Performative Acts and Gender Constitution: An Essay in Phenomenology and Feminist Theory
In this episode I unpack Butler’s (1988) seminal publication titled “Performative acts and gender constitution: An essay in phenomenology and feminist theory,” which unpacks the notion that gender is a performative act that is socially and historically constructed.
-
welcome back to another episode of the
csk8 podcast
my name is jared o'leary each week of
this podcast alternates between
an unpacking scholarship episode where i
unpack some scholarship in relation to
cs education and an episode where i
interview a guest or multiple guests
this week's episode is an unpacking
scholarship episode where i continue a
little mini-series on gender
in particular i'm going to unpack a
paper by judith butler
titled performative acts and gender
constitution an essay in phenomenology
and feminist theory
this paper was published in the theater
journal in 1988.
fatter summarize this particular paper
into a single sentence
i would say that this seminal paper
unpacks the notion that gender is a
performative act
that is socially and historically
constructed so here's actually the final
couple of sentences in the paper itself
this is from page
about to talk about
quote gender is not passively scripted
on the body
and neither is it determined by nature
language the symbolic
or the overwhelming history of
patriarchy gender is what is put on
invariably under constraint daily and
incessantly
with anxiety and pleasure but if this
continuous act isn't mistaken for a
natural or linguistic given
power is relinquished to expand the
cultural field bodily
through subversive performances of
various kinds end quote
okay so this particular paper begins
with an introduction
that unpacks what it means to become a
woman or to become a gender
so here's a quote from page 519-520
now it's a long quote but i'm going to
kind of like rephrase it
after i i state it quote when simone de
bouvier
claims one is not born but rather
becomes a woman
she is appropriating and reinterpreting
this doctrine of constituting
acts from the phenomenological tradition
in the sense
gender is no way a stable identity or
locus of agency
from which various acts proceed rather
it is an identity
tenuously constituted in time an
identity
instituted through a stylized repetition
of acts
further gender is instituted through the
stylization of the body
and hence must be understood as the
mundane way in which bodily gestures
movements and enactments of various
kinds constitute the illusion
of an abiding gendered self this
formulation moves the conception of
gender off the ground of a substantial
model of identity to one that requires a
conception
of the constituted social temporality
significantly if gender is instituted
through
acts which are internally discontinuous
then the appearance of substance is
precisely that a constructed identity
a performative accomplishment which the
mundane social audience
including the actors themselves come to
believe and to perform in the mode of
belief
if the ground of gender identity is a
stylized repetition of acts through time
and not a seemingly seamless identity
then the possibilities of gender
transformation
are to be found in the arbitrary
relation between such acts
in the possibility of a different sort
of repeating in the breaking or
subversus repetition of that style
end quote okay so that was a long quote
but given that this
is an article written for a theater
journal talking about acting and actors
and performing think of that lens of
gender is a role or a character that you
are taking on and performing
within a play in this case this play
is in society so you are trying to
adhere to a particular role that has
been
set historically for you someone has
given you the script
and you are having to learn how to act
out that script so it is socially
constructed
and historically constructed through
those who have
acted out the gender roles before you
and continue to act them out
with and against you in society so a
little bit further down on page 520
here's a quote
quote what is called gender identity is
a performative accomplishment compelled
by social sanction and taboo
end quote okay so if we think of this as
what is a social sanction and taboo
a gender identity you are performing
your identity however you identify
whether you identify as non-binary as
male
female however you identify whatever you
do to perform that identity
will either receive some kind of
affirmation
or support from others or somebody might
look at it and go
that's not how you're supposed to behave
as a blank gender
identity okay so the rest of paper is
going to kind of unpack this stuff
that's been talked about in this very
first introduction
so the first main section of this paper
intro is called sex gender
feminist and phenomenological views and
by the way there's a slash between sex
and gender
so the main gist of the opening part of
this particular part of the paper
is that feminists have argued that sex
and gender are two different things so
sex being biological and gender being
social
so here's a quote from page 520 quote in
distinguishing sex from gender
feminist theorists have disputed causal
explanations that assumes that sex
dictates or necessitates
certain social meanings for women's
experience end quote and butler goes on
to argue that
this construction of a gender such as a
woman
as a man or i'll add in the term
non-binary
is historically situated and culturally
situated
so depending on where you live the
communities that you live in
and the histories of those communities
and how they view different types of
