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Damaria Knox
Ms. Allford
CRLT 101, Section C
17 November 2016
Literary Analysis: Butler
Gender is something that is already established in the world today. The genders that are
already in the world today have been there for a while. There are only two and thats girls and
boys. Those are the only genders that either thought about or even exist. But what if there could
be more than one type. Theres one person who agrees, Judith Butler. In Beside Oneself, Judith
Butler opens up about there being more than the forms of gender that exist right now, Butler
wants to know how would humans react to it or accept it . She, Butler wonders how the new
forms of gender will affect the community and the way things are now in the world. Butler also
wants to know how to tell apart the forms of gender odds that are worth something and the ones
that are not. Butler questions if the new genders happen, how will it develop in the world today.
Butler believes that because of the normal standards, that the genders wont be considered real
but new. What if new forms of gender are possible? How does this affect the ways that we live
and the concrete needs of the human community? And how are we to distinguish between the
forms of gender possibility that are valuable and those that are not. I would say that it is not a
question merely of producing a new future for genders that do not yet exist (Butler 124). This
quote is from Butler, Where she explains gender exists and how she wonders what would happen
if there were more.
Within the world besides the breakout of AIDS and HIV within the gay community, there
seems to be violence. The violence comes from people having stereotypes and being offensive

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about them.There are times where people are killed for being gay or being transgendered. The
desire to kill someone, or killing someone, for not conforming the gender norm by which a
person is supposed to life itself requires a set of sheltering norms, and that to be outside it, to
live outside it, is to court death. (Butler 127).
Butler states that people who are killing others who are different or likes something
different or a different genders are trying to keep things normal. Butler thinks that life has a
list of things that are normal and if people go outside of those things, death happens. Butler
thinks that gender norms is on the top of the list of normal things. Butler also thinks that people
who endanger others with violence are basically trying to fit in with the rest of the world. Butler
says that the people fight because the body is conceited and a violent feature in effort to bring
back order. The body brings back order to rekindle the social part of the world with gender. The
social world is what Butler calls the world. Butler thinks that because of the social world,
violence occurs. She says because of the social world, its hard to think outside of the normal
standards. Butler also thinks that because of the social world, humans cant think of the world as
something that isnt normal or unnatural or unnecessary.
The whole point of this paper is that humans take in other cultures and genders. The
point is not to assimilate foreign or unfamiliar notions of gender or humanness into our own as if
it is simply a matter of incorporating alienness into an established lexicon. (Butler 130). Butler
thinks that everyone should redo the categories of life basically. Of being a human, being
gendered, and the study of humans. The fact that Butler points this out, makes it noticeable. The
categories of ontology as Butler calls it, needs to be redone. It will make the world a better place
and more comfortable. Butler mentioned that the social world is an anxious and rigid place. The
redoing of this whole thing of nature and life. Accepting different things and people even if they,

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humans do not like. Thats what Butler wanted the readers to know or think about. Butler wanted
to get out there that sexuality isnt the only that is looked at differently. Gender is looked at
differently within the world. For example, Transgendered people within the world arent looked
as humans to some people but then again that also ties with sexualtity. If the world came upon a
new gender would it be considered normal? Butler doesnt think so, She also doesnt think
people will accept it. Butler thinks the world is so involved in themselves as well as the normal
things. Butler thinks that the world will never change, even as much as she wants.

Butler,Judith. Beside Oneself:On The Limits of Sexual Anatomy: Ways of Reading, David
Bartholomae, Anthony Detrosky, Stacey White, Bedford/ St. Martins, 2014, 114-137