Indeed it may be only by risking the incoherence of identity that connection is possible.
Judith ButlerRead
It's my view that gender is culturally formed, but it's also a domain of agency or freedom and that it is most important to resist the violence that is imposed by ideal gender norms, especially against those who are gender different, who are nonconforming in their gender presentation.
Interpretation
What this quote means
Gender is shaped by culture and offers personal freedom, but one must resist the violence of rigid gender norms.
Judith Butler highlights the complex interplay between cultural constructions of gender and individual autonomy. She emphasizes the importance of challenging the societal pressures and violence that arise from rigid ideals of gender, particularly for those who don't conform to traditional gender presentations. This quote advocates for the recognition and respect of diverse gender identities and the freedom of self-expression.
Themes
GenderAgencyNormsFreedomViolence
In practice
Example use cases
In a diversity training session to discuss gender identity.
More from Judith Butler
All quotes →When we say gender is performed, we usually mean that we've taken on a role or we're acting in some way and that our acting or our role playing is crucial to the gender that we are and the gender that we present to the world.
Judith ButlerRead
I do not deny certain kinds of biological differences. But I always ask under what conditions, under what discursive and institutional conditions, do certain biological differences - and they're not necessary ones, given the anomalous state of bodies in the world - become the salient characteristics of sex.
Judith ButlerRead
Sexual harassment law is very important. But I think it would be a mistake if the sexual harassment law movement is the only way in which feminism is known in the media.
Judith ButlerRead
We act and walk and speak and talk in ways that consolidate an impression of being a man or being a woman.
Judith ButlerRead
Indeed, even if one believed that criticisms of Israel are by and large heard as anti-semitic (by Jews, anti-semites, or people who could be described as neither), it would become the responsibility of all of us to change the conditions of reception so that the public might begin to distinguish between criticism of Israel and a hatred of Jews.
Judith ButlerRead
Similar quotes
Doctors put drugs of which they know little into bodies of which they know less for diseases of which they know nothing at all.
VoltaireRead
Let no man be sorry he has done good, because others concerned with him have done evil! If a man has acted right, he has done well, though along; if wrong, the sanction of all mankind will not justify him.
Henry FieldingRead
Just as we tend to assume that the world is as we see it, we naively suppose that people are as we imagine them to be.
Carl JungRead
The true measure of a man is how he treats someone who can do him absolutely no good.
Samuel JohnsonRead
You come of the Lord Adam and the Lady Eve," said Aslan. "And that is both honour enough to erect the head of the poorest beggar, and shame enough to bow the shoulders of the greatest emperor on earth. Be content.
C. S. LewisRead
Too much of water hast thou, poor Ophelia, And therefore I forbid my tears: But yet It is our trick; nature her custom holds, Let shame say what it will: when these are gone, The woman will be out. — Adieu, my lord! I have a speech of fire, that fain would blaze, But that this folly drowns it.
William ShakespeareRead