"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."
"If Lacan presumes that female homosexuality issues from a disappointed heterosexuality, as observation is said to show, could it not be equally clear to the observer that heterosexuality issues from a disappointed homosexuality?"
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Source: Judith Butler, Maxine Elliot Professor of Comparative Literature and Critical Theory Judith Butler (2002). “Gender Trouble: Tenth Anniversary Edition”, p.63, 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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