gender
there might be different variants on
roles that you play
so let's say you identify as a woman
within a particular culture
there are going to be certain social
norms or expectations
of what it means to act as a woman
within that particular culture
however if you take that sort of
behavior and the
sort of performative role and then put
it into another completely different
culture
maybe on the other side of the world
there are a different set of norms and
expectations
that when you try and enact what you
think it means to be a woman they might
look at you and go
that's not how a woman is supposed to
act around here again this applies to
any kind of gender identity
in other words the social views or norms
or expectations
for an identity such as a gender
identity
is situated within that culture and it
is
influenced by historical acts behaviors
laws etc alright so i'm going to read
another quote this is from page 521 an
apologies if i
mispronounce his name quote marlou ponti
maintains not only that the body is an
historical idea but a set of
possibilities to be continually realized
in claiming that the body is an
historical idea morlu ponti
means that it gains its meaning through
a concrete and historically mediated
expression in the world
that the body is a set of possibilities
signifies a
that its appearance in the world for
perception is not predetermined by some
manner of interior essence
and b that its concrete expression in
the world must be understood
as the taking up and rendering specific
of a set of historical possibilities
end quote so in other words that the
ways that your body appears in the world
is not some innate thing that is
predetermined by
what butler refers to as an interior
essence and that if we look at this from
a theatrical standpoint
we are actors who are performing
a specific set of historical identities
that have been predetermined
for us so here's a quote from page 521
and 522
quote to do to dramatize to reproduce
these seem to be some of the elementary
structures of embodiment
this doing of gender is not merely a way
in which embodied agents are exterior
surfaced open to the perception of
others embodiment clearly manifests a
set of strategies
or what satra would perhaps have called
a style of being
or foucault a stylistics of existence
this style is never fully self-styled
for living styles have a history and
that history conditions and limits
possibilities
consider gender for instance as a
corporal style
and act as it were which is both
intentional and performative
where performative itself carries the
double meaning of dramatic
and non-referential in quote so
apologies if i mispronounce
sartra s-a-r-t-re now because butler
considers gender to be a performance
quote
those who fail to do their gender right
are regularly punished end quote from
page 522
quote gender is thus a construction that
regularly conceals its genesis
the tacit collective agreement to
perform produce and sustain discrete and
polar genders are culturally fictions
as cultural fictions is obscured by the
credibility of its own production
the authors of gender become entranced
by their own fictions
whereby the construction compels one's
belief in its necessity and naturalness
the historical possibilities
materialized through various corporal
styles are nothing other than
those punitively regulated cultural
fictions that are alternatively embodied
and disguised under duress end quote
it's from page 522
so we socially are going off of the
historical constructions of what it
means to be blank
identity and we then are furthering
that by performing that identity by
buying into the narrative that
is written before us historically
and is being co-written by us socially
in the world that we are in so if you
identify as a man
the ways that you behave the ways that
you dress the words that you use
how you carry your body the acts that
you do the hobbies that you have
all of those things fit within certain
historical
and socially constructed expectations
around what it means
to identify as a man and in the last few
decades
more recently in the last decade or so
there have been discussions in the u.s
in particular about people who are born
with a sex
that does not match their gender
identity and people are resisting
that somebody is going against what
society is telling them they should be
based off of their sex
so if somebody is born as a man and they
identify as a woman
then they take on these gendered roles
related to being
a woman and some people do not
understand
that process and what it means to
perform these kinds of identities
and so there's been a lot of random
discussions around bathrooms
and pronouns and all sorts of other
random stuff
well as a non-binary individual i find a
lot of the discussions and assumptions
problematic
i like that we're actually having some
kind of a dialogue about it
as opposed to not talking about it so as
uncomfortable as those discussions are
and as
uncomfortable as like this podcast is to
try and
frame things in a way that can be
understood by people who agree with me
and
also disagree with me i think these kind
of discussions are important which is
why i'm bringing this particular
episode to this little mini series
that's on gender
butler's paper is seminal it is a very
important paper to talk about
in relation to cs and cs education and
i'll have some questions
towards the end of this episode that
unpack it more i want to dive deeper
into butler's notion of performativity
so here's a quote from page 523 quote my
suggestion
is that the body becomes its gender
through a series of acts which are
renewed
