Gender and Its Discontents

Abstract

Gender produces multiple discontents (unease, discomfort, embarrassment, irritation, annoyance) in society. With this straightforward thesis the author addresses the problem of gender—Butlerian “gender trouble”—as a form of cultural discontent or unease. During the ground-breaking and path-paving women’s, feminist, gay and lesbian movements, gender, then female gender, caused cultural irritation for the patriarchy of the then societies and continues to do so to this very day. However, with the recent transgender movement, this cultural unease about gender has taken on entirely new dimensions, including turning gender into an alarming issue, a threatening global specter and annoyingly omnipresent conflict not only in wider society but also in academia. These uneasy issues are here tackled in two ways, through the theory and practice of gender. The way subversive gender theory can trigger collective unease, even if it is falsely imposed, artificially induced, and manipulatively orchestrated, is shown using the example of the abuse of Judith Butler’s gender theory by polemicists in culture war debates surrounding gender and proponents and supporters of the anti-gender movement, clearly betraying their intention of harming communities of gender non-conforming people and those communities’ efforts towards social, political, and legal emancipation. The way transgressive gender practice can trigger relational discomfort in everyday interactions is illustrated through the author’s own “gender story” in the form of a short autoethnography of gender unease, to illustrate the problem of deep sex/gender binarism, essentialism, primordialism, perennialism, and naturalism permeating, completely spontaneously and unreflexively, all our thoughts, words, actions, relationships, institutions, and collectives.