Imitation and gender Insubordination (Group 4)

Paragraph 1-5 Hugh Knapp

Butler begins her piece by explaining her contention with identity labels. She illustrates the complexities and the operation of power deployed through the assignment of a label. For example, she claims that the production of the lesbian label creates a “politically efficacious phantasm”. This means that there is an effective yet illusory, socially constructed mechanism of power used by regulatory regimes. She argues that the language we use to label and conceptualize homosexuality is an extension of homophobic thought. Language and label-making is used by the oppressor to trap the oppressed group. Butler seems to explain the effects of the Sapir-Whorf hypothesis meaning that the way we see and understand the world is through language. Butler continues to explain her struggle to being cast as a defender of homosexual theory. She confronts the challenge of trying to move past the colonizing discourse and stumbling blocks to resist this cage of language and understanding from the oppressor.

This section of the piece reminds me of two personal things. Firstly, I struggle with the labelling of health conditions in education with young people. Secondly, I connect and am frustrated with being a “defender” of sociology when talking to friends and family.

A young family member of mine that I am very close with has been labelled in his education system as needing extra help due to attention deficit issues. He has been tested and deemed to be labelled as “this type of student”. I see this label as an oppressive identity that I hope he does not internalize deeply. I see him as a super creative teenager that likes to play hockey and bike with friends. There are rigid labels used in the education system that might have negative repercussions if internalized deeply. This is Cooley’s approach in that he sees himself in the mirror of others that see him as this certain type of person that needs at a label at school. I hope this label proves to be positive in the school environment and allows him to succeed.

Secondly, I feel that I am often a defender of sociology. “Why do you study that?” The mere fact that I feel the need to argue and strengthen the claim for the salience of sociology, in turn, exposes its weakness. I feel that the need to strengthen something inherently shows that this something is weak. I struggle with this because I am successful yet have to be a defender of my study. It has come to the point where I don’t want to defend because I don’t feel the need to substantiate the importance of sociology because it shows that it needs argument. I am sure others in this class have felt this. How do you approach this?

Paragraph 6-9 Weijia

Judith Butler mentioned that when homosexual and bisexual people “come out ”, they can not really express themselves in public without pressure, they only come out of an old closet, and go to a new closet which produced by society. They just get into a new different area of opacity. It is a transformation between the location of opacity. The public know their self-cognition on sexual orientation but they do not know the meanings of it, they only know the descriptions without understanding. Discrimination and harm from the public make new chains for them. Just like what Butler mentioned “If I claim to be a lesbian, I “come out” only to produce a new and different “closet” ”. When homosexual and bisexual people thought when they come out, they could get into a new chainless space, actually, the wish of living under the sunshine does not accomplish, the discrimination and harm from others make the life without closet as rough as before.

This situation is related to the social status which “blame the victims”. When people got raped, some of them choose not to say it or report it to the justice system, because some people still think that been raped is a shame as the victims, it will make their body filthy and fragmentary. They are getting cheap and impure, it is hard for them to find a love in the future, because their future spouse may not accept them as a fragmentary person, just like a second-hand products. When victims tell what happened to them, some people may say that they are asking for it by wear clothes which exposed their skin or walk alone at night. Some people may think what they wear or their behavior made them saying “I want it” or deserve what happened to them. It makes people who got raped rather than suffer the pain alone rather than report it to the justice system to catch the criminals and get the justice that they need.

Paragraph 10-13 Bo Li

Judith Butler introduced a new idea of "the professionalization of gayness". I think she used this term to refer to the implicit bias and stereotyping of gay and lesbian people. I think this term describe a self-identification and self-expression process of gay and lesbian people. In order for them to "exist", they need to adapt those constituted identity categories(as "gay" and "lesbian") invented by people who does not come from the same social group (Heterosexual people) According to Butler, this professionalization process actually represent the old time explicit prohibition of gayness and lesbianism. Although gayness and lesbianism is not explicitly prohibited any more (there are exceptions), their existence are still threatened to be replaced standardized version of "gay" and "lesbian".

I think her idea could somewhat linked to the "erasure" of Indigenous identity in Canada. There is no discriminatory law to Indigenous people, however most of the time Canada tried to replace the original Indigenous identity by introducing Canadian version of Indigenous people. One of the example that I could recall is that there was an Indigenous custom performance which have been criticized a lot from the Indigenous community because none of the performers comes from Indigenous community and the performance they gave was not actually a traditional Indigenous performance.The sponsor created the performance based on their own imagination of Indigenous people. I think to some extent we could say that Indigenous identity is slowly been replaced, because the government could regulate what kind of Indigenous people they "should" be.

