Gender Perfomativity or Gender Performance is a postmodern feminist theory and also aligns with Queer theory. It is a theory given by Judith Butler in her book The Gender Trouble which becomes important to understand gender in a different lens. Butler as a postmodern critic was directly influenced by poststructuralism and Derridean deconstruction theory. She tries to posit and argue gender and its attributes which dissociate from the mainstream feminist ideas and theories.
Gender in mainstream feminism refers to the social construct where the society has constructed gender from the biological sex of male and female. The feminist tries to dissociate the difference between gender and sex and highlights that gender is a social construct and it is not fixed whereas sex is a biological fact and it is constant. Butler tries to highlight the understanding of gender and the roles assigned particularly to each gender and the identity given based on the gender performances.
According to Butler, gender is like a text. It is a performance and both male and female are supposed to perform a role from the attributes given to gender. She states that gender is performing an attribute that gives a particular individual their identity. She tries to highlight a gender has to be performed by an individual to give a certain norm of identity. The identity is given based on the performance of the roles or attributes performed by a particular sex. However, Butler tries to subvert the given identity by stating that the attributes are not fixed (poststructuralism) and hence the identity cannot be fixed either as it will constantly fluctuate. This gives a sense of postmodern approach towards the rejection of objective understanding of masculinity and femininity as the roles attributed to it are not fixed.
Butler uses postmodern approach of rejection of objectivity in understanding gender. The understanding or the very definition of a woman and man is not objective. She highlights that there are no clear definition of objective woman and man. It is because a female can perform the attributes of a man and the identity given to that particular cannot be fixed either as she is just performing the attributes of an opposite gender and also performs the attributes of the woman gender roles and vice versa. Hence, the idea of not fixed attributes of a particular subverts the fixed identity of a gender and also subvert the objective definition of a man and a woman. Butler simply suggest that there is no objective definition of a man and a woman.
Butler’s idea of gender performance also gives rise to queer theories. As the attributes given to both the gender where a woman is suppose to attract a man as well a man is suppose to attract a woman is not fixed as well. This attributes when not fixed gives rise to queer theory as some man performs the attributes of a woman who is attracted to man and vice versa. This performance gives rise to identity and a particular discourse is given especially the LGBTQ discourses but Butler subverts the given identity based on performances as it is not fixed and hence the idea of traditional genders where gender is composed of two binary opposition is subverted (poststructuralism reacts to Structuralism binary opposition) and establishes multiple subjective idea of genders born out of gender performances.
