bashoGWSS1

The idea that gender is a performance means that gender is not, as we are socialized to believe, necessarily a result of the genitalia with which we are born. The idea that gender is a performance refutes the commonly-held assumption that boys “naturally� act like boys and girls “naturally� act like girls, and that those behaviors and characteristics “naturally� carry on into adulthood.

Instead, the performance of gender is actually a performance to prove to ourselves and to others that our sex reflects our gender—which reflects our sexuality—which reflects us. We do gender and we assume that others do it, too. When one accomplishes gender, that person naturalizes gender within themselves.

I see the construction of gender as a perpetual cycle. Throughout American history, we have created and recreated the “male� ideal and the “female� ideal. We have a new baby boy or girl, determined by ownership of “fitting� genitalia for its sex. We recognize its sex in the choices we make—from the color of its bedroom walls to the types of toys we buy. The child grows up, taking hold of the reigns for its own gender performativity, continuing that which it feels society understands. And the cycle restarts.

However, this path is by no means absolute. Changing the way that we “do� gender can change our social conditions. The way in which we present ourselves impacts the way others see us, so it makes sense that if we changed our performance, others would, in turn, perform to us differently. Perhaps if people allow themselves to perform outside societal constraints, others will perform with lesser grip on traditional “male� or “female� expectations. The result would be a more genuine society of individuals.