authority figures, is an act of choosing to perform a
gender. One of her most controversial theories is
that individuals only perceive themselves as having
constant gender identities, when in reality every
action and every choice they make is one that either
confirms or violates the gender roles of a particular
group.
Because gender is basic to human behavior, the
study of gender can be applied to any (or virtually
any) social context or literary work. Thus, the focus
on gender as a role has recently expanded to the
social and cultural forces that shape men’s gendered
behavior. Therefore, one could carry out a gender
study on the masculinity of men in power, explor-
ing how they enjoy and benefit from their perfor-
mance of masculine-coded behavior. More typically,
however, theorists look at male gendered behavior
among oppressed groups, the ill-effects of the per-
formance of masculinity among dominant groups,
or how the male performance of gender roles has
the potential to harm both men and women. Three
examples of literary works—Suzan-Lori Parks’s
Topdog/Underdog (2002), David Henry Hwang’s
M. Butterfly (1998), and William Shakespeare’s
otheLLo—as well as selected criticism on these
works provide examples of scholarly gender study.
In Topdog/Underdog and M. Butterfly, the authors
consciously incorporate a study of gender into their
creative processes. Topdog/Underdog is a play that
works to explain the ill-effects of contemporary
lower-class African-American male gendered roles.
Because the play’s two male characters, the brothers
Booth and Lincoln, are poor and largely uneducated,
they face restrictions in the performance of their
masculinity that wealthier, and especially wealthy
Caucasian, men do not. All the men in the larger
American culture depicted in the play may display
their masculinity through acts of sexual virility and
by dominance over men lower in status themselves.
Only middle- and upper-status men can dem-
onstrate their masculinity by flaunting their high
work incomes. Because the brothers are poor and
extremely low-status, they are restricted to sexual
prowess and the domination of one another as the
means of defining their masculinity. The ill-effects
of the encompassing cultural system are shown
when their mutual attempts at domination culmi-
nate in Booth shooting Lincoln to death.
M. Butterfly also looks at the expression of mas-
culinity within oppressed groups and, as in the case
of Topdog/Underdog, explores the issues of gender
in combination with those of race. Here the com-
parison is between a sexist and racist male French
diplomat, René Gallimard, and a transsexual (a
person of one gender who adopts the clothing and
often the mannerisms of the opposite sex gender
but retains their original sexual organs) Chinese
male spy, Song Lilling. The two have an enduring
love affair, during which time Lilling steals various
diplomatic secrets and completely conceals his male
sexual organs from his French lover, despite many
occasions of sexual activity. The cause of Gallimard’s
misreading of Lilling’s sex is shown to be the result
of Lilling’s perfect performance of what Gallimard
believes to be Asian femininity. For example, Lilling
apologizes for her breastless chest and begs Galli-
mard to love her anyway. Gallimard is so attracted to
this performance of self-denigration and subordina-
tion that he fails to explore the likely physical causes
for Lilling’s lack of breasts. Similarly, Lilling claims
to be so shy and ashamed of her body that she will
not allow Gallimard to touch her genitals or to see
her/him naked. Again, Gallimard is so attracted to
what he perceives as the feminine performances of
shame that he does not explore other likely explana-
tions for Lilling’s behavior. The plot’s obvious twist
is that the transsexual Lilling uses the performance
of subordination and femininity to gain power over
a heterosexual man who enjoys performing mas-
culine dominance. Thus, while Lilling’s behavior
is not traditionally masculine, and thus would be
disempowering for many men, for the character of
Lilling, such performances of gender are nonetheless
his means of expressing power and dominance over
another man, and thus they express his masculinity.
In “Men and Women in Othello,” from her book
Broken Nuptials in Shakespeare’s Plays, Carol Thomas
Neely looks at the gendered behavior of the men in
Othello and compares it to the women’s gendered
behavior. Neely evaluates a 16th-century play in
terms of seeming universal gender roles and finds
the men of the play to be too concerned with male
honor, their ability to dominate other men, and theirgender 41