revised and consolidated through time
from a feminist point of view
one might try to reconceive the gendered
body as the legacy of sedimented acts
rather than a predetermined or
foreclosed structure essence or fact
whether natural cultural or linguistic
end quote
again going back to the discussion on
trans individuals non-binary individuals
etc this kind of discourse helps shed
light
on the idea that people who do not
identify as cisgendered
so in other words a person whose gender
aligns with the sex that was assigned at
birth
so for example if on your birth
certificate it says that you were male
and you identify as male then that
person is a cis male
now if as myself my
sex was assigned at birth as male
but i do not agree with that assignment
in terms of my gender
i fall within the trans community in
terms of
not being aligned with between the
gender and the sex that was assigned at
birth
so i personally identify as non-binary
however there are many different types
of other
genders outside of the male female
binary that exist within the trans
umbrella
like genderqueer trans non-binary
gender fluid et cetera there's many more
now as butler is saying it is through
this series of acts
within social context that
our gender identities are renewed
revised
and consolidated through time it is
through these experimentations over time
that we continue to get to know
and better understand our identities
or even bear witness to the changes in
identities over time
such as a gender fluid individual now
one of the interesting quotes that's
from page
futility of a political program
which seeks radically to transform the
social situations of women without first
determining whether the category of
woman is socially constructed in such a
way
that to be a woman is by definition to
be in an oppressed
situation end quote now i'm going to
unpack this a little bit more
towards the end of this particular
podcast so keep that in the back of your
mind
so the second section of this paper is
titled binary genders and the
heterosexual contract
now in this paper butler begins by
talking about how
by putting genders into binaries and
making it quote natural
to have male and female genders
attracted to each other
it ostracizes anything outside of the
heteronormative lens that is being used
in these social acts or dialogues or
discourses
in other words it's basically saying if
you do not fit within male and female or
if you do not fit within
a male female relationship then you are
other or less than or an outsider or
different
now thankfully since this paper was
initially written
in 1988 there have been a lot of changes
socially
policy wise etc that have helped dispel
this notion
of the false binary and the
heteronormative lens that is frequently
used
in discourse within the us however we're
still having to fight for rights
for people who exist outside of the
binary and
people who do not fall within a
heterosexual
relationship now further in this section
butler describes how we as individuals
are acting
within social norms and if as it was
in relatively recent time if people are
not able to express their gender
and sexuality within social settings
this sets the precedent or the unspoken
understanding that it is not okay to
identify outside of what is considered
to be the norm
so to be more explicit with what i'm
saying if we think of how
individuals who are not heterosexual had
to hide
their sexuality publicly and had to
engage in
sexual acts and relationships and
romance
outside of the public eye because it was
considered
to be not a part of the accepted
performance of what it means to be in a
relationship
or to have asexuality tying it back into
gender
people within the trans community have
had to hide in the u.s
their identities because it does not fit
within what was considered to be
the norm in the u.s here's a quote from
page 526
quote when this conception of social
performance is applied to gender
it is clear that although there are
individual bodies that enact these
significations
by becoming stylized into gendered modes
this action
is immediately public as well there are
temporal and collective dimensions to
these actions
and their public nature is not
inconsequential indeed the performance
is
affected with the strategic aim of
maintaining gender within its binary
frame
understood in pedagogical terms the
performance renders social laws explicit
end quote so if we think about this
particular
quote and what i was just rambling about
this gets at the idea of why
representation is
important so for example if we do not
see certain identities within
certain careers like computer science by
having
media such as posters and videos and
curricula
created to include a diverse range of
identities
then we might be implicitly stating
certain kinds of identities
are welcome within computer science
while others are not
so if you listen to the episode two
weeks ago that talked about how
course materials can be gendered and
forward a certain notion that certain
genders
are acceptable within computer science
while others are not this can be highly
problematic
so we as educators need to think through
how are we
acting out genders and what identities
not just gender but any identities are
we encouraging
and enabling within the resources and
projects and experiences that we design
facilitate teach whatever in computer
science education
again the performance renders social
laws explicit
so if we have projects that are 100 male
or 100 involve heterosexual
relationships or 100 percent
involve only white individuals all of
these
are performing those social laws that
say that this
