202 Chapter 9
In being concerned about issues of ‘identity’, and the processes through which women’s identities are constructed (and can be reconstructed), third-wave feminism also reflects the influence of poststructuralism . Influenced particularly by the French philosopher Michel Foucault (1926–84), poststructuralism has drawn attention to the link between power and systems of thought using the idea of discourse, or ‘discourses of power’. In crude terms, this implies that knowledge is power. Poststructuralist or postmodernist feminists question the idea of a fixed female identity, also rejecting the notion that insights can be drawn from a distinctive set of women’s experiences. From the poststructural perspective, even the idea of ‘woman’ may be nothing more than a fiction, as supposedly indisputable biological differences betweenwomen andmen are, in significant ways, shaped by gendered discourses (not all women are capable of bearing children, for example). However, it is questionable whether the consistent application of poststructural or postmodern analysis is compatible with the maintenance of a distinctively feminist political orientation. Trans theory and feminism
Although genderqueer and transgender issues sometimes surfaced in the 1970s, often in connection with cultural feminism or lesbian separatism, trans theory (or transgenderism) has only been recognized as a specific area of politico-cultural debate since the 1990s. At the heart of trans theory lies a radically critical approach to thinking about gender. In particular, trans theorists reject the binary conception of gender, in which society allocates its members to one of two sets of identities, usually linked to biological or anatomical differences. In the binary view, the categories woman and man are meaningful and objectively based. Although trans theory is not associated with a single or simple conception of gender, its most influential belief is the idea of gender and sexual ambiguity, sometimes based on the idea of a gender continuum. Trans people are thus ‘gender nonconforming’; they are neither women nor men (Beasley, 2005). From this non-binary perspective, gender is not something that is determined at birth or ascribed to individuals by society; instead, it is a matter of self-identity. People are therefore whatever gender they choose to be, based on their inner feelings. In this vein, Judith Butler’s concept of gender as repeated social performance has been particularly influential. (Such thinking is discussed further in connection with queer theory.)
Poststructuralism: An intellectual tradition, related to postmodernism, which emphasizes that all ideas and concepts are expressed in language that itself is enmeshed in complex relations of power. Genderqueer: Denoting or relating to people who do not conform to prevailing expectations about gender, usually by crossing over or moving between gender identities. Transgender: Denoting or relating to people who do not conform to the sex they were assigned at birth, and who may seek to realign their gender and their sex through medical intervention.
KEY FIGURE
JUDITH BUTLER (BORN 1956) A US philosopher and gender theorist, Butler has challenged currents in feminist thinking that unwittingly enforce a binary view of gender identity, in which human beings are divided into two clear-cut groups: women and men. She rejects the idea that the sex/gender divide reflects an underpinning nature/culture divide, arguing instead that gender encompasses the discursive and cultural means whereby ‘sexed nature’, or ‘a natural sex’, is produced. Butler thus contends that not only gender but sex itself is, at least to some extent, a ‘performative’ social construct. Butler’s most influential work is Gender Trouble ([1990] 2006).
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