Judith Butler – Gender as a performance

Nov 27th, 2020

This post was originally published on Apr 6th, 2018 as part of a larger work titled “Gender: Flip the script”

The idea that gender isn’t tied to a persons biology is becoming more widely accepted in society. This was first postulated by French philosopher Simone De Beauvoir in her work “The Second Sex”. Building off of the work done by Beauvoir, Judith Butler¹ expands this into the theory that gender is a flexible and changing expression of the self, instead of a stable identity.

An ongoing performance

In her model, our experience of gender as a fixed trait is an illusion produced by repeating actions.

gender is an identity tenuously constituted in time, instituted in an exterior space through a stylized repetition of acts.

(Butler, Gender trouble: Subjects of sex/gender/desire, pp214)

For example, a man might identify as “manly” which he believes leads him to do traditionally masculine things. Butler suggests that the reverse is true; it’s the repeated manly actions (and the expectations of others that he act manly) that gives him the sense he is a man.

Regulating ourselves

Discrete genders are part of what “humanizes” individuals within contemporary culture; indeed, we regularly punish those who fail to do their gender right.

(Butler, Gender trouble: Subjects of sex/gender/desire, pp213)

We use and regulate our bodies to convey our gender (among other things). In this way, our bodies are a medium: a channel (or mode) of communication and artistic expression. This medium is regulated politically and socially.

Our bodies are politically regulated by the rules enforced by the state, for example (non-exhaustive):

clothing laws
limits to bodily modification like piercings
bans or over-regulation on medical procedures like abortion, gender confirmation surgeries, or a hysterectomy/vasectomy (tube tying)
guidelines for procedures like genital reshaping surgery on infants
taxes on necessary hygiene products like tampons
the legality of the gay and trans panic defense

Our bodies are socially regulated by the retribution we endure and expect from other civilians. This includes harrassment, assault, bullying, etc for (non-exhaustive):

wearing certain clothing
having different mannerisms
showing interest in the “wrong” gendered activities or hobbies

In Western society, we enforce the gender binary regularly, often ridiculing or violently subduing/disciplining people who don’t conform to societies expectations of man/woman. One doesn’t need to look far to see this; men who act too feminine are often ridiculed and attacked, as are women who act too masculine.²

“Natural” gender

Since it is essential to our safety and position in society, the performance of gender must be consistent and repeated. Through self-surveillance³, we enforce the consistency and apparent naturalism⁴ (biological-ness) of our gender.

Gender is […] a construction that regularly conceals its genesis; the tacit collective agreement to perform, produce, and sustain discrete and polar genders as cultural fictions is obscured by the credibility of those productions — and the punishments that attend not agreeing to believe in them; the construction “compels” our belief in its necessity and naturalness.

(Butler, Gender trouble: Subjects of sex/gender/desire, pp213)

The public enforcement of gender, combined with the conscious and unconscious self-policing of our gender expressions leads to the regular, rigid, and predictable expressions of “maleness” and “femaleness” that makes gender seem biological, or as Butler often says, ‘essential’.⁵

In this way, the perception of a concrete and objective gender reality is created by:

the constructed story of gender that we perform, combined with
the ways that it is naturalized⁴ and enforced by those around us.

In a nutshell

Butler argues that gender is a changing expression of self, instead of being a stable part of someone identity. It is a performance that we use to communicate with the people around us (i.e. the construction of gender), and we use our bodies (which are a politically and socially regulated medium) as the essential prop to convey our gender.

If we are “bad at gender” we are punished and policed by ourselves and others to fulfil the gendered expectations of Western society. Avoiding this punishment causes gender to be a repeated performance that creates predictable expressions of gender that appear biological (or “essential”). These everyday forms of gender expression position us (by ourselves and others) in the Western gender hierarchy.

Tristan Potter