Judith butler: ‘gender as performance’

‘identity can be a site of contest and revision

Unlike Laura Mulvey who presents gender as being fixed (male/female) structured by powerful individuals who are able to have control and institutions: Butler suggests gender is fluid, changeable ‘a set of categories to be played out and performed by individual subjects in individual moments in time and space.’

Butler also suggests we have different identities performed to different people, in different social settings, in different social conditions, supporting the fact gender is a performance.

The different examples of feminine attitudes (tomboy/girlygirl) illustrate the plural nature of gender.

Gender as performative is recognised as  ‘phenomenon that is being reproduced all the time‘ and that ‘nobody is a gender from the start.’

QUOTE FROM JUDITH BUTLER IN AN INTERVIEW TO USE;  

‘The historical meaning of gender can change as its norms are re-enacted, refused or recreated.’

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