How feminist theory and gender roles are used in film, literature and society.

     Gender roles are basically performative and, as Judith Butler states in Bodies That Matter, constantly reinstated by that same performativity.  What is a real woman according to society and its powers that be?   A woman steps into a complexly repressed role in order to legitimize a false, man-crafted law of the universe.  Since the very onset of our lives, we are taught to be secondary figures.  We play house and change dolls' diapers; we wear princess outfits and assume the role of maidens in distress; we are taught to loathe our bodies and conform to the Barbie-doll specimen.  All these things we do in the interest of a patriarchal society that imposes the heterosexual matrix.  As a result, we end up becoming products of this power structure:  we mass produce babies, we clean and cook and we measure beauty by a standard emphasizing powerless and frailty.  But why must there be a dominant gender?  According to the Bible, Eve was formed from Adam's rib, but who wrote the Bible?  It was not a god-like creature but several very human and therefore subjective men who desired to be in control.  Man created god in his image.  Therefore, god has a penis and Jesus does not have a sexually active mother. 

It is a mockery of Biblical principles to presume domination leads  to spirituality.  If there is a god, aren't we all made of flesh and blood and therefore equal?   We all come from matter and in the end dissolve back into the greater matter of the universe.  Death becomes the great equalizer when our bodies putrefy and gender is revealed to be a socially-established boundary.  The penis is a minor organ, a protruding piece of muscle and skin.  Why should those who have it wield the law and impose taboos and boundaries?  For that matter, the clitoris is as much of a protrusion.  Moreover, it does not take as much away from the brain as the other male head.  We must break out of our categories by realizing they are imaginary.  The origins of humanity lie in the chaos of the organic, not the clean realm of the law.  Let us break these phantasmic chains that prevent us from exploring ourselves, reaching our full potential and liking ourselves. The soul does not have a gender and the powers of creativity and love go beyong biological sex. 

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