The Cultural Matrix And Gender Identity - 1506 Words

Butler (1999) states that â€Å"‘persons’ only become intelligible through becoming gendered in conformity with recognizable standards of gender intelligibility (p.22)† and describes â€Å"intelligible† genders [as] those which in some sense institute and maintain relations of coherence and continuity among sex, gender, sexual practice, and desire (p. 23).† That is, legitimate persons are those whose gender matches their sex within heterosexual engagements. However, all persons should be intelligible. It is through the cultural matrix, of the cultural practices and political actions, that such normativity of intelligible identities is maintained. Furthermore, Butler (1999) affirmed this notion by stating: The cultural matrix through which gender†¦show more content†¦30).† This desire allows there to be multifaceted sexualizes, which sex education has to take into account in order to provide students with an education that addresses desires. Sexuality repression In the early centuries, the government became aware that they had to learn to manage a growing population. They had acknowledged mortality rates, relationships, and birth control mechanisms in order to understand â€Å"‘population’† as an economic and political problem: population as wealth, population as manpower or labor capacity, population balanced between its own growth and the resources it commanded (Foucault, 1990, p. 25).† At the heart of this policing was sex. The 18th and 19th centuries saw a turn from managing the sex lives of married couples to the governing of perversion in terms of the sexuality of children, the mentally ill, the criminal—inclusive of â€Å"hermaphrodites†, and the homosexual. As these individuals became scrutinized, they began to confess the truths about their sexualities. The rules of sex also started to fray as the â€Å"individual [became] driven, in spite of himself, by the somber madness of sex (Foucault, 1 990, p. 39).† The outing and labeling of such individuals are perverts gave them and those studying them power to no longer be repressed by the governing laws of marriage and desire. Foucault (1990) posits, â€Å"it is through the isolation, intensification, and consolidation of peripheral sexualities that the relations of power to sex and pleasureShow MoreRelatedDolores Hayden : A Feminist Critique Of Architecture And Urban History1535 Words   |  7 Pagesneighbourhoods by disrupting divisions between the private dwelling and the workplace. Working from a socialist feminist perspective Hayden believed that the project’s habitation and operation should represent varied family structures and subvert unbalanced gender roles, with paid work and domestic responsibilities to be shared equally. 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