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Quote :Gender Trouble: Feminism and the Subversion of Identity
Is there a political shape to "women," as it were, that precedes and prefigures the political elaboration of their interests and epistemic point of view? How is that identity shaped, and is it a political shaping that takes the very morphology of the sexed body as the ground, surface, or site of cultural inscription? What circumscribes that site as "the female body"? Is "the body" or "the sexed body" the firm foundation on which gender and systems of compulsory sexuality operate?
What comes first, the lady or her egg? But seriously, this is about the concept of what it means to be "a woman"—eggs and other biological factors aside, Butler's saying that it's just as much a matter of what culture constructs as making up a woman—high heels, scared of mice, better at multi-tasking—and women often play into those stereotypes even if they don't really think mice are that scary (of course, unless they've been reading Baudrillard).
With that whole idea that gender is constructed, Butler asks what that's got to say about the fight for "women's" interests. Was there already something political about the concept of "womanhood"? Where does identity come from? Who influences its shape? Is the human body something natural that we can take for granted, or is it shaped by culture? And that's where the mice come in.
Butler's argument in Gender Trouble that gender isn't something that just comes naturally, but gets performed daily (eek!), is seriously mind-blowing. Her theories made a whole generation of readers sit up and take notice of all the work that goes into telling the difference between "male" and "female"—difference that isn't natural at all, but is created by discourse and culture!