Question 1. Butler argues that sex, and not just gender, is socially constructed. What do you think she means by this? Use your answer to compare and contrast Butler’s theory of gender relations to those of Simone DeBeauvoir or Dorothy Smith. Question 2. To trace the political operations that produce and conceal what qualifies as the juridicial subject of feminism is precisely the task of a feminist geneology of the category of women. In the course of this effort to question ”women” as the subject of feminism, the unproblematic invocation of that category may prove to preclude the possibility of feminism…[I]f the formulation of the subject takes place within a field of power regularly buried through the assertion of that foundation” (Butler p. 504). 2 full pages