is accepted while other things are not
whether we intend that or not that's how
it can be perceived by students by
community members
etc so if you haven't listened to the
episode that i did two weeks ago make
sure you take a listen to that
and the following episodes are going to
unpack this a little bit more
and one of the examples is actually
going to talk about how some of these
gender norms are different in other
countries
so stay tuned for upcoming episodes now
not only is representation
important but it's also important to
understand that
there are social expectations involved
with different identities and how we
perform those identities
now here's a quote from page 528 and if
you've listened to the unpacking
scholarship episodes
that talk about padol ferreira's book
pedagogy of the oppressed think of this
in relation to
lenses in not just relation to gender
but other forms of oppression
related to identities that i talk about
in those other episodes which i'll link
to in the show notes this is from page
quote genders then can be neither true
nor false
neither real nor apparent and yet one is
compelled to live in a world in which
genders constitute
unavocal signifiers in which gender is
stabilized
polarized rendered discrete and
intractable in effect
gender is made to comply with a model of
truth and falsity which not only
contradicts its own performative
fluidity
but serves a social policy of gender
regulation and control
performing one's gender wrong initiates
a set of punishments
both obvious and indirect and performing
it well
provides the reassurance that there is
an essentialism of gender identity after
all
that this reassurance is so easily
displaced by anxiety
that culture so readily punishes or
marginalizes those who fail to perform
the illusion of gender essentialism
should be signed enough that on some
level there is social knowledge that the
truth
or falsity of gender is only socially
compelled and in no sense ontologically
necessitated
end quote okay so some concrete examples
of this
as an example before i found the
terminology
to identify as non-binary in high school
i shaved my legs which as somebody who
was male presenting
was not socially acceptable and needless
to say led to
a lot of interesting commentary by my
peers
as another example think of what might
happen if
a very masky looking individual were to
start wearing a dress
cut that the ways in which people
respond to seeing
that expression of gender identity can
reaffirm that there are correct and
incorrect ways
to fit within a particular identity and
that internal dialogue of a person who
internally does not fit with the
identity that society has
prescribed them can cause a lot of harm
mentally physically socially emotionally
etc
to an individual so for example if you
have a student
who identifies outside of the sex that
was assigned to them at birth
depending on the community that they're
in and their peers or you as a teacher
or other administrators or other family
members and community members
depending on how you structure that
social environment can have a huge
positive or negative impact on that
student this doesn't just apply to
gender identity but any type of identity
so something that we as educators really
need to consider and i've got some
questions at the end
that i'm still thinking through and i
think the field should also think
through that i'll share here
pretty soon before i do that i just want
to say that there is one
final section in here that is called
feminist theory beyond an expressive
model of gender
and i've already read one quote related
to that at the start of this podcast and
i will read one more
very shortly okay so as always in these
unpacking scholarship episodes i just
want to share some lingering questions
or thoughts that i have
while reading this particular paper the
first one that i have is when are we
unintentionally reaffirming gender
expectations and binaries
through performative acts related to cs
education so for example if you listen
to the interview with sarah judd which
i'll include a link to in the show notes
sarah talks about how in the computer
science classes that they're in
in school in k12 setting had these
notions of
what it meant to be a female in
cs it had these preconceived notions of
what it meant to be
a female or woman in computer science
education
interested in it so it came with
assumptions like oh well if you identify
as a girl then you like to help people
and you like to
have things with rainbows and ponies in
it and you don't like to talk about
nerdy things like star wars etc so
depending on how we set up our classroom
environment
and the ways that we communicate with
the students that we work with and the
assumptions that we make in terms of
oh you are blank gender identity
therefore you must like blah blah blah
those assumptions can reaffirm gender
expectations
and binaries through the performative
acts that we are doing while teaching
so it's something to consider not only
in relation to gender but other
identities as well to use
some verbage from some academic
discourse we are essentializing or
engaging in a process of cultural
essentialization where we are taking an
identity and saying
you are x identity therefore you must
think y
and z without actually getting to know
children as individuals
so the next question that i have is how
do we balance between finding solidarity
within a marginalized
identity and challenging the social
construction of that identity so here's
a quote
that is from page 530 quote
certainly it remains politically
important to represent women
but to do that in a way that does not
