sex, by definition, will be shown to

have been gender all alon (Butler 2006, 11).

This question guides the discussion back to the Butler’s understanding of sex: it is unnecessary

to analyze sex, since “sex itself is a gendered category” (Butler 2006, 10).

The second disagreement is about whether gender is expressive or performative. In

Rubin’s article, she deems gender as socially constructed roles that penetrate into people’s

identity. Utilizing Freud’s Oedipus Hex, Rubin conveys that as people grow up, they would be

persuaded by sex/gender systems, psychologically accept sex/gender systems, and become

genderdized comprehensively. After finished with this fundamental transformation, gender is no

longer a role but a subsistent substance embedded in one’s identity. Since then, gender becomes

expressive. However, Butler attacks on the idea of “Metaphysics of Substance.” She argues that

the word ‘expressive’ implies that gender is something true and real to people, whereas examples

such as drag performance and parodies demonstrate that gender is merely a performing style

taken place on body and skin. Except for the person himself/herself/themselves, the only one

who is able to access into the inner space, no one could possibly claim that this person is

psychologically accepted sex/gender systems, or verify whether his/her/their so-called

‘gendered’ behaviors are performances or not. Therefore, the performativity is the maximum

limit to which an outsider could approach.

of drag performance:

The performance of drag plays upon the distinction between the anatomy of the

performer and the gender that is being performed. But we are actually in the

presence of three contingent dimensions of significant corporeality: anatomical

sex, gender identity, and gender performance (Butler 2006, 187).

This excerpt points out that the sexuality is consisted of three parts: biological sex, individual

understanding of gender, and gender one decides to perform. The three-dimensional corporeality

not only includes Butler’s performativity of gender, but also slightly agrees with Rubin’s

biological determinism. With regards to logical coherence, I would prefer Rubin’s writing. She

conducts a strong reasoning, which starts with Marx and the social phenomena of gender

oppressions, then moves onto Lévi-Strauss to explain why sex/gender system generates gender

oppression, and finally lands in Freud’s theory regarding how individuals compromise and

accept the idea of gender. I enjoyed reading Rubin’s deduction that allows me to see through the

appearance to perceive the essence. However, it is fairly difficult to precisely consider whether I

prefer Rubin or Butler. Their theories, arguments, logics, and evidences are well-organized and

persuasive, which is also why we are reading both of their works in Introduction to Women,

Gender, and Sexuality Studies.

Work Cited:

Butler, Judith. Gender Trouble. New York: Routledge Classics, 2006.

New York, New York: Monthly Review Press, 1975.

2. According to the Introduction to Beauvoir’s Second Sex, women don’t resist their own
subjugation (and perhaps even embrace it) for at least three types of reason. Explain those
reasons, citing relevant passages to support your interpretation. How are those reasons like or
unlike the reasons some of the authors in This Bridge Called My Back offer for why members of
oppressed racial, ethnic, and sexual groups accept their oppression? Draw on at least three of the
essays in Bridge in your analysis, citing relevant passages. How can people overcome these
barriers to liberation? Use any of our texts to support your view.

In The Second Sex, Simone de Beauvoir incisively points out three major reasons why

women do not resist, and what’s worst, even embrace, their own subjugation: : first,

marginalized people (for example, women) have the tendency to marginalize each other (for

example, colored women); second, oppressors (men) in a society manage to psychologically

(women) are satisfied from the oppression upon themselves. The inconceivable attitude of these

women by which Beauvoir describes in the book is not accidental. In fact, such attitude and

reasons can also be discovered as encountering other social injustices, such as racism, classism,

homophobia, etc.

The first reason Beauvoir suggests is “[the lacks] of the concrete means to organize

themselves[women] into a unit that could posit itself in opposition [to men]” (Beauvoir 2011, 8).

Women, or generally speaking, people being oppressed, have never unite as a group, and

according to Beauvoir, the primary cause of that is the deficiency of mutual understanding and

congenial goals. Instead of recognizing each other’s struggle, the oppressed, marginalized people

further oppress and marginalize each other. Such useless and pathetic hatred does nothing but

establishes a psychological “tie that binds [them] to [their] oppressors,” enhances the sense of

‘Otherness,’ and escalates the already severe situation (Beauvoir 2011, 9).

The passage La Prieta in the book This Bridge Called My Back illustrates a similar

encounter:

In the streets of this gay mecca, San Francisco, a Black man at a bus stop yells,

“Hey Faggots, come suck my cock.” Randy yells back, “You goddamn niggar, I

worked in the Civil Rights movement ten years so you could call me names.”

Guilt gagging in his throat with the word, nigger… a white woman waiting for the

J-Church streetcar sees Randy and David kissing and says, “You should be

ashamed of yourselves. Two grown men -- disgusting.”

work. “Gay boys, faggots,” they yelled throwing a beer bottle… Randy pounding

on my door one corner of his mouth bleeding, his glasses broken, blind without

them, he crying, “I’m going to kill him, I’m going to kill the son of a bitch”

(Anzaldúa 2015, 205).

