En los umbrales del genero? Beauvoir, Butler y el feminismo ilustrado

The aim of this paper is to analyze certain aspects of the category of gender, which is central to the enlightened feminist project, in order to show some of the challenges to which this project is currently confronted. For doing so, I will take Judith Butler’s reading of Simone de Beauvoir –an indisputable referent for such feminist frame– and the contesting arguments made against the performativity of gender by this tradition. My contention is that the question around «how to become a woman» continues to be at the center of this debate. Therefore, in light of the tension between Beauvoir’s equality tradition and the problem of sexual difference, I will focus on the debate concerning post estructuralist radical constructivist views and their relation to Beauvoir’s own constructivism.