In excerpts from her book, Gender Trouble, Judith Butler discusses “gender performativity” and the relationship between performativity and sexuality. She also implies that gender should not be seen as binary, but rather as fluid. She states that genitals need not apply when speaking about gender and sexuality as one should not, and do not, have anything to do with one another. The dominant ideology, or heterosexual illusion, is that someone with a penis, will cause one to sexually identify as a man and will cause one to be sexually attracted to women.

Butler questions this assertion, asking if this really is the “natural” structure of our environment, or whether sexual identity is socially constructed based upon our genitalia as a way of classification and restriction. To her, our sex and sexual desires are not linked, and do not comprise our identity. The falsity of this link can be seen when we examine other cultures and historical eras, when sex and sexuality were not inevitably interrelated (like Roman, Greeks, etc.) like they are in today’s western society.

Butler essentially undermines the distinction between gender and sexuality, arguing that gender is not an “inner truth” or a core part of our identity. Rather gender is a construction borne out of a “stylish repetition of actions,” or in other words, a performance. This performance includes acting out our everyday behaviors: the way we walk, talk, move, dress, and act both publicly and privately. This behavior “congeals” over time, making us think that the gender effect is an inner-truth or part of our identity, when it is in fact a by-product of social construction. Gender is not inevitable, then. It is fluid and free-flowing, and we can change the way we perceive it by “reclassification.”

Judith Jack Halberstam describes an interesting phenomena in their essay “Female Masculinity,” in which, in a de-industrialized age, many men perceive their masculinity as fragile and powerless. As the perception of “manliness” changes due to a rise of women in the workplace, or a rise in the acceptance of homosexuality, a desire is produced in many males to reaffirm his “maleness,” or straight-white-male dominance, over the female body. When we look at this “crisis of masculinity” in the real-terms, we can see how it applies to our social and political world.

If we watch the news, or pay attention at all to politics, we’ll often hear the term “war on women.” This is a term that refers to an effort to restrict women’s rights, particularly in regards to her health decisions, her workplace, her sex-life, and her sexuality. Abortion, seems to be an especially divisive subject, in which many people either lean towards the “pro-life” or “pro-choice” side. In regards to political viewpoints and politicians, and while both sides are ultimately pandering to their base, democrats are often on the side of “choice,” stating that women should be able to choose whether or not to have children. Republicans—a party that is primarily represented by older white men in congress—on the other hand, are often “anti-choice,” stating that the life of the unborn child is their primary concern. It is curious, however, that the life of the mother is never a part of the Republican conversation about access (or lack thereof) to abortion. They never speak of whether or not a child would harm the woman physically or mentally; or whether the woman wants a child; whether she has goals and dreams that a child may interrupt; whether she’s been raped or sexually assaulted. In these discussions, her role is relegated to that of an incubator, and her life is unacknowledged and unappreciated.

By not addressing these issues, Republicans prove that their goal isn’t to save babies or promote Christian values, it’s to control the woman and keep her in her traditional role—to that of the housewife and mother. When women are kept in their traditional roles, men are kept in theirs. Their maleness is kept intact, crisis averted. Further, if their true goal were to save babies, one would think that contraception would be used as an answer to prevent an unwanted pregnancy. However, this is not the case. Many of those who seek to restrict abortion access also seek to restrict contraceptive access, a further attempt to control women’s bodies. We can see this with Congress’ attempt to repeal the Obamacare mandate that insurance companies provide free birth control to all women, as well as the recent Supreme Court ruling in favor of Hobby Lobby, who sued to prevent birth control coverage for their female employees because of the company’s religious beliefs (never mind that corporations cannot, by definition, have religious beliefs). A few years ago, when congress called a “religious freedom” hearing to talk about contraception and the Obamacare mandate, not one woman was called to testify.

Contraception and abortion threatens the male in the way that women are able to, without their partner’s input, decide when they wish to have children. Prior to unrestricted access to contraception and abortion, men were able to dictate when the woman got pregnant, how many children they would have, etc., effectively choosing when a woman’s independent life would end. She would be confined to the home with little choice in the matter, as her only job was to bear children and take care of her husband. This made her dependent upon the male, and women were chattel, in this way. Men not only had social control over the female body, but economic control as well.

With the advent of contraception and legal abortion, women were finally able to make their own choices. It seems as if many men in power idealize this era—they wish for a woman’s place to be in the home, and for their power to go unchallenged and unsurpassed. So it is unsurprising, then, that attempts to restrict abortion and contraception access has been experiencing a resurgence in recent years. It seems as if it is almost a last ditch effort of a dying generation, who experienced the sexual revolution and the de-industrialization of labor, to reassert their male dominance over an entirely new generation of women. They are still experiencing a crisis of masculinity, their fear attempting to dictate our bodies.