@Eden@weirder.earth @distel the works that termed woman with a stable definition would be all of white male philosophy since Plato; c.f. in particular the notion of the “Eternal Feminine” (look it up on Wikipedia)
the work which first challenged that definition would probably be “The Second Sex” by Simone du Beauvoir, which made the case that if womanness were inherent, a DFAB person acting “unwomanly” would be paradoxical. DFAB people are called unwomanly all the time, ergo womanhood is not inherent to “the female sex”, ergo the destabilizing of the concept of “woman” and what is popularly termed the sex/gender split of second-wave feminism
(Butler will go on to complicate the idea that sex is a stable category either, but it is taken as generally understood at this point that gender isn’t. “Stable” here can be read as “natural” or “biological” because anything which is socially-constructed necessarily will change with society.)
@Eden@weirder.earth @distel as a note, when TERFs speak out “against gender” it is precisely because of this instability; they want to ground feminism in what they see as the material realities of sex rather than gender, which they see as nebulous, unreal, and ill-defined
@Eden@weirder.earth @distel having not actually read it, take this analysis with a grain of salt, but my understanding of Gender Trouble is that Butler is speaking to a feminism which is unsure to what extent it should give a shit about gender (over/alongside sex), and saying (1) you should absolutely give a shit about gender, and (2) sex is not the bastion you thought it was
@Eden@weirder.earth @distel and Butler is doing this as a vital energy from a DFAB person who has felt alienated from contemporary feminism on the basis of gender things