"Gender is not something that one is, it is something one does, an act... a "doing" rather than a "being". There is no gender identity behind the expressions of gender; that identity is performatively constituted by the very "expressions" that are said to be its results. If the immutable character of sex is contested, perhaps this construct called 'sex' is as culturally constructed as gender; indeed, perhaps it was always already gender, with the consequence that the distinction between sex and gender turns out to be no distinction at all."
"I'm no great fan of the phallus, and have made my own views known on this subject before, so I do not propose a return to a notion of the phallus as the third term in any and all relations of desire."
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Source: Judith Butler, Maxine Elliot Professor of Comparative Literature and Critical Theory Judith Butler (2004). “Undoing Gender”, p.135, Routledge
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"Gender is not something that one is, it is something one does, an act… a doing rather than a being."
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