Paper Summary:

The paper looks at how Judith Butler's article "Variations on Sex and Gender: Beauvoir, Wittig and Foucault" discusses the genderization process and argues that gender is chosen. The paper explains Butler's claim that there is no necessary relationship between one's body and one's gender and women are not only their bodies. The paper also explains how Butler collapses the sex/gender distinction in order to argue that there is no sex that is not always already gender. The paper outlines Butler's responses to the viewpoints of Simone de Beauvoir, Monique Wittig and Michel Foucault.

From the Paper:

"Butler, in the first part of her article, "Gender as Choice," discusses the genderization process and Butler argues that gender is chosen. She states that "One chooses one's gender, but one does not choose it from a distance, which signals an ontological juncture between the choosing agent and the chosen gender" and that "it is the kind of choice we make and only later realize that we have made" (Butler 148). Accepting the gender is not something that happens immediately but rather one that happens in a gradual process. It is a cleverly planned and lengthy project and for the most part a secret one. Becoming a gender is a process of interpreting a cultural reality loaded with authorization and taboos. Choosing a gender, therefore, is interpreting the already existent gender customs, thus reproducing and systematizing these customs once more."

Sample of Sources Used:

• Butler, Judith. "Variations on Sex and Gender: Beauvoir, Wittig and Foucault" Seyla Benhabib and Drucilla Cornell, eds Feminism as Critique (1987), reprinted in Modern Literary Theory. Philip Rice, Patricia Waugh (eds), 1996.
• http://www.biographybase.com/biography/Butler_Judith.html
• http://www.newstatesman.com/2009/08/media-death-frames-war-obama

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