Analysis Of Judith Butler's Woman, Nature, Product, Style

Heinämaa’s formulation of what a woman is cannot be properly understood until the ideas that makes up its groundwork are understood. The first idea is that the normative way of thinking about sex being determined by biological factors alone is unfounded because “…the studies pertaining to the relationships between genes, hormones, and anatomy only prove correlations, not causal links,” (Heinämaa 298). She then explains the implications of this by saying, “The evidence allows for the presumption that environmental factors produce different experiences which, in turn, have an effect on hormonal functions and thus also indirectly on other organic features,” (Heinämaa 298). The second idea is Beauvoir’s realization that the problem of gender and
Before I talk about these specific points of critique, I will explain Butler’s formulation. It seems to me that for Butler, gender, sexuality, and even sex, are sets of culturally prescribed actions performed until they become habitual. She explains that gender “is in no way a stable identity or locus of agency from which various acts proceed; rather, it is an identity instituted through a stylized repetition of acts,” (Butler 97). These acts form the identity of an agent, but also the identity itself as an illusory object, (Butler 98). The acts that help to form this identity have a cultural basis which is aimed at the perpetuation of said culture and are enforced with the threat of punishment, (Butler 99). This conception of gender leads to “…a sedimentation of gender norms that produces the peculiar phenomenon of a natural sex, or a real woman…” which, “produced a set of corporeal styles which, in reified form, appear as the natural configuration of bodies into sexes which exist in binary relation to one another,” (Butler 101). Butler argues that gender and sexuality, especially heterosexuality, are intertwined and “compulsory heterosexuality” is perpetuated through the ideas of natural sexes and binary sexuality, (Butler 101-2). Gender is not shaped solely by the actions of individuals or social forces, but rather, “the gendered body acts its part in a culturally
Two central features remain intact: the separation of the natural and the cultural and the causal explanatory framework,” (Heinämaa 298-299). Although Heinämaa cites a different text of Butler’s than the one we’ve read, evidence for the nature/culture distinction can still be found in the text we engaged with. An example that I believe the nature/culture distinction is when Butler says, “The formation of the body as a mode of dramatizing or enacting possibilities offers a way to understand how a cultural convention is embodied and enacted,” (Butler 102). In this statement an aspect of culture is something to be embodied via a part of nature, the corporeal body; “cultural convention” is treated as distinct from “the body.” In the case of the latter part of Heinämaa’s critique, Butler opening rejects that nature influences gender but in the next sentence goes on to say, “Gender is what is put on, invariably, under constraint, daily and incessantly, with anxiety and pleasure….,” (Butler 107). This seems to suggest a causal relationship in which cultural pressures are causing the body to act out gender