Tianni Ivey

WGSS 200 Midterm Exam

1. In addition to civil rights for women such as the right to vote, Beauvoir believes there
still remain social frameworks and hinderances in front of women that were created and
reinforced by men. Ability to work and earn an income, as well as possessing civil rights
such as suffrage do not guarantee freedom when society continues to view women as
inferior beings incapable of self-autonomy and governance.

2. Beauvoir does not right about gender and its fluidity and expression because at the time
of her work, there was not yet such a concept as “gender.” Beauvoir does however,
understand that a person cannot be understood only in terms of their biological sex. When
Beauvoir says one is not born a woman, but rather becomes a woman, she means that not
every being that is born female is necessarily a woman because to be a woman, one must
subscribe to the social construct of femininity, lacking the converse conception of
masculinity.

3. Drag performance can be parodies of women, but Butler takes it a step further and says
that drag performances are parodies of the widely accepted myth of originality, disrupting
what is considered to be true and what is false. Drag performances poke fun at the
accepted notion that there is an essential woman that is contrary to an essential man, and
make way for a space to reconstruct and contextualize identity, gender, and sex. They
serve to subvert the myth of a true gender identity, and what Butler points to as the unity
between “inner” and “outer” where outward gender expression matches the internal
biological sex of a person.

4. To say that gender is performative rather than substantial means that our conception of
gender is born from our repeated performances of gender constructions. People mirror the
world around them and thus create themselves, constructing “gendered identities” that are
not uniform, coherent, or stable. These identities and expression change during different
periods and moments of our lives making gender true insofar as it is performed.

5. Butler does not believe that sex can be conceptualized apart from gender in the way that
Rubin argues because gender mirrors sex. She argues that sex is natural, and because of
this, gender may be as well—i.e. not socially constructed, but predetermined. In essence,
she is questioning if sex is also socially constructed like gender, and maybe even more
 so. Butler further claims that our understanding of sex is also constructed in that it is
influenced by politics and social ideas.

6. A major conceptual obstacle that Moraga face when convincing women of color to
submit work for her anthology with Anzaldua was getting women of color to actually feel
comfortable sharing their work knowing that feminist effort traditionally ignored and
exploited people of color and favored the issues of white women. Because of this, there is
often a sense of “us versus them” amongst women of color because everyone wants to
protect their own, work amongst and advocate for their own collective (whether it be
Black, Chicana, Native, etc.) with the usual understanding that collaboration often results
in manipulation.

7. Rubin thinks that binary gender is no longer necessary for maintaining and reproducing
society because she ultimately hopes for a genderless society in where there are no
socially constructed gender and sex difference or hierarchy. Women’s oppression lies in
the kinship systems that establish gender division and division of labor, as well as a
requirement for heterosexual relationships. Because of the ways women are treated as
commodities in transactions, it is evident that the core of women’s oppression lies in
social systems, not in biology, so there’s no point in having a gender binary anymore.

8. Moraga believes that a theory in the flesh requires not only reflection on one’s own
experiences of oppression, but also “entering the lives of others” because theories cannot
be separated from lived experiences, but must grow directly from them. Whether a
theory’s focus is social justice or political action, it spans the scope of a multitude of
people and characteristics, so the wide array of physical realities of these people must be
incorporated into a theory. Successful theories can only be made by collaborating and
empathizing with others, and there is importance in including the lives and stories of
others who may be different from you just as much as you’d want to incorporate stories
similar to your own. Empathy is key as being able to “enter the lives of others” and make
their trials and triumphs your own breeds good theory.

9. The writers in This Bridge Called My Back both accept and resist being a bridge because
they essentially want to do two things. The first is to push back on the societal forces and
misconceptions that dump all feminists and feminist literature into one generic category.
Also, the authors speak about wanting to resist the notions of feminism and social
movements that create hierarchies and oppositional value systems in feminist discourse
instead of promoting interrelation and dependence. On the other hand, the writers can be
seen accepting the idea of being a bridge in that they desire to highlight all women and
the experiences that both united and divide women as feminist, in order to expand the
 definition of a feminist. The hope is that expressing and dispersing the sentiments, joys,
and frustrations of women of color will possibly shift the consciousness of feminism.

10. The concept that most informs my thinking about the world is “women of color.” I have
spoken in class about how the “double-minority” status of being a woman of color
influences the ways in which I am engaged on this campus, and the world at-large, as
well as how I in turn engage others. In thinking about gender, identity, and social
movements, I identified most with This Bridge Called My Back as it was a great text to
understand how the feminist movement is a white feminist movement, and conceptualize
how women of color fit—or don’t—into the movement’s framework. I can understand
the frustration expressed by the women of color in this anthology. When engaging
community and coalition building; intersectionality is key. As a woman of color, I know
all too well that any progress I experience on the front of gender will be secondary to the
must needed racial progress. What I mean by this, is what I’ve also brought up in class, is
that white women can say “I am a woman,” and that be their sole form of oppression.
However, for women who look like me, it is never that simple. I am a Black woman and I
can’t detach those two words, and separate race from my essence with the goal of being
“woman.”