Gender Trouble By Judith Butler

In her book Gender Trouble, Judith Butler suggests that all gender is a performance, learned and then repeated to an societal audience. From this performance we can draw a conclusion that gender is not a binary, such as male/female sex is a binary,but more of a spectrum with many different genders somewhere along the sliding scale. Male and female gender roles and expectations would only book end the scale, and each person would fall somewhere along the spectrum of gender, based on their individuality.

"If sex does not limit gender, then perhaps there are genders, ways of culturally interpreting the sexed body that are in no way restricted by the apparent duality of sex. Consider the further consequence that if gender is something that one becomes—but can never be—then gender is itself a kind of becoming or activity, and that gender ought not to be conceived as a noun or a substantial thing or a static cultural marker, but rather as an incessant and repeated action of some sort. If gender is not tied to sex, either causally or expressively, then gender is a kind of action that can potentially proliferate beyond the binary limits imposed by the apparent binary of sex" (112).

This idea of performative gender along a non-binary spectrum is the basis of my media project. It seems that every work that we have looked at challenges this binary, as we see characters search for their identity along this performative gender spectrum.

As a result, I've created a graphic representation of this gender/identity spectrum idea. I've plotted the characters I've discussed in this project along it's axis, to show a visual representation of how they might align against this concept.

Butler, Judith. Gender Trouble Feminism and the Subversion of Identity. New York: Routledge, 1999. Print.