Judith Butler Gender Quotations

Gender is an identity tenuously constituted in time, instituted in an exterior space through a stylized repetition of acts.

There is no gender identity behind the expressions of gender... identity is performatively constituted by the very 'expressions' that are said to be its results.

There is no original or primary gender a drag imitates, but gender is a kind of imitation for which there is no original.

our notions of what a human being is problematically depend on there being two coherent genders. And if someone doesn't comply with either the masculine norm or the feminine norm, their very humaness is called into question.

Gender is not something that one is, it is something one does, an act… a doing rather than a being.

When we say gender is performed, we usually mean that we've taken on a role or we're acting in some way and that our acting or our role playing is crucial to the gender that we are and the gender that we present to the world.