Black men discriminating gays, white men discriminating black men, women discriminating

gays, Latino men discriminating gays, white men discriminating Latinos… Not only “the

violence against us,” but most dreadfully, “the violence within us[the oppressed people]” are

what transform the oppressed people into oppressors, segregate marginalized people, and

eventually compel them to subjugate (Anzaldúa 2015, 205).

The second reason Beauvoir provides is “the necessity to link with men” (Beauvoir

2011, 8). From her point of view, women become dependent on men due to certain biological

needs, such as sex and posterity. Their unrestrainable needs can and can only be satisfied with

the help of men (if we are talking about a gender-binary, heterosexual society), which inevitably

forms a ‘master-slave relation,’ a non-reciprocal relation that only stresses subordination. Such

relation magnifies the dependence of the oppressed on the oppressor while fail to remind the

oppressors their dependence on the oppressed. In other words, the oppressed people whose

endeavors are rationalized and normalized gradually become unaware of their own values, and

their unawareness creates an illusion -- they cannot survive without the oppressors. -- which is

absolutely absurd.

Unfortunately, the second reason can traced in This Bridge Called My Back as well. In

Andrea Canaan’s passage Brownness, she mentions that although both white people and Latinos

are indispensable elements that integrate the constitution of society, “brownness was always
compared to whiteness in terms that were ultimately degrading for brownness” (Canaan 2015,

232). Latinos, in this case, are “lazy, shiftless, poor, nonhuman, dirty, abusive, ignorant,

uncultured, uneducated,” and their aspirations -- being diligent, competent, rich, civilized, clean,

generous, smart, cultured, and educated -- thus lie upon white people who claim to possess all

these respectable characteristics (Canaan 2015, 232). The only vehicle Latinos have access to in

order to achieve their goals is white people, which automatically places the oppressed people in

great demands of the oppressors’ assistance as well as elevates the role of oppressor from a

participant of this relation to an irreplaceable figure. Therefore, it is not necessity at all to resist.

However, what’s worth considering is that who initiates this master-slave relation, who defines

which side is more dependent on the other through devaluation, and who maintains the operation

of this inegalitarian relation.

Last but not the least, Beauvoir suggests that the oppressed people “derive satisfaction

from her role as Others” (Beauvoir 2011, 8). For women who lived in Beauvoir’s life period or

before, refusing complicity with man would mean renouncing all the advantages an alliance with

the superior caste confers on them (Beauvoir 2011, 10). If to resist means to undertake

uncertainty, responsibility, and toughness, then it seems plausible for women to accept the

oppression by positioning themselves on the same side as men.

Pat Parker expresses similar ideas in Revolution: It’s Not Neat or Pretty or Quick.

“They[some women with racism and classism] use their skills gained through their privilege to

lead the movement into at first reformist and now counterrevolutionary bullshit” (Parker 2015,

241). Here Parker raises the question: why do people rebel? People rebel in order to strive for or

regain their rights. It can also be interpreted as, people rebel for themselves. This ego-centric

rebellion would terminate unsurprisingly at the moment when the demands of oppressed people
are guaranteed, regardless the situations of other people from the oppressed groups. So then on,

they are liberated from the uncertainty and tough life. These satisfied traitors (maybe this word is

too harsh) would then become impediments to further revolutions, and it is highly possible that

they would receive compliments from the oppressors by being moderate, reasonable, and less

greedy. In this case, why would they even bother to resist? Nonetheless, satisfaction did not,

does not, and will not accomplish anything but reinforces the privileges and power of the

oppressors by allowing they to become the only judge of success, integrity, and personal value.

After analyzing the three major reasons of why not only women, but also the oppressed

groups in general, do not resist their own subjugation, we should ask the next question -- How

can people overcome these barriers to liberation? From my perspective, I deeply resonate with

one sentence in La Prieta, “What about what I do not identify as” (Anzaldúa 2015, 206). I

believe that this question is capable of re-clarifying the missions of rebellion, ensuring the values

of the oppressed people, and ultimately unifying all the ‘Otherness.’

Work Cited:

Anzaldúa, Gloria, 2015. “La Prieta.” In “This Bridge Called My Back: Writings by
Radical Women of Color,” edited by Cherríe Moraga, and Gloria Anzaldúa, 198-209.
Albany: State University of New York Press.

Beauvoir, Simone de. 2011. The Second Sex. Translated by Constance Borde and Sheila
Malovany-Chevallier. 1st ed. New York: Vintage Books.
Canna, Andrea, 2015. “Brownness.” In “This Bridge Called My Back: Writings by Radical
Women of Color,” edited by Cherrié Moraga, and Gloria Anzaldúa, 232-237. Albany:
State University of New York Press.

Moraga, Cherrié , and Gloria Anzaldúa , eds. 2015. This Bridge Called My Back: Writings by
Radical Women of Color. 4th ed. Albany: State University of New York Press.

Parker, Pat, 2015. “Revolution.” In “This Bridge Called My Back: Writings by Radical
Women of Color,” edited by Cherrié Moraga, and Gloria Anzaldúa, 238-242. Albany:
State University of New York Press.