Posted by alexandra_k on July 25, 2005, at 22:12:48
In reply to Re: the link I found... » alexandra_k, posted by Tamar on July 25, 2005, at 19:39:35
> I vaguely recall you said that people sometimes think you're male because of your writing style. Also, I seem to recall that So thought you were male at one point.
Yes. I think that is partly why I chose what I thought was a female sounding posting name. But I think people still get a bit confused between 'alexander' and 'alexandra'.
>I’ve read a bit of evolutionary psychology, and it can be quite fun.
Yes :-)
>It seems to me that evolutionary psychology seems to assume that gender is essential, whereas Butler argues that gender is performative.
Some people distinguish between gender (which is basically what sex you are) and gender identity which can go either way... Gender is supposed to be determined by what sex you are (so it is 'essential' if you like) whereas gender identity is what you see yourself as being (so more to do with the way you behave).
The term 'performative' is interesting to me. There are a class of speech acts that are known as 'performatives'. Promises are considered to be performatives because to succesfully make a promise just is to perform the speech act of promising to do something.
So I guess the notion of 'performative gender' is that our gender identity is in part (or maybe even fully??) determined by the gender roles / characteristics that we exemplify in our behaviours.
>But as to how the theory applies to admin here… I suspect that a performative account of gender (rather than an essentialist account) might be more useful in exploring how gender norms are policed and indeed transgressed at Babble.
Do you mean with respect to people displaying typically masculine or feminine behaviours?
poster:alexandra_k
thread:525223
URL: http://www.dr-bob.org/babble/admin/20050716/msgs/533513.html