Gender Discourse

The lessons that we learn in these readings is that people are different possessing their own unique state of mind. Helene Cixous investigates that phallocentrism is a prime attribute of masculine nature as opposed to women who are subordinated to passivity in a male dominated society. An overlap and distinction in feminism that has caught our discussions on feminism and their strive for ascribed masculine status can be interpreted from Helene’s case; “The [political] economy of the masculine and of the feminine is organized by different requirements and constraints, which, when socialized and metaphorized, produce signs, relationships of power, relationships of production, an entire immense system of cultural inscription readable as masculine or feminine”. (pg 231-232)

Judith Butler focuses on unbiased gender where it does not make sense to talk of an originary body. That there is no division between masculine/feminine, reproduction simply occurs incessantly; “She sees the sex/gender distinction as a product of Cartesian thinking which assumes an absolute split between mind and body, but where body exists effectively in the realm of denial”.(pg 228)

In Judith Butler’s case; “And there may be forms of ‘gender’ within homosexuality which call for a theorization that moves beyond the categories of ‘masculine’ and ‘feminine’”. (248) Butler is likely to state that people who are exhibiting homosexuality present an alternative way of life in contrast to heterosexuals. In other cases I see that Judith Butler does not favor a distinction between homosexuals and heterosexuals in essence that both cultural genders are simply normal. She also criticizes that people who are homophobic are in peril of losing proper gender because those people (heterosexuals) are overprotective about their sexual drives in order to seduce the other sex.