GENDER. It has been observed that we don't even think of people as human until we determine their gender. (What's the first question about babies? Is it a girl or a boy?)
So, it's personal. It's a cornerstone of how we determine our identities--both when we fail to perform our genders "correctly" as Butler would put it AND when we do it "right" as Tseelon's discussion of notions of "masquerade" points out.
Both Tseelon's work and Butler's are evidence of the unprecedented amount of scrutiny and rethinking notions of gender have undergone in recent years, and Roberts' article reminds us that controversy about gender and how to do it is also not new.
This week, get personal. Take a picture (Don't find one! Don't use an old one! Take a new one!) that helps to express your own experience(s) of gender. You might want to use the reading assignments as a prompt to help you focus on one aspect of your experiences as a gendered subject. (Sorry boys, there wasn't reading focused on masculinity this week, but there's still plenty to talk about. And in binary systems, thinking through one thing inevitably brings up questions and ideas about the other.)
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