![]() In other words, all people do things that "perform" gender in different ways depending on the situation, but they also are responsible for other actions that, if included in a reading of one's gender identity, would tell a very different story about that same person's gender. ![]() But, she maintains, this identity can never be stable, both because it is never performed the same way twice, and because a myriad of acts are performed daily which, though unacknowledged in significance, ultimately disrupt the otherwise consistent pattern of gender. She describes this phenomenon as "performance," suggesting that repeated, subtly gendered acts take shape to form a "coherent" gender identity. Rather, she argues, gender is a fluid variable, with no independent existence of its own, and it shifts and changes depending on a person's context. In her influential 1989 book Gender Trouble: Feminism and the Subversion of Identity, she draws on thinkers such as Michel Foucault, Jaques Lacan, and Jean-Paul Sartre in order to argue against the assumption that one's masculine or feminine gender identity is necessarily linked to his or her reproductive sex. Regarded as one of the founders of queer theory, Butler is best known for her work addressing gender, identity, power, and desire. She was named Maxine Elliot Professor in the Departments of Rhetoric and Comparative Literature at the University of California, Berkeley, and also taught at Wesleyan and Johns Hopkins Universities. After attending Bennington College, she received a B.A. Butler's interest in philosophy grew out of many years of education at the synagogue in her hometown of Cleveland, where she was first exposed to existential theology and ethics.
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