The basic (and simplified) idea is that gender--what we think of as masculine and/or feminine--is performed in the ways we act, speak, dress, move, etc. and doesn't really exist outside of that performance. We learn how to perform this way from dominant culture and conventions--what someone might (incorrectly) call "normal male" or "normal female" behavior. But these "normal" qualities (and genders themselves) don't actually exist--rather, we are all repeatedly mimicking them and are rewarded for doing so (or punished for not doing so). We merely impersonate the qualities we've been taught match the gender we've been told we possess (like females being demure or males being aggressive) until those impersonations (and gender itself) become belief and seen as something natural and assumed.

https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/4dddcq/eli5butlers_gender_performativity/

[–] Valmond@lemmy.world 14 points 3 days ago* (last edited 3 days ago)

Thank you very much!

Very simple to understand too IMO.

[–] Lemminary@lemmy.world 8 points 2 days ago

Forgot to add that male and female are not the same as man or woman. The former specifies the sexual characteristics of our species, but the latter is what we call the performance. See: drag queens.

[–] RupeThereItIs@lemmy.world 2 points 2 days ago (4 children)

So, in a nutshell, the assertion is that gender is entirely nurture and not nature.

Yeah, sorry, that is an extraordinary assertion and I'm going to need extraordinary proof.

Are there people for whom gender and sex don't neatly match up, or even those for whom it is purely performative, sure.

But they are statistical outliers, and not representative of the majority experience.

People can be different then the statistical norm, and that's ok, but to assert that this norm is entirely cultural is over the top self serving.

[–] Objection@lemmy.ml 9 points 2 days ago* (last edited 2 days ago) (1 children)

Gender is definitionally cultural. A person's sex is nature, but the bundle of signifiers that denote gender (as well as which categories exist at all) are largely arbitrary and divorced from that, and vary greatly across time and place. Women wearing pants was unheard of a century or so ago, and would 100% be perceived as queer, nowadays it's completely normal. There were times when dueling was a virtually mandatory rite of passage to being considered a man. There are also historical cultures with more than two genders, and it's not as if people in those cultures were biologically different from others.

There's nothing "extraordinary" about this claim.

[–] rockerface@lemm.ee 3 points 1 day ago

Pants could also be exclusively feminine clothing, depending on the region and time period. Also, the colour pink used to be considered masculine (as we're all shades of red).

What I'm saying is, you're absolutely correct, and gender expectations are completely reliant on the culture factor.

[–] frezik@midwest.social 12 points 2 days ago (2 children)

There are clearly things that fall under physical differences. People with penises will always find it easy to stand up while peeing, and that affects how bathrooms are arranged. These things fall under their sex.

There are clearly other things that don't fall under those physical differences. Men can have long hair styles, but western culture doesn't usually go that way. That hasn't always been true, it's more common now than it was in the 1950s, and other cultures make entirely different choices for hairstyles between men and women. These things fall under gender.

Which means gender is performative by definition. You fall into society's rules for gender, or you deliberately break them, but it's never something encoded in DNA or anything. If it is, then it's sex, not gender.

[–] Kacarott@aussie.zone 8 points 2 days ago

I had hoped that as we as a society realised that gender is performative, it would make gender and these arbitrary gender roles less and less meaningful, to the point of eventually being effectively erased. That people could just say "this is my personality" and be accepted without needing to wrap it into definitions and groupings.

However what seems to be happening instead (from my perspective and experience) is that people are embracing the performative nature of gender more strongly, albeit with new non-traditional genders.

As a specific example, it seems like having one pronoun for everyone regardless of gender, would be better than inventing new pronouns in addition to the traditional gendered ones.

Note that I am happy to learn/hear other perspectives, or how mine is flawed.

[–] Hackworth@lemmy.world 5 points 2 days ago* (last edited 2 days ago)

Even sex isn't particularly cut and dry (Relevant Radiolab Episode). Here's hoping technologically enabled transhumanism makes it all moot.

[–] zea_64@lemmy.blahaj.zone 3 points 2 days ago

There's certainly a non-performative part, I feel it inside of me. But when I'm looking at other people I can't see that, I can only see the performance. Tbh I'm not very good at doing woman despite my internal sense of self. Most of the things people think of in women are not very appealing to me, so I don't do them. And I think it's fair to say a lot of those things, like wearing certain kinds of clothing, are definitely not nature, but arbitrary.

Basically, there's two (maybe more) things going on here both called gender which is very confusing. I'm sure the internal feelings are very correlated to biological factors, but the other parts? No.

[–] Olgratin_Magmatoe@slrpnk.net 9 points 2 days ago* (last edited 2 days ago)

My understanding (and it could be incorrect) is that this is more of a definitional/philosophical thing.

Though you are more than welcome to read directly from the source Judith Butler who (to my understanding) first started this theory on gender:

https://www.amherst.edu/system/files/media/1650/butler_performative_acts.pdf