Gender as Performative

Sometimes, when people say "gender is a performance," they mean that gender is something you pretend to do, like an actor upon the stage. I think this is a shame, because as I understand performativity theory it's actually very insightful and puts transgender identity on a solid philosophical footing.

Unfortunately, Judith Butler is one of the most famously confusing philosophers of all time, so I can't make any promises that I understood her correctly. But, whether or not I understood her, I do think I'm right.

A "performative speech act" is a speech act that does something as it is being said. For example:

• "I now pronounce you man and wife."

• "I baptize you in the name of the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit."

• "I'm naming you Sarah."

• "I bet you $10 that you're not going to get all your work done by 5pm."

• "I bequeath my entire fortune to the Foundation to Cure Rare Diseases In Cute Puppies."

• "You are now a member of the Freemasons."

You can understand a lot of human interaction as, additionally, ways of communicating things to each other.¹ For example, when you dress like a goth, you're communicating that you're rebellious, that you like certain books and kinds of music, that you're morbid, and that you care deeply about aesthetics. When you buy a fancy car, you signal that you're rich. When you bring your friend cake you baked, you signal that you're a caring person who wants them to be happy. Even conversations that are purportedly about something else are often communicating other things in subtext: "I am smart"; "I like you"; "you're cooler than I am and I feel a bit intimidated"; "wanna fuck?"

The basic insight here is that all of these kinds of communication can also be performative speech acts—that is, they can make something true because of the process of communicating them.