Quotes from book
Gender Trouble

Name: Gender Trouble
Author: Judith Butler

Gender Trouble: Feminism and the Subversion of Identity is a book by the philosopher Judith Butler, in which the author argues that gender is a kind of improvised performance. The work is influential in feminism, women's studies, and lesbian and gay studies, and has also enjoyed widespread popularity outside of traditional academic circles. Butler's ideas about gender came to be seen as foundational to queer theory and the advancing of dissident sexual practices during the 1990s.

“If Lacan presumes that female homosexuality issues from a disappointed heterosexuality, as observation is said to show, could it not be equally clear to the observer that heterosexuality issues from a disappointed homosexuality?”

Judith Butler book Gender Trouble

Source: Gender Trouble: Feminism and the Subversion of Identity

“If the immutable character of sex is contested, perhaps this construct called ‘sex’ is as culturally constructed as gender; indeed, perhaps it was always already gender, with the consequence that the distinction between sex and gender turns out to be no distinction at all.”

Judith Butler book Gender Trouble

"Gender Trouble: Feminism and the Subversion of Identity" (1990)

“To operate within the matrix of
power is not the same as to replicate uncritically relations of domination.”

Judith Butler book Gender Trouble

Source: Gender Trouble: Feminism and the Subversion of Identity

“There is no gender identity behind the expressions of gender; that identity is performatively constituted by the very "expressions" that are said to be its results.”

Judith Butler book Gender Trouble

"Gender Trouble: Feminism and the Subversion of Identity" (1990)