1.3: Gender Performativity

Drag Culture

The cultural anthropologist Esther Newton published Mother Camp: Female Impersonators in America, a groundbreaking ethnography of drag culture in 1972. Newton uses the term drag queen to describe a “homosexual male who often, or habitually, dresses in female attire.”^[19] Newton separated the sexed body from the gender expressed on it, suggesting that there is no natural link between the two, as discussed in the previous section, but in 1972 the link between sex and gender remained tightly clamped. Newton writes, “The effect of the drag system is to wrench sex roles loose from that which supposedly determines them, that is, genital sex. Gay people know that sex-typed behavior can be achieved, contrary to what is popularly believed. They know that the possession of one type of genital equipment by no means guarantees the ‘naturally appropriate’ behavior.”^[20] Like Rubin, Newton was writing before the 1990 birth of queer theory. Also like Rubin, her intellectual investments and theoretical findings were harbingers of things to come. In fact, Judith Butler, who is often identified as an early and formative player in the creation of queer theory, cites both theorists as influential to her work on performativity.

Judith Butler

Judith Butler’s Gender Trouble, originally published in 1990, introduces the term performativity to suggest that gender identity is not natural and does not emanate from an essential truth that can be located on or in the body (figure 1.5). For Butler, gender is established as consistent and cohesive through its repeated performance.^[21] Importantly, for Butler, because gender must be constantly reperformed, it can be intentionally or unintentionally troubled, revealing it as an ongoing project with no origin. This is similar to Newton’s observation of drag, particularly her suggestion that drag reveals gender as a performance.

Gender Trouble was critiqued for ignoring the materiality of the body and real sex differences. In a follow-up publication, Butler argues that sex is a regulatory ideal that forces many bodies into a two-part system.^[22] This is likely reminiscent of Fausto-Sterling’s provocation that there are five discernible sexes. Butler responded to critique by arguing that, although discourse does not produce material sex differences, it organizes these differences, gives them meaning, and renders them legible.^[23]

Judith Butler: Your Behavior Creates Your Gender

Judith Butler describes the social construction of gender, and the policing of gender, by social institutions in this video in the Big Think series. Clearly a social constructionist, Butler emphasizes that she considers gender an important site of freedom and pleasure. 

• Butler states that there is a difference between saying that gender is performed as opposed to saying gender is performative. Describe that difference in your own words. What examples of different kinds of behavior help you understand that difference? And if you disagree with this idea, explain why you do not see an important difference between the two.
• Butler names institutional powers, like psychologists and psychiatrists, and informal practices, like bullying, that try to keep us in our place. Has someone you know had their gender presentation challenged or censored? Was there any way for the person to resist that challenge? How would you respond to that challenge today?

In Female Masculinity, Jack Halberstam continues the work of disentangling gender from genitals through a series of interpretive readings of literary, filmic, and historical representations (figure 1.6). Halberstam argues that female masculinity “actually affords us a glimpse of how masculinity is constructed as masculinity.”^[24] In other words, women and especially lesbians who are masculine reveal masculinity as a construct, in much the same way that drag queen performances reveal femininity as a construct. Halberstam convincingly claims, “Masculinity must not and cannot and should not reduce down to the male body and its effects.”^[25] Like many queer theorists engaging gender, Halberstam deemphasizes genitals, refocusing on gender expressions. In other words, much as Newton observes about drag performances of femininity, anybody can put on a gender expression.

In Conclusion

Queer theories of gender have influenced scholars across disciplines, radically transforming how we think about gender. For Butler, there is no natural and essential gender or sexuality that queers deviate from. For Newton, femininity is not the property of women, just as for Halberstam masculinity is not the property of men. Instead, we are all citing, at times contesting, at others complying with, existing ideas about gender and sexuality. Additionally, these ideas, and the value hierarchies that adhere to them, are maintained only by their reproduction.

The work discussed in this chapter dissipates some of the power that coheres around the idea of natural gender and sexuality, an idea that has often been used to mark queer genders and sexualities as unnatural and by extension inferior to heterosexuality.

Check Your Knowledge

Contributed by Has Arakelyan, Rio Hondo College

Multiple-Choice Questions

1. According to Eve Sedgwick, what concept is central to the construction of the modern nation-state?
   A) Biological determinism
   B) Religious doctrine
   C) Sexual identity categorization
   D) Capitalism

2. Judith Butler’s theory of performativity suggests that:
   A) gender identity is innate and biologically fixed.
   B) dender is performed repeatedly and has no essential origin.
   C) only drag performances challenge gender norms.
   D) sex differences are socially constructed.

3. Which scholar introduced the concept of the “sex-gender system”?
   A) Anne Fausto-Sterling
   B) Judith Butler
   C) Gayle Rubin
   D) Suzanne Kessler

4. Anne Fausto-Sterling argued that biological sex:
   A) is binary and unchangeable.
   B) is purely cultural.
   C) exists on a spectrum with more than two categories.
   D) is irrelevant to gender.

5. Which of the following best reflects Suzanne Kessler’s critique of Fausto-Sterling?
   A) Gender identity cannot be theorized without considering economics.
   B) Gender is better understood through genital examination.
   C) Intersex categories are biologically invalid.
   D) Gender performance, not genitalia, is used to assign gender in social contexts.

Short Answer / Essay Questions

1. Compare and contrast Eve Sedgwick’s “minoritizing” and “universalizing” views of homosexuality. How do these frameworks influence modern conversations about sexual identity?
2. Explain Judith Butler’s concept of gender performativity. How does this idea challenge conventional understandings of gender and sex? Include examples like drag or social norms in your explanation.
3. Describe Gayle Rubin’s concept of the “sex-gender system.” How does this system work to uphold patriarchy and heteronormativity according to her analysis?
4. Discuss Anne Fausto-Sterling’s argument for a spectrum of biological sex categories. What social or political systems does her work challenge, and how was it critiqued by scholars like Suzanne Kessler?
5. Many of these theorists distinguish between 'sex' and 'gender' in different ways. How does the nature vs. nurture debate play out in the work of Rubin, Butler, and Fausto-Sterling? Whose argument do you find most compelling and why?

Multiple-Choice Questions - Answers

1. C) Sexual identity categorization
2. B) gender is performed repeatedly and has no essential origin.
3. C) Gayle Rubin
4. C) exists on a spectrum with more than two categories.
5. D) Gender performance, not genitalia, is used to assign gender in social contexts.