distort and reify
the very collectivity the theory is
supposed to emancipate end quote
so in other words yes it's important to
organize
and find solidarity within marginalized
identities however
we have to understand that it is not a
unified identity and
we should in some way try and challenge
the construction
or apparent unification of that identity
so an example that a professor used in a
class that i took
was going through a process of centering
de-centering and re-centering so one way
to describe this
might be to center around a particular
particular identity
so for example myself getting to know
and understand
my perspective as a non-binary
individual and finding others
who identify similarly with their gender
identity
decentering might be trying to find
other identities perspectives
ways of being that exist outside of my
own
to try and better understand many
different perspectives and voices around
gender re-centering is then the process
of coming back to
myself and going now that i've learned
all these other things how do i better
understand or how have my
my own identity around gender changed
through this process
of centering de-centering and
re-centering so
one way we can do this in cs education
is to potentially create
personalized projects projects that get
to know
individuals so for example an
interactive collage
in scratch you create this as a process
of centering
where you are creating a collage that
expresses who you are
in that moment you can then go through a
series of projects that de-center around
other identities outside of dot collage
so if you identify as somebody who likes
sports and somebody who likes
painting and somebody who likes to read
you could then try and find some
different
perspectives or hobbies or identities or
whatever
outside of that and learn about it and
create some projects around that
that would be a de-centering process
then a re-centering process or project
might be coming back
and saying okay how can i take this new
understanding
new ways of being that i now better
understand and
reassess my own identity and you engage
in this process in a cyclical nature so
you're constantly centering decentering
re-centering now i will say as a student
at the time as a grad student when i
went through this process many of these
students in that particular class
felt it was unstabilizing going through
this process
and difficult because it was constantly
going well
i thought i had this solid understanding
of who i am as an individual and now
i'm realizing that one there may have
been some problematic assumptions that i
was making and two that identity is not
as firm as i thought it was it's
actually fluid and ever changing etc
so just a heads up in advance if you as
an individual or the classes that you
work with decide to go through this
process of centering decentering
recentering
it can be a little un unnerving or
destabilizing
going through this process of examining
your identities
but it is a very worthwhile process in
my opinion all right so the final
question that i have for this particular
paper
has an embedded quote in it from page
so if quote gender reality is
performative which means
quite simply that it is real only to the
extent that is performed
end quote what other identities besides
gender might we consider as performative
and in need of discussing as a field
so sticking with gender if gender is a
construction
socially and is something that is
performed
how can we challenge the notion of that
construction
and dive deeper in cs research education
policy discourse etc but what other
identities
might be performative in nature and that
we as a field need to discuss
thankfully as a field we're starting to
discuss race more
we're starting to discuss individuals
with disabilities whether
physical neurological etc but what other
identities
are potentially performative and that we
should be
discussing as a field and i'm not saying
we shouldn't discuss the things that we
already are
we certainly need to do that it's a yes
and approach that i think that we as a
field need to kind of kind of figure out
the point is who is missing from this
conversation what identities
are we not discussing as a field and how
can we engage in a reflective process
similar to what i discussed in the
pedagogy of the oppressed miniseries
where we are trying to examine from
lenses oppressor and oppressed to figure
out
who's missing from this conversation and
how are they being impacted by this
all right so those are my lingering
questions or thoughts for this
particular paper i know this publication
and the things that i've talked about
might take some time to digest because
these are not simple conversations to
have but i hope this
helped you walk away with some questions
or considerations or thoughts
that you might be able to take into the
physical or virtual classrooms that you
are working with
if you want to read this paper itself i
will include a link to it
in the show notes and i will continue
this little mini series on gender with a
discussion on a study
that has to do with gender and computer
science education
in two weeks so stay tuned next week for
another interview
and two weeks from now for another
unpacking scholarship episode thanks so
much for taking time to listen to this
episode i hope you all have a wonderful
week and are staying safe
Article
Butler, J. (1988). Performative acts and gender constitution: An essay in phenomenology and feminist theory. Theatre Journal, 40(4), 519-531.
My One Sentence Summary
This seminal paper unpacks the notion that gender is a performative act that is socially and historically constructed.
