Gender Trouble

Introduction

Gender Trouble: Feminism and the Subversion of Identity was published by Routledge in 1990. Butler questions the feminist assumption that “women” form a stable subject whose interests politics represents, and the distinction between biological sex and cultural gender: sex, too, is shaped by discourse. Gender is not an inner essence that finds expression but is produced by the repeated performance of norms within a “heterosexual matrix”. Drag, which parodies these norms, shows that the supposed original is itself an imitation. The book became a founding text of queer theory; its difficult style also drew criticism, and Butler clarified the notion of performativity in Bodies That Matter (1993).

Connections

Builds on

• The Will to Knowledge (The History of Sexuality, Vol. 1)1976 · Michel Foucault

Criticizes

• The Second Sex1949 · Simone de Beauvoir
• Écrits1966 · Jacques Lacan

Taken up in

• Bodies That Matter1993 · Judith Butler

More works by Judith Butler

• 1993Bodies That Matter

Appears in

• Journey ‘The Linguistic Turn’ · Stop 10 of 10