Performativity
Butler asserts that “appearance is achieved through a performative twist of language and or discourse that conceals the fact that “being” a sex or a gender is fundamentally impossible”2.With this Butler is merely informing her audience that one’s gender is not innate or apparent, but rather something that is assigned to us by the normative culture we were born into. Furthering this point Butler says this “the substantive effect of gender is performatively produced and compelled by the regulatory practices of gender coherence” 2. What Butler is trying to get across here is that the concept of gender as we know it would not exist without actors acting out these prescribed scripts everyday. This pressure of performativity on the individual takes away one’s autonomy and grants only the ability to be formed by others around you“Gender proves to be performative— that is, constituting the identity it is purported to be. In this sense, gender is always a doing”2. If gender is a doing then every person on this earth is a performer. We construct our own image of gender based on social norms and in doing so bill ourselves as the subject of gender, the person being acted upon. We must espouse gender ideals from popular culture and reinvent the language of gender before the true gender identity of someone may be revealed.
