A couple of years ago, I wrote a blog post for Muchness and Light about how, according to Erving Goffman’s theory of dramaturgical sociology, I am really a man. Based on very basic observations of general differences in the demeanor of men of women, in how they use space and interact with other people, I tend to exhibit far more masculine characteristics.  

            According to Wikipedia:

            Goffman forms a theatrical metaphor in defining the method in which one human being presents itself to another based on cultural values, norms, and expectations.  Performances can have disruptions (actors are aware of such), but most are successful.  The goal of this presentation of self is acceptance from the audience through carefully conducted performance.  If the actor succeeds, the audience will view the actor as he or she wants to be viewed. ("Dramaturgy (sociology)" n.d.)

            Because I generally take up more space in a room, stare too long at people as I watch them move in their environment, and become stoically shy in new situations, I better fit the traits Goffman says generally define men socially.

            When I started reading Judith Butler’s essay “Performative Acts and Gender Constitution: As Essay in Phenomenology and Feminist Theory,” I was excited to see how she would apply the phenomenological theory of acts—“which seeks to explain the mundane way in which social agents constitute social reality through language, gesture, and all manner of symbolic social sign” (Butler 1997, 462)—to gender, specifically female behavior within and as a product of society. What I did not expect was to feel so thoroughly judged for identifying as a woman in any culturally-normative way.

            Like many feminist writers (and others) Butler sees how people act as an affectation of their gender. We act, dress, and behave in certain ways that are reflective of our gender, but that “stylized repetition of acts” (Butler 1997, 462) is entirely proscribed by society. We internalize the proscriptions so completely that we “come to believe and to perform in the mode of belief” and perpetuate the cycle in a “subversive repetition of that style.”

            Butler notes a common feminist assertion that biology plays little-to-no role in gender, discounting the idea that “the meaning of women’s social existence can be derived from some fact of their physiology.” (Butler 1997, 463) The body is the facilitator for acts, certainly, but its gender “is not predetermined by some interior essence.” Styles of gender behavior are contemporaneous; they are defined by their point in historical reference. However, how each person uses their body to perform acts as influenced by society differs “from one’s contemporaries and from one’s embodied predecessors and successors as well.” (Butler 1997, 464)

            I will agree that women (and men) are, in so many ways, products of their environments. We live within a cultural time, across decades that morph relatively slowly into each other, both because of, and simply reflective of, our own human nature. How humans express ourselves is as influenced by the technology available during our limited lifetime as it is by our language, which is also exceedingly temporal. But in order to live our lives—to travel, to communicate, to act—we do so necessarily within the constraints of that lifetime. Practically speaking, we live in the here and now.

            Butler takes on Simone de Beauvoir’s claims that “’woman’ is a historical idea and not a natural fact,” allowing that “to be a woman is to have become a woman, to compel the body to conform to an historical idea of ‘woman’.” Further, Butler sees this as a survival strategy with “clearly punitive consequences,” ignoring the practicality of temporal and physical constraints that have nothing to do with societal construct.

            In response, Butler says, “The authors of gender become entranced by their own fictions whereby the construction compels one’s belief in its necessity and naturalness.” (Butler 1997, 465) This critique seems to negate the one thing men and woman have in common—their humanity. Where is the choice, the free will, the thought, and the individuality that make both men and woman people, far beyond their biological makeup? If we “perform” in ways that we believe to be true to our inner selves, is it fictitious? Or do we incorporate those true opinions in a mindful way, thereby making them a Fact of My Life?

            Butler extrapolates on the feminist idea that “the personal is political,” whereby subjective experience and political arrangement influence one another. Recognition of personal experience (which she specifically notes as pain, silence, anger, or perception) “delimits in me a shared cultural situation which in turn enables and empowers me in certain unanticipated ways.”

            We are, indeed, naturally social creatures—though I’m sure my assertion of biological influence of any kind would be criticized as fallaciously presumptive. Sharing our experience helps to establish relationship of various forms between human beings, furthering the social structure that helps a sexually-reproductive and physically-vulnerable species to survive.

            But each of those experiences is ours alone, even in some ways when experienced with other people, and Butler agrees that it is clearly not a “fully individual matter.” (Butler 1997, 468) She seems to assert that any political benefit to women (as an historically-oppressed social class) far outweighs the personal benefit any woman gains from social growth. Further, women (and presumably men, though that is never addressed) should abandon “punitively regulated cultural fictions,” (Butler 1997, 465) which seem to be any expression of gender that can be remotely attributed to social construct—which all gender characteristics are since there is no biological basis for gender.

            Can there be no expression of gender that is not an indictment of human society, and thereby the genetically social creatures who formed the society based on its place in human history?

           Butler offers that it is impossible to distinguish sex from gender as long as “gender is the cultural significance that the sexed body assumes.” (Butler 1997, 466) If the goal of Butler and other feminists is to fully separate gender and sex, to eradicate social constructs that influence expression of gender, it would seem that the only way to make men and women equal is to make them the same, to have everyone identify as androgynous.

           Butler acknowledges that gender expression is a combination of individual choice within the constraints of culture. (Butler 1997, 468) However, she seems to discount the role of personal choice and mindfulness in self-expression.

