Sex and Gender

Simone De Beauvoir
INTRODUCTION TO THE SECOND SEX

I hesitated a long
time before writing
a book on woman.

If her functioning as a female is not enough to

define woman, if we decline also to explain her
through the eternal feminine, and if nevertheless
we admit, provisionally, that women do exist, then
we must face the question: what is a woman? . . . The
fact that I ask it is in itself significant. A man would
never get the notion of writing a book on the peculiar
situation of the human male. But if I wish to define
myself, I must first of all say, I am a woman; on
this truth must be based all further discussion.

The category of the Other is as primordial as

consciousness itself.
in consciousness itself a fundamental hostility to
every other consciousness; the subject can be posed
only in being opposed -- he sets himself up as the
essential, as opposed to the other, the inessential, the
object

Judith Bulter
PERFORMATIVE ACTS AND GENDER
CONSTITUTION: AN ESSAY IN
PHENOMENOLOGY AND FEMINIST
THEORY

gender identity is a
performative
accomplishment
compelled by social
sanction and taboo

In [acts] very character

as performative resides
the possibility of
contesting [their] reified
status

the possibilities of gender necessarily

constrained by available historical conventions
Performative acts which construct gender may
appear ostensibly as a personal choice, but
always work within the existing framework of
cultural sanctions and proscriptions, of a shared
social structure shared social structure

bodies become
gendered through a
legacy of sedimented
acts which are reified
over time

Having established gender as what is

put on, invariably, under constraint,
daily and incessantly, with anxiety and
pleasure argues for establishing a
genealogy of gender which relies on a
phenomenological understanding of
acts as socially shared and historically
constituted.

She acknowledges that while the political

advancement of women is still important
work, we ought take care not to
unwittingly reify the binary restriction
of gender and in doing so relinquish
power to expand the cultural field body
of gender through subversive
performative acts.

bell hooks
RECONSTRUCTING BLACK MASCULINITY

she illustrates the fact that dichotomous gender norms

are not universal by examining the ways specific

contemporary norms of black masculinity have been
shaped by racism, capitalism, sexism, and hegemonic
white cultural standards.
Central to her discussion is a description of the shift
from a nineteenth-century emphasis on patriarchal
status, characterized by black mens roles as providers
and protectors, to current hypermasculine models of
black manhood, marked in U.S. pop culture by
obsessions with violence and sexual conquest.

Hooks traces stereotypes of black masculinity, and

black feminist responses to them, in black power

movement discourses, black nationalist ideologies, and
the artistic work of Eddie Murphy and Spike Lee, the
last of which she analyzes in her own inimitable style.
Hooks shows how particular performances of black
manhood erode solidarity between black women and
men, weaken black communities, and prevent then
development of creative strategies for confronting and
resisting white supremacy, internalized sexism, and
homophobia.

Anne Fausto-Sterling
SHOULD THERE BE ONLY TWO SEXES?

When we look through the lenses of medicine and

human experience, we find a variety of body types

rather than a strict bifurcation between women
and men. To look only for similarities in womens
lives or experiences, at the expense of noticing
differences, is to ignore the ways categories of sex
and gender are shaped by racism, colonialism,
class, etc., and how privileged women benefit from
certain versions of femininity.

What it means to be a woman means different

things in different communities, and women are

therefore subject to different roles and regulations.
Example: Western female sexuality has historically been
described as innocent or chaste, while women of color are
characterized as having voracious sexual appetites.
some lesbians would say they are not women, while
others would think it is obvious that they are women.