{"id":2863,"date":"2025-04-21T12:29:57","date_gmt":"2025-04-21T16:29:57","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/blogs.dickinson.edu\/everythinginbetween\/?p=2863"},"modified":"2025-04-21T12:29:57","modified_gmt":"2025-04-21T16:29:57","slug":"butler-and-written-on-the-body","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/blogs.dickinson.edu\/everythinginbetween\/2025\/04\/21\/butler-and-written-on-the-body\/","title":{"rendered":"Butler and Written on the Body"},"content":{"rendered":"

I think that Written on the Body<\/em> is an excellent example of how gender is ascribed to different actions and how gender is not real. Judith Butler wrote, \u201cIf the inner truth of gender is a fabrication and if a true gender is a fantasy instituted and inscribed on the surface of bodies, then it seems that genders can be neither true nor false, but are only produced as the truth effects of a discourse of primary and stable identity\u201d (Butler 136). This passage tells me that it is really society and the norms of the time that create gender, gender does not create society\u2019s trends because without those decisions or pressures, there would actually be no gender. It is the actual acts that denote gender, not the bodies. One of the important parts here is the \u201ceffects of a discourse\u201d because gender changes and appears differently through time, it has to fit in with the current standard.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

While reading, Written on the Body<\/em> by Jeannette Winterson, everyone in class had different ideas of the gender of our narrator. We wanted so badly to attribute a gender to the narrator because of certain actions they committed. If we read Written on the Body through a male lens, then it would be a very different book then if it was read through a female one. Winterson chose to make it ambiguous to challenge these ideas of societal norms that we have.<\/span><\/p>\n

The moment that stuck out to me the most was when the Narrator hits Jacqueline. \u201cShe\u2019d angered me and I responded by thumping her. How many times does that turn up in the courts? How many times have I curled up my lip at other people\u2019s violence?\u201d (Winterson 87). While this is not about gender explicitly, as a society, we have the image of domestic violence in our heads as a man hitting a woman. I think the text even leans into that by mentioning the courts and how they are disgusted by the same situation in others. The part that plays into Butler\u2019s theory is that the \u201cdiscourse\u201d around domestic violence is that the violence is a masculine trait whereas being the one hit or hurt is more feminine. The part that matters is the conversations happening around the action to make it gendered. This of course doesn\u2019t make it right, but it does complicate our reading of the gender of the narrator. <\/span><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

I think that Written on the Body is an excellent example of how gender is ascribed to different actions and how gender is not real. Judith Butler wrote, \u201cIf the inner truth of gender is a fabrication and if a true gender is a fantasy instituted and inscribed on the surface of bodies, then it … Continue reading Butler and Written on the Body<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":5588,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[346812],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-2863","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-2025-class-post"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.dickinson.edu\/everythinginbetween\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2863","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.dickinson.edu\/everythinginbetween\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.dickinson.edu\/everythinginbetween\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.dickinson.edu\/everythinginbetween\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/5588"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.dickinson.edu\/everythinginbetween\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=2863"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.dickinson.edu\/everythinginbetween\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2863\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.dickinson.edu\/everythinginbetween\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=2863"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.dickinson.edu\/everythinginbetween\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=2863"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.dickinson.edu\/everythinginbetween\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=2863"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}