Similar to Goffman’s theory of dramaturgy, she notes that people may present like actors on a stage, but she argues that an actual play necessitates a willing suspension of disbelief in its audience that is not generally present in day-to-day life. When the demarcation between play and reality is eliminated, “the act is not contrasted with the real, but constitutes a reality that is in some sense new, a modality of gender that cannot readily be assimilated into the preexisting categories that regulate gender reality.” (Butler 1997, 469)

           “Gender reality is performative which means, quite simply, that it is real only to the extent that it is performed.”

           In direct opposition to Goffman, Butler suggests that the self “is not only irretrievably ‘outside,’ constituted in social discourse, but that the ascription of interiority is itself a publicly regulated and sanctioned form of essence fabrication.” (Butler 1997, 470) But because we live in a world that does have the constraints of time and society and language, we accept the idea that we are real and distinct and different, that we are our selves.

           Butler says that an ideal world is one in which “acts, gestures, the visual body, the clothed body, the various physical attributes usually associated with gender, express nothing.” (Butler 1997, 472) The “diverse experiences of women” are valuable insofar as they bolster and improve the political class of woman as a whole, regardless of the individuals who perform the acts necessary to facilitate those experiences.

           Her assertion reduces the individual to insignificance, as a thoughtless machine that can either perform as a mindless puppet of society, or it can be “enlightened” and assimilated into equality with all other enlightened creatures, like an androgynous Agent Smith from the Matrix series of films.

           There is no room in Butler’s world for individuality or self-thought or self-expression that doesn’t perpetuate her chosen personal-political cycle. My experience is my experience, and I choose to share it or not as I will, mindful and cognizant of the fact that I am constantly establishing relationships with other individuals.

           I am not just my gender. I am a whole person, but I am also defined by my gender and my sex in various ways. Since conception, my genetically-wired brain has been especially receptive to female androgens. My ovaries and uterus developed and have responded to both male and female hormones in varying degrees. I experienced puberty, colored by the hormonal/metabolic imbalance of Polycystic Ovary Syndrome. I gave birth to two sons, whose own hormones coursed through my body and forever altered the physiology of my brain. But now that I have chosen not to reproduce again, should my sexual identification as a woman—as an adult female—end?

           My sexuality as an expression and vehicle for my own sexual pleasure is important to me. Why does expressing my sexuality and self-perceived gender identity as a mode to achieve pleasure make me not a feminist? Why does choosing to wear mass-produced, pink, glittery heels (or comfortable loafers) mean that I am a fake, buying into social constructs to make others more comfortable?

           There is a game—an attraction, a flirt—that happens between two (or more!) people who are contemplating having sex together. Copulation, as a linguistic relative of coupling, is enjoyable and fulfilling to me—far more so than self-gratification. I don’t need a partner to achieve satisfying orgasm, but I do need a partner for social intimacy. That intimacy comes from connection, from common ground. My outward expression of what I feel on the inside is a vehicle for finding a partner who may be able to make that connection with me. It’s a quick way to assess basic compatibility that may lead to sexual gratification with the intimacy that comes through that shared connection.

           It is a confluence that is contemporaneous, both socially and individually.

           The reasons I choose to seek that connection are mine. They’ve been thoroughly explored and examined, and I have claimed my sexuality as my own. I’m on good terms with it and am very mindful of how and when and why I choose to use it.

           My reproduction is finished. I’m not conforming to a gender identity. I’m conforming to my identity.

           Choosing to examine male-derived expectations of women and finding the views I believe are also in line with my own does not mean I have relinquished my own power and thoroughly adopted the agency of men. Often in feminist writings, there seems to be no room for the idea that men can also be intuitive and articulate and thoughtful—or right. To deny that men can have opinions and views of women that are in line with women’s own views is to divisively vilify men, thereby reinforcing the idea of the traditional binary gender system Butler denounces.

           If I have chosen to assimilate certain characteristics that are identified by Butler as societally-constructed and dangerously-normative, so be it. I do so consciously and fully aware of the implications of my choice. If my chosen partner speculates based on my behavior that I am feminine (Irigaray 1977, 430), then I have expressed myself in the way I intended, which just happens to be similar to a contemporaneous definition of femininity. And contrary to what Luce Irigaray seems to assert in “This Sex Which Is Not One,” stimulation of my clitoris—whether by myself or by a partner and by anything other than my own labia—is not an “attempt to possess at long last the equivalent of the male sex organ.” (Irigaray 1977, 426) Sex with a man does not mean I am buying into historically-male stereotypes of what a woman’s sexuality should be. Feeling beautiful, whether in my own eyes or in my partner's, does not make me strictly an object to be manipulated for a man’s pleasure.

           Sometimes I manipulate for my own pleasure.

Works Cited

""Dramaturgy (sociology)"." Wikipedia. n.d. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dramaturgy_%28sociology%29 (accessed January 24, 2016).

Butler, Judith. "Performative Acts and Gender Constitution: An Essay in Phenomenology and Feminist Theory"." 1997.

Irigaray, Luce. ""This Sex Which Is Not One"." 1977.