For Goffman ‘performing’ social roles was meant in the literal sense, we as human beings incorporate our everyday lives in to a huge on stage performance, switching out status’ between front stage and back stage. According to Goffman the aim of our act is to create and control certain impressions that we chose to pass over to our audience, or family and friends. . Goffman believed that roles and acts of the individuals changed depended on who they were with, for example playing the role of daughter is totally different compared to playing in the role of a girlfriend or work colleague.
Butler first became famous after the publication of her first book in 1990 Gender trouble, which was largely read through out the discipline of sociology and beyond in to wider society. Butler’s ideas were radical and new, people began to think about gender and their identity a lot more. In a certain way this book publication in itself theorized identity as an effect of performance, with great relevance to gender for many people, through reading her book many people began to think in a new way.
Butler argues that sex is a biological given from birth which only in extreme cases be altered, she has the opposite view in regards to gender, Butler sees gender as socially constructed, another of Butlers views it that sex which is natural and gender which is socially constructed doesn’t have to match, so a man can biologically be a man but also have feminine traits, and the same for biological women, they can show signs of masculine behaviour. Butler also puts forward the idea that if gender is socially constructed then there should be more than two categories. Macionis and Plummer define gender role as being a “learning of and the performing of the socially accepted characteristics for a given sex.” (2005, P. 310) Macionis and Plummer also describe Gender performance as a “way of doing gender, the ways in which masculinities and femininities are acted out.” (2005, P. 310)
Butler’s ideas are similar to those of Goffman, in believing that certain aspects of out lives are performed, for Goffman his theory applied every social interaction where as Butlers focus is specifically on Gender being performed especially by women, this she called Gender performativity. In addition Butler considers that gender is a continued performance unable to be completed, an individual is always becoming man or a woman and subject to continual development. This concept may be initially hard to grasp as gender is seen by many as being natural from birth and through out life.
The Heterosexual matrix is the term used for the belief that an individual has a fixed sex from birth either male or female, upon which culture creates a gender, either masculine or feminine; this in turn determines desires towards the opposite sex, for example if your are a man, you should have a masculine gender and be sexually attracted to women. The same applies for women, should be feminine and be attracted to men. Heterosexuality is shown as desired and accepted within that society and culture, where as homosexuality is not. Butler disagrees with this conception, her out look is that an individual has as body, that person may perform a specific identity, which may result in having some desires towards the same or opposite sex. Butler States that binary sex “does not follow the construction of ‘men’ will accrue exclusively to the bodies of males or that ‘women’ will interpret only female bodies.” (1990). A key principle in Butler’s work is the question that if gender is socially constructed then why is there only two genders, in theory there could be hundreds.
Goffman proclaims that props have an essential use within the roles, for example the uses of books and folders can strengthen the student role and also the use of glasses may help the individual to look intelligent or feel they look more intelligent to others. You could also relate this part of the theory to gender as use of props or certain aspects are seen as belonging to either gender group or the other, an example would be long hair is usually a sign of a feminine person, it is shown in the media as being desirable for a woman to have longer hair than a man. An example for a male or masculine gender would be the type of clothes that they wear are different to women’s clothing such as shits and trousers are seen as more masculine than dresses and skirts, usually worn by women.
For Butler gender Performativity is not a free choice, that an individual can carry out as and when they like but is highly constrained and socially policed by others. Consequences will be had if the individual strays away from the accepted behaviour. It is with this that butler suggests that gender gives the appearance of being natural behaviour, because it is forced upon the individual from birth and is almost insisted on throughout childhood and adolescence.
Gender performativity is revealed through the act of Gender subversion, which is mainly taking the gendered roles of both men and women and deliberately placing emphasis on the main characteristics of the gender. Gender subversion is largely carried out by drag queens or comedians, Even though extreme Gender subversion demonstrates that gender is only an act and it is an act that is learned and passed off as being a part of natural human biology.
Both Goffman and Butler believed that the concept of the ‘self’ was not a fixed one, but a term that could easily be changed to suit the environment and the company that the individual was in at any given times, for Goffman this was within every social interaction and for Butler the focus was specifically on Gender.
Bibliography
Butler, J. (1990) Gender Trouble: Routledge.
Elliott, A. (2007) Concepts of the Self, 2nd edition. Cambridge: Polity Press.
Macionis, J, Plummer, K. (2005) Sociology, a Global Introduction, 3rd edition. Essex: Pearson Education Limited 2005.
Ritzer, G. (2003) Contemporary Sociological Theory and its Classical Roots. London: McGraw Hill.