Judith Butler, through her book Gender Trouble, claims that gender is a kind of improvised performance. Butler disagrees with one of the central assumptions of feminist theory that there is a presence of identity and a subject that needs representation in politics and language (Blumenfeld, 2017). For Butler, “woman” and “women” are groups complicated by situations such as ethnicity, class, and sexuality. Therefore, she avoids using identity politics in favor of new coalition feminism that criticizes the basis of identity and gender. She also criticizes the assumption made between sex and gender. There are various examples of how gender intersects with the other modalities in contemporary society.
Feminism perspective on power is one of the examples. Power in contemporary society has currently been unequally distributed between men and women. In the society, work in feminist theory is focused on criticizing women`s subordination by determining the intersection between sexism and other forms of subordination including heterosexist, racism and class oppression (Lazar, 2017). Power is a central concept of feminism, and it is not frequently discussed in feminist work (Bachmann, Harp, & Loke, 2018). Therefore, this brings about challenges in analyzing feminism perspective on power. This is because feminism aims at redistributing power in more equitable ways among men and women.
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Intersectionality of gender inequality and racial discrimination is another example. This is the discrimination women experience because of their gender (Sutton, 2018). For example, women being discriminated because of their gender can be directly related, encouraged and caused by an individual’s race. This has been seen through substantive issues such as human trafficking, migration, and violence against women. In society today, many women have faced racism due to their gender. They have faced challenges mainly in their educational sections and even their occupational areas (Jenkins & Finneman, 2018) Gender and racial discrimination have made it difficult for women to attain their dream occupations due to the social stereotype about women.
References
Bachmann, I., Harp, D., & Loke, J. (2018). Through a Feminist Kaleidoscope: Critiquing Media, Power, and Gender Inequalities. In Feminist Approaches to Media Theory and Research (pp. 1-15). Palgrave Macmillan, Cham.
Blumenfeld, W. J. (2017). Butler Matters: Judith Butler's Impact on Feminist and Queer Studies . Routledge.
Jenkins, J., & Finneman, T. (2018). Gender trouble in the workplace: applying Judith Butler’s theory of performativity to news organizations. Feminist Media Studies, 18(2), 157- 172.
Lazar, M. M. (2017). Feminist critical discourse analysis . Handbook of Critical Discourse Studies , 372-87.
Sutton, G. V. (2018). Science for a Polite Society: Gender, Culture, and the Demonstration of Enlightenment . Routledge.
