George R. R. Martin’s love for the 80’s word processor is something akin to writers hand writing the first draft of their greatest works. Our generation is so used to words being auto capitalized and having a squiggly red line under misspelled words that it’s almost like the words on the paper are not our own. I’m not surprised by the amount of writers that have stuck with what we consider “old fashioned” writing processors because they want the words to be their own with their flaws and all. Wordstar is not a processor that i’ve had the bitter pleasure to use but if it is anything like early 90’s Microsoft word, I’m glad I didn’t. While I, a person in their 20’s, would rather not have to go through the harsh task of navigating through software that requires more than a few steps, an older generation found solace in it’s outline. the Article describes it at taking the layout of a typewriter while also having every editing tool only have one function so that there is authenticity without the struggle of having to write something long hand. And while anyone can appreciate not having to write something out, most have grown accustomed to having a computer do all the work for you. Take this wordpress website for instance. when typing out a new post, it does not automatically capitalize the first letter of a new sentence and i’m pretty sure the first time I noticed I rolled my eyes and had to go back and manually fix it. this is a product of having a writing system that does it for you and Wordstar did not do that. At the point of its conception and its golden years, no one could even fathom a system that fixed all the small mistakes on its own and they were satisfied with what they had. Of course there are still the writers that prefer to do the fixing themselves but for ordinary people, having to use an older system would be annoying and tedious. Of course there is a quote from Friedrich Nietzsche about our writing tools shaping our thoughts and it’s true. We find our styles and our typing patters with the hold of what we are given. We have the possibility to write thousands of words in such a short amount of time and without getting a cramp in our wrists because we have technology to do the hard work for us. It’s important to appreciate and understand the history of this tech and how much it has done for writers and readers alike.

In Judith Butler’s “Gender Trouble, Butler focuses on the topics of gender identities between gender and sex. She starts off by introducing the idea of gender as performative, meaning a production of series of effects that combine an impression. Butler feels as though that gender is this phenomenon where us as individuals “perform” gender relatively through what we wear, our posture, our manners, utterances, and etc. The idea of performative gender is socially produced through repetition. Butler strongly believes through that no one is truly born with a gender, but on the other side she believes that once we are born into this world, our gender is already chosen for us through this unexplained destiny.

In this writing, Butler also argues that sex is a social construct and is a category that stems from both social and cultural norms within a setting that reflects history and both social and political aspects. She tests the performative theory of gender through the analysis of drag queens to prove that the idea of gender identity is not a display of something that is supposed to come naturally. Instead she suggests it is a product of actions and behavior that counts as performative. She also makes it a point to say that gestures, apparel, behaviors, utterances, and certain stereotypes all work together as a collective to produce this preconceived notion of masculine and feminine identity. Butler feels as though that this is a problem because it gives people the permission to traffic another person’s gender identity, gender, validate their experiences, and their sexual orientation.

Butler uses both the culture and the lifestyle of drag queens  as an example to continue to prove his point of a performative gender. She uses a documentary called, “Paris is Burning,” which is a 1990 documentary of both drag and queer culture, which is a large part of the drag culture. In drag, there are certain categories that the have to compete in, one being “realness.” In this category, drag contestants would dress as a woman, which Judith says is a way of performing gender. The goal here is to be accepted into both the socially acceptable women or men. They are allowed to perform class, race, and gender within drag races to make them feel more accepted in the world even though institutionally they are ignored. She mentions many examples of drag queens such as Trixie Mattel and Katya who are in Paris is Burning and how they display femininity which in all proves Judith’s theory that there is no particular way to be feminine or a woman.