A woman working on her Ph.D. asked me yesterday if I wanted to read a paper she had just published on the social construction of maleness. I said sure. I haven't read it yet, but I think I can predict what it will say. She has studied Judith Butler closely, she tells me. I won't try to make a summary here. I will only tell you I'm all for it. I'm against it. Both. I enjoy the inventiveness of it, of watching a truly good mind at work. And after that, I enjoy the uncertainty. I enjoy the argument.
How many forms of maleness exist in the United States, I wonder? It probably depends on how thin you want to slice the onion. The struggle is for who gets to say. I'm trying to keep up.
Gender Trouble: Feminism and the Subversion of Identity
Chapter 1
"Subjects of Sex/Gender/Desire"
One is not born a woman, but rather becomes one.
--Simone De Beauvoir
Strictly speaking, "women" cannot be said to exist.
--Julia Kristeva
Woman does not have a sex.
--Luce Irigaray
The deployment of sexuality. . . established this notion of sex.
--Michel Foucault
The category of sex is the political category that founds society as heterosexual.
--Monique Wittig
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