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Quote :Gender Trouble
... that gender is a choice, or that gender is a role, or that gender is a construction that one puts on, as one puts on clothes in the morning, that there is a ‘one’ who is prior to this gender, a one who goes to the wardrobe of gender and decides with deliberation which gender it will be today.
Butler suggests that gender is like a hat you can put on or take off. A guy at a football game might put on the sports guy hat and smash a beer can against his forehead to impress his friends. When that same guy meets his girl for dinner the next night, he might put on his best conscientious boyfriend hat.
Later that night, he might have dreams about sexual experiences with his frat buddies that will freak him out, even if, at core, they’re really just about wanting platonic love and acceptance. So he’ll put a bunch more adamant hats, like the jerk hat, or homophobe hat.
The point is: we have complicated, multi-dimensional lives that’re full of wildly varying daily experiences. And these different experiences and contexts come with different expectations for our behaviors. So we develop intricate hat collections.
Butler argues that we can go do what’s expected of us, based on traditional gender roles, or we can choose to perform something different. Us girls can put on jeans instead of miniskirts. Us guys can put on flip-flops and sarongs instead of suits.
Go wild, friends.