Creating Gender in Linear and nonlinear texts

Gender as Performance

Gender has been considered in terms of nature or nurture.
The ideas behind Wasp Factory suggest that there is a third option.
   
. The place of testosterone in aggressive behaviour is still debated. High testosterone may be a product of aggressive behaviour, rather than a cause.   Frank does not behave the way she does because of biological causes - she does not have a Y chromosome. She has not been born with a 'male' brain. She does have high levels of circulating testosterone (for a girl) but she was not subject to these at critical times - in the womb and in early development
  The third option is that proposed by Judith Butler, that of gender as performance.  
Frank has received nurture only from her rather odd father. She could to some extent be socialized into stereotypically male behaviour, but this would not explain the rapid change of attitude she shows on discovering that she is a normal female, rather than a castrated male.   We are not the passive subjects of our biology but neither do we fulfill pre-given cultural roles.
   

 

 

 

 

 

 Patriarchy favoured the idea of biology as destiny, Feminism countered this by arguing that nurture is what counts.

In each of these texts gendered behaviour could be seen as a performance.

Frank's behaviour is performance, even in 'his' own eyes.


 
 

Yod has no reason to behave in a nurturing role towards Ari but he does wish to please Shira. He acts in the way which he interprets as being the most likely to do that.

 

  
The behaviour in Victory Garden's particularly the sexual behaviour is unashamed performance, the reader being in a voyeuristic role.   Shelley Jackson's Patchwork Girl cannot follow nature - since she is a human product, not a being with a natural creation. She rejects patriarchy. She strives to be what her various body-parts dictate, but most of all she acts herself; her gendered behaviour and her sexual encounters are all performative.