Paragraph 18-21 Chris Ko

In this section, Butler talks about how it is problematic to talk about whether homosexuality or heterosexuality is the copy or the origin. She goes on to say that if gay identities are not derived from straightness but that they are inverted imitations. She then says that the imitative effect of gay identities is not to copy heterosexuality, but to expose it as a panicked imitation of itself. This shows that the idea of heterosexuality “knows” that it is always at a risk becoming undone. Heterosexual norms reappear within the gay identities and she brings up a point by saying that the heterosexual norms by which gay people are oppressed is not determined by the dominant heterosexual frames.

I think we can relate this to so called gender norms in which society expects you to act a certain way. In the sense that she says to be heterosexual is to act heterosexual and that only by acting that way is to be heterosexual. Thus, we can see that to be “manly” is only to reproduce an idealized concept of what a “man” is.

Paragraph 22-25 Beverley Wong

In this section, Butler argues that gender identity is the effect of the continual repetition of certain gender behaviors rather than a preceding identity that guides these behaviors. This means that a person is not heterosexual because they are heterosexual; they are heterosexual because they continuously perform heterosexual behaviors. Moreover, Butler asserts that identity is not self-determined if it is forced to repeat itself as this implies that the identity would collapse without continuous repetition for maintenance. Butler’s theories on gender identity relates to how Harnaam Kaur’s “lady-beard” challenges the boundaries of gender models in modern society. After years of attempting to remove her beard (an effect of her polycystic ovaries), Kaur’s acceptance of her facial hair and how it defies the boundaries between femininity and masculinity has allowed her to become a fashion model, which demonstrates Butler’s point on how gender norms are subject to change as they stem from repetition, not a rigid reality.

Paragraph 26-30 (Group 13: Emma Russo)

The first paragraphs of the section Psychic Mimesis build upon the overall argument of Imitation and Gender Insubordiation in order to expose the unstable nature of sexual identity as performance, either validated or rejected by the dominant social narratives. Due to its potential of being rejected, identity as Butler talks about it has also the potential of being “subversive” (436), a form of embodied resistance against the normativity of heterosexuality. What I found to be the most striking of Butler’s points, which makes her argument so brilliantly compelling, is that she successfully dismantles the validity of oppressive normativities (such as heteropatriarchy) by showing that those stand on the same level of unsteadiness and performative being as those that are deemed as impostural imitations, and thus repressed. The very concept of “heterosexual drag” (436) is revolutionary in appealing to the individuals that feel the most comfortable and have the most privilege within the dominant narrative, and in calling for their unsettlement. If in the previous part of the text she had contested but yet defended the need for identity politics to be temporarily constructing categories in order for the oppressed to have a unified voice and rebel, this last part is the theoretical step forward that makes it impossible to politically deny the need for equality.

Thinking of recent developments in world politics that have seen populistic racism and sexism on the rise, Butler’s text is highly inspirational to those of us who want to join social movements of resistance. Now more than ever due to the circumstances, those movements often revolve around identity, forcing us to an introspective exercise that is hard to do with peace of mind when we have full awareness of the power structure that are conditioning our thinking about ourselves.

In the light of Butler’s argument, do you agree that your own positioning is an “ontological illusion” (436)? Why are we prone to feel anxiety associated to that awareness of instability, despite it being such a common, and I'd say 'natural', feature of ours? Why is self-liberation so often overwhelming to the extent of becoming problematic for some?

Paragraph 31-35 (Group 13: Shawn Sun)

Continuing her discussion about psychic identification, Butler describes gender as an illusion of our inner sex or psychic gender core through behaviours, an illusion of our inner depth and psyche. The psyche, moreover, is formed by through repetition of acts or imitation. However, it is not compulsory to have a certain sex expressed prior to the repetition; identities could be produced through continuous imitations and repetition. Therefore, heterosexuality requires compulsory performance and repetition to maintain the very categories of sexual identity or gender which is created by repetition.

We can relate this to Elbe in the movie "the Danish Girl" - for long he lived with his biological male body until one day the female psyche woke up in his body when he was modelling for his wife's painting. Elbe then identified herself as a female through constant repetition of imitation, she wore female clothes and make-up, spoke and behaved just like all the females till she had the transgender surgery. Contrast to Elbe in the movie, some people might identify themselves as males and act as males through daily imitation and repetition while living in their female body. In both cases, people's identity is an illusion of their "inner identification" and their psyche, and they maintain their very identifications through repetition of imitation or behaviours.

Comment: Diana Choi

I believe that transgender people encounter challenges through the action of policing within public spaces (e.g. bathrooms) in order to exclude them from participating in our society. People who have gender ambiguous bodies encounter discrimination in public spaces by people who seem to “fit” into gender binary system. Thus, public spaces like bathrooms are where gender gets “tested” and “recreate” gendered bodies to preserve the sexed regimes of power. Especially for transgendered women who portray their remaining masculinity traits within their physical appearances are considered perverted for intruding female’s bathrooms and abused and policed out of the public space. This is problematic as the more people repress alternative gender identities through the action of policing, the less these individuals are seen, thus people are going to take less consideration about them and keep marginalize them from our society.