Performative Acts and Gender Constitution: An Essay in Phenomenology and Feminist Theory

Butler’s work focuses on the thesis that gender is an essential structure of society and yet something without inherent essence. The idea that gender is socially constructed rather than natural or necessary is generally accepted by feminist theorists. Simone de Beauvoir and her followers such as Betty Friedan, author of The Feminine Mystique, showed that the belief in gender essentialism was used to prevent women from accessing education, economic opportunities, and personal autonomy. So, even though gender is not a natural category, a hierarchical understanding of gender is an essential part of many societies.

While there are biological differences between sexes, these differences do not require one way of performing gender rather than another, and they certainly do not require gender to be defined in terms of domination and subordination or a hierarchy of oppression. Butler draws her interpretation of patriarchy from anthropological studies such as Claude Levi-Strauss’s kinship analysis and Gayle Rubin’s interpretation of kinship formation (Levi-Strauss, Claude. The Elementary Structures of Kinship. Beacon Press, 1965; Rubin, Gayle. “The Traffic in Women: Notes on the ‘Political Economy’ of Sex.” Toward an Anthropology of Women, edited by Rayna R.