On Thursday, November 21, my group and I attended a monthly event hosted by The National Organization for Women (NOW). Each month they pick a new theme for the meetings; the theme for the meeting we went to was feminist philosophy and philosophers. The goal of the fieldwork was to get a better understanding and background of feminism in general before we narrowed down our topic. We learned about a feminist philosopher and author named Judith Butler who taught us that biological sex does not equal gender. Judith Butler also told us that our culture’s need to define the difference between the genders because this is one of the root causes of gender issues. To directly quote Judith Butler: “…gender is a kind of imitation for which there is no original; in fact, it is a kind of imitation that produces the very notion of the original as an effect and consequence of the imitation itself…what they imitate is a phantasmic ideal of heterosexual identity….” In simpler terms, no one can express their gender in an individual way. Gender expression can cause people to think that the way they express their gender is unique. However, gender expression is defined by cultural and societal norms and stereotypes. Due to this fact, people imitate the imaginary ideal of what the heterosexual man or woman looks like based on their biological sex. This theory taught me that the only way to define our gender for ourselves is to not identify with the genders defined by culture. This greatly impacted my understanding of how sex and gender relate to each other in nature and in our culture. Prior to the meeting, I thought that sex and gender were directly related, but the other attendees of the meeting taught me that penis≠man and vagina≠woman. I believe that the next steps for us is to continue to go the meetings .