Question

You're in a Gender and Women's Studies introductory course, and a fellow student gives their take on a question that asked "What is Gender Performance? and What are some ways that you perform your gender?". The student stated, "Gender performance is the idea that gender is shown everyday through learned performances based on how our culture views masculinity and femininity, and how genders are supposed to "act". I preform my gender by wearing makeup, wearing hair down, how I dress, how I sit ("ladylike"), and how I talk to people is how I preform my gender and how I express myself."

**QUESTION: How would you respond to this student's idea of gender performance/their ways of performing gender? Responses must be respectful and informative, and may include thought provoking questions to further the dialogue between students.  

Answer 1

The response of the student clearly depicted the idea of the American philosopher and gender theorist Judith Butler, who first coined the term "Gender performance". According to her, both gender and sex are not completely natural and both these are performed by the individuals and then becomes natural over a period of time. In other words, we learn to talk, walk and behave in the ways that are consistent with our culture's idea of masculinity and femininity that makes us men or women. The performances typical of the gender to which we belong to are learned and performed based on what is expected from that specific gender in that culture. So, we 'perform' or 'communicate' our gender to other people. For example, The type of dress a person wear, the tone or pitch of their voice, the hairstyles they have, the accessories they wear, the body language are some of the ways through which a person performs their gender.

I would further ask the students as, "If we tend to perform our gender based on our sex, i.e a child who is born as a male is expected to perform his gender by expressing masculine behaviors as he grows up and a child who is born a female is expected to perform her gender by expressing feminine behaviors as she grows up, then what factors influence the individuals to not perform their "typical gender role". For example, a person is born as a male, but performs behaviors that are mostly associated with femininity, so why are they not performing the behavior that are typically expected from their gender?".