Part 2 Sexuality and Identity in the Internet World

This is a continuation about the previous post on Sexuality and Identity in the Internet World

To understand our subject for the study, it is imperative that we discuss the theory that will help us analyze the situations. The study has its grounds on Judith Butler’s study about the Queer Theory, in her book Gender Trouble:Feminism and the Subversion of Identity (1990). Butler points out a new model called ‘heterosexual matrix’ in which ‘sex’ is seen as a binary biological given – you are born female or male – and then ‘gender’is the cultural component which is socialized into the person on that basis. (Gauntlet 2008). Butler’s overall argument is that we should not accept that any of these follow from each other – we should shatter the imagined connections (Ibid.) which can be summarized in this diagram.

Source: Media, Gender, and Identity (Gauntlett 2008)

Rather than taking the historical attributes to gender as fixed as male and female, Butler sees gender as a fluid variable that shifts and changes in different contexts and at different times (Ibid.). The theory can be a good tool in analyzing the reason why a person shifts from different gender. The theory is not limited to homosexuality but is rather a part of it.

The theory asserts that identities are not fixed – neither to the body nor to the ‘self’ –we can select gender in whatever way we prefer. Although some gender patterns may have acquired and learned socially, these can be broken by performing non-normative ways of how a person may appear or act and the mass media plays its role in breaking the barriers of acting in a normative ways.Part 1 post about of this