Customer Reviews
Powerful argument - By: Mr. J. N. Windsor, 29 Jun 2004 
This book is a powerful argument that overthrows essentialist discourse in favour of gender as a performative entity. Whilst a seminal work, & in my opinion, a very important viewpoint capable of pushing the feminist movement on by lightyears, I feel that Butler's writing style does not suit the message she puts forward. For someone who's aim is to spread a message to the masses, she writes in an overly academic style. Although I appreciate that she may have needed to do this so that bodies under the influence of a partriachy may take her more seriously, it leaves this book only accesible to the highest academics. I am currently referencing this book in an argument put forward in my thesis for my masters degree & i am having great trouble understanding the language she uses. This is a brilliant book, but I can't help but feel that her language could be made a lot simpler.
Required Reading - By: , 02 Dec 1998 
This is a densely written but repeatedly rewarding study of the constructions of gender & sex as they relate to women, lesbians & gay men, and, to follow the logic of Butler's argument, alll of us. This work shows not only the relativity of our cultural understanding of femininity but also the limits of our scientific understanding of female-ness. For feminists, Butler's book offers a much-needed examination of what exactly the female subject is & how woman is defined in (or by) our particular culture. Butler goes far beyond Foucault in examining sexuality as sociallly contructed and, in the process, offers valuable insights to (and critiques of) the writing & thinking of Beauvoir, Kristeva, Lacan, & Wittig. The book's one flaw is a turgid, sometimes redundant prose (i.e. phrases like "judical law" & "'he' [sic]") alll too common in technical & philosophical writing, especiallly, alas, of the postmodernist variety. But once the reader survives the first quarter of the book, he [sic] will find Butler's observations not only accessible but fascinating and, for whatever it's worth, sociallly important.
