Rachel

1. Intersectionality
Intersectionality is the linked nature of different aspects of identity, including but not limited to,
gender, race and social class. This is usually used in discussion of discrimination or oppression to
express that one category cannot be looked at without considering the others. They are all
interlocked. For example, at a given time, I cannot simply be seen as a lower middle class
individual. I have to be considered a lower middle class, white, lesbian woman. Moraga uses
this idea in her book filled with writings by radical women of color. When Cherrie Moraga
visited our campus, she talked about how women are all oppressed and they often argue about
who is more oppressed based on race. In her book, the idea of intersectionality is important
because she discusses how people are bridges between each other because of their
intersectionality. Black lesbians have to explain the blacks to the white lesbians and the lesbians
to the straight blacks.
2. The Other
The Other is the idea that a group is labeled as the other when they are identified as being
something that is not. For instance, woman is the other because she is not man. Simone de
Beauvoir writes extensively about the other in her book The Second Sex. She uses the term to
apply to women and explains how women have forever been labeled as the other even by
themselves. In contrast, she writes about how some groups consider each other the other
(example: Native Americans thought British colonists were the other, but the colonists also
thought of the natives as the other). Women, Beauvoir says, have always been the other from
both perspectives and she uses this argument to discuss women as the second sex in her book.
8. Incorporation versus Internalization
Incorporation is the idea that people incorporate certain attributes, traits and habits into their
daily lives and personalities because of the gender they have been assigned at birth.
Internalization is the idea that as theyre being raised, children internalize certain habits (such as
sitting with your legs closed) because of their upbringing and then they internalize those habits
into something that is called gender. Butler uses these examples of views on gender to explain
how her own view differs from (and is better than) them. Butler discusses the idea of a
performative gender, saying that while we are trained to adopt certain habits, they are not
internalizations that come from a model that is being intimidated. Instead, its something that can
be interrupted which is what gives it its performative quality.
1. Butler on Performative Gender
Butler discusses her ideas of gender in a comparative way to other popular ideas about gender.
She compares her thoughts on performative gender at first to the idea of internalized gender.
The two ideas share distinct similarities, but Butler is very clear on her points of how they differ
and why those differences make her idea better, in her opinion.

Internalization is the idea that people imitate a model of gender and internalize habits as they
grow up, habits that are a means of imitating a gender (either male or female). Butler, however,
asserts that internalization cannot be interrupted, which is where the theory is flawed. Her ideas
of gender as performative allow for an interruption. Butler believes that gender is something
we do and that we adopt habits (of moving, speaking, etc.) but its because of constant pressures
to adopt these habits (for example, parents telling their children to act a certain way: be more
ladylike) and not because were naturally trying to imitate a label that weve had applied to us.
Some drag performances can offer support to Butlers argument, not on the shallow level of
saying that drag is a performance, but because drag is an interruption of those habits that would
not be possible if gender was something that was internalized. Drag is a presentation of gender in
such a way that shows that habits associated with one gender can be masked or changed to have
the same individual perform the opposite gender. This interruption of the normal habits is what
Butler is talking about when she writes about performative gender.