Some Of My Lingering Questions/Thoughts
When are we unintentionally reaffirming gender expectations and binaries through performative acts related to CS education?
How do we balance between finding solidarity within a marginalized identity and challenging the social construction of that identity?
If “gender reality is performative which means, quite simply, that it is real only to the extent that it is performed” (p. 527) what other identities besides gender might we consider as performative and in need of discussing as a field?
Resources/Links Relevant to This Episode
Other podcast episodes that were mentioned or are relevant to this episode
AI4ALL, Curriculum Development, and Gender Discourse with Sarah Judd
In this interview with Sarah Judd, we discuss what Sarah learned both in the classroom and as a CS curriculum writer, the curriculum Sarah continues to develop for AI4ALL, advice and philosophies that can guide facilitating a class and designing curriculum, some of our concerns with discourse on gender in CS, my recommended approach to sustainable professional development, and much more.
Broadening Gender in Computing for Transgender and Nonbinary Learners
In this episode I unpack Menier, Zarch, and Sexton’s (2021) publication titled “Broadening gender in computing for transgender and nonbinary learners,” which is a position paper problematizes the current lack of trans and nonbinary individuals in discourse around gender in CS education.
Examining Coding Skills of Five-year-old Children
In this episode I unpack Metin, Basaran, and Kalyenci’s (2023) publication titled “Examining coding skills of five-year-old children,” which investigates whether gender, parent education, or socioeconomic status has an impact on coding abilities of five-year-olds.
In this episode I unpack Tsan, Boyer, and Lynch’s (2016) publication titled “How early does the CS gender gap emerge? A study of collaborative problem solving in 5th grade computer science,” which investigates the potential impact of gendered groups on the quality of completed Scratch projects in an in-school computer science class for 5th grade students.
How to Get Started with Computer Science Education
In this episode I provide a framework for how districts and educators can get started with computer science education for free.
Pedagogy of the Oppressed
This episode is the start of a miniseries that unpacks Paulo Freire’s (1970) book “Pedagogy of the Oppressed.” This particular episode unpacks chapter 1, which discusses how oppressors maintain control over the oppressed. Following unpacking scholarship episodes discuss what this looks like in education and how educators can adopt a “pedagogy of the oppressed” to break cycles of oppression.
This episode is episode two of a miniseries that unpacks Paulo Freire’s (1970) book “Pedagogy of the Oppressed.” This particular episode unpacks chapter 2, which discusses the “banking” approach to education that assumes students are repositories of information, and then proposes a liberatory approach to education that focuses on posing problems that students and teachers collaboratively solve. If you haven’t listened to the discussion on the first chapter, click here.
This episode is episode three of a miniseries that unpacks Paulo Freire’s (1970) book “Pedagogy of the Oppressed.” This particular episode unpacks chapter 3, which discusses the importance of dialogue when engaging in liberatory practices. This episode builds off the previous unpacking scholarship episodes on chapter one and chapter two, so make sure you listen to those episodes before jumping in here.
This episode is the final episode of a miniseries that unpacks Paulo Freire’s (1970) book “Pedagogy of the Oppressed.” This particular episode unpacks chapter 4, which synthesizes the concepts introduced in the previous chapters and discusses the difference between anti-dialogical and dialogical practices in education (and at large). This episode builds off the previous unpacking scholarship episodes on chapter one, chapter two, and chapter three so make sure you listen to those episodes before jumping in here.
Promoting Equity and Activism in Computer Science Education with Kim Wilkens
In this interview with Kim Wilkens, we discuss embracing failure, encouraging activism and community impact through CS and technology, supporting marginalized gender identities in CS, and much more.
In this episode I unpack Mellström’s (2009) publication titled “The intersection of gender, race and cultural boundaries, or why is computer science in Malaysia dominated by women?,” which “points to a western bias of gender and technology studies, and argues for cross-cultural work and intersectional understandings including race, class, age and sexuality” (p. 885).
Trans Voices Speak: Suggestions from Trans Educators about Working with Trans Students
In this episode I unpack Cayari et al.’s (2021) publication titled “Trans voices speak: Suggestions from trans educators about working with trans students,” which provides five suggestions from Trans educations on working with Trans students.
Resources relevant to gender issues in CS and technology
Find other CS educators and resources by using the #CSK8 hashtag on Twitter