Judith Butler (1990) - Gender Trouble

• Judith Butler, a feminist philosopher and linguist, proposed that the notion of performativity could also be applied to gender. This relates to the idea that through our behaviour and language choices we 'are being' a man or a woman.
• Gender is performative in that it is productive. Identity is a product rather than a cause.
• Butler highlights "Gender performativity is neither fatally determined nor fully artificial and arbitrary". It is most certainly not theatrical.
• Butler highlights gender's constructed nature in order to fight for the rights of oppressed identities, those that don't conform to the artificial rules that govern normative heterosexuality.
• Butler argues that if the rules that govern normative heterosexuality are not natural or essential, then they do not have any claim to justice or necessity.
• Since the rules that govern normative heterosexuality are historical and rely on their continual enactment by subjects, then they can also be challenged through alternative performative acts.
• Judith Butler coined the term 'Gender Performativity' which refers to the idea that we 'perform' in role as we communicate: "We act, walk and speak in ways that consolidate an impression of being a man or a woman."
• Butler believes we may conform to social norms we have learnt, but we are not biologically preconditioned. We can of course, perform other roles.