Editing Judith Butler (section)

===''Performative Acts and Gender Constitution'' (1988)===
In the essay "Performative Acts and Gender Constitution: An Essay in Phenomenology and Feminist Theory," Judith Butler proposes that [[gender performativity|gender is performative]] – that is, gender is not so much a static identity or role, but rather comprises a set of acts which can evolve over time.<ref>{{Cite journal |last=Butler |first=Judith |date=December 1988 |title=Performative Acts and Gender Constitution: An Essay in Phenomenology and Feminist Theory |url=https://www.jstor.org/stable/3207893 |journal=Theatre Journal |volume=40 |issue=4 |pages=519–520 |doi=10.2307/3207893 |jstor=3207893 }}</ref> Butler states that because gender identity is established through behavior, there is a possibility to construct different genders via different behaviors.<ref name="Jones2018">{{cite web | url = https://www.openculture.com/2018/02/judith-butler-on-gender-performativity.html | first = Josh | last = Jones | date = 7 February 2018 | title = Theorist Judith Butler Explains How Behavior Creates Gender: A Short Introduction to "Gender Performativity" | website = Open Culture | access-date = 8 July 2021}}</ref> <blockquote>"...if gender is instituted through acts which are internally discontinuous, then the appearance of substance is precisely that, a constructed identity, a performative accomplishment which the mundane social audience, including the actors themselves, come to believe and to perform in the mode of belief. If the ground of gender identity is the stylized repetition of acts through time, and not a seemingly seamless identity, then the possibilities of gender transformation are to be found in the arbitrary relation between such acts, in the possibility of a different sort of repeating, in the breaking or subversive repetition of that style."<ref>{{Cite book |last=Butler |first=Judith |title=Performative Acts and Gender Constitution: An Essay in Phenomenology and Feminist Theory |date=December 1988 |publisher=The Johns Hopkins University Press |pages=520 |language=en}}</ref></blockquote>Butler concludes their essay with a personal reflection on the strengths and limitations of widespread feminist theories which function on a solely binary perception of gender. Butler critiques what they call the "reification" of sexual difference within a heterosexual framework, and articulates their concern with how this framework affects the accurate presentation (or lack thereof) of "femaleness" across a diverse array of experiences, including those of women.<ref>{{Cite journal |last=Butler |first=Judith |date=December 1988 |title=Performative Acts and Gender Constitution: An Essay in Phenomenology and Feminist Theory |url=https://www.jstor.org/stable/3207893 |journal=Theatre Journal |volume=40 |issue=4 |pages=530 |doi=10.2307/3207893 |jstor=3207893 }}</ref><blockquote>"As a corporeal field of cultural play, gender is a basically innovative affair, although it is quite clear that there are strict punishments for contesting the script by performing out of turn or through unwarranted improvisations. Gender is not passively scripted on the body, and neither is it determined by nature, language, the symbolic, or the overwhelming history of patriarchy. Gender is what is put on, invariably, under constraint, daily and incessantly, with anxiety and pleasure, but if this continuous act is mistaken for a natural or linguistic given, power is relinquished to expand the cultural field bodily through subversive performances of various kinds."<ref>{{Cite journal |last=Butler |first=Judith |date=December 1988 |title=Performative Acts and Gender Constitution: An Essay in Phenomenology and Feminist Theory |url=https://www.jstor.org/stable/3207893 |journal=Theatre Journal |volume=40 |issue=4 |pages=531 |doi=10.2307/3207893 |jstor=3207893 }}</ref></blockquote>Throughout this text, Butler derives influence from French philosophers such as [[Simone de Beauvoir]] and [[Maurice Merleau-Ponty]], particularly de Beauvoir's ''[[The Second Sex]]'' and Merleau-Ponty's "The Body in its Sexual Being." Butler also cites works by [[Gayle Rubin]], [[Mary Anne Warren]], and their own piece "Sex and Gender in Simone de Beauvoir's ''Second Sex''" (1986), among others.