Describe how Judith Butler differs from the phenomenological feminism explicated by Simone de Beauvoir. Include in your answer why Butler maintains it is dangerous for feminists to rely on or promote the idea of “women” as a universal category and compare and contrast it to Barbara Fields’ notion of race as an ideology.

Answer and Explanation:

Judith Butlers argues that gender is created by the act of your performance. The performance is already constituted, and it is being performed through the individual acts of the body. She further elaborates on the idea that we are obliged to consider the binary gender system. She proposes that gender identity is constructed through acts. There should be a space to construct different gender based on individual acts. We are confined in our bodies, and people have to Act to move in society.

Butlers argue that performing a gender itself creates a gender. Butlers critique the terms Sex and Gender, which are being used by feminists. She argues that it is dangerous to make a group of Women describing its particular characteristics. So she is of the view that feminists should not use the term Women. The main agenda of her to create a society that should be “flexible, free-floating and not caused by other stable factors.”

In her essay, Second Sex, Beauvoir defines that women are considered as second sex because they are defined as a relation to men. She argues about the St. Thomas, who referred women as an imperfect man. She suggests that women are being considered others in a society, which is an excuse for men not to understand women and their problems.

She talks about the hierarchy in the society like race, class, and religion in the same way gender is being categorized to give rise to the patriarchal system.