- Judith Butler is a post structural, radical theorist of power, gender, sexuality and identity. She is a philosopher whose work has influenced political philosophy, ethics (moral correctness and principle that governs behaviour), feminist, queer and literary theory.
- In her book Gender Trouble (1990), Butler argued that feminism had made a mistake by trying to assert that 'women' were a group with common characteristics and interests. She goes against binary opposites of gender relations in which human beings are divided into two clear-cut groups, women and men. Rather than opening up possibilities for a person to form and choose their own individual identity.
- Before any other kind of theorist, she puts being a feminist before any others. Feminists reject the idea that biology is destiny - that because you’ve been assigned a gender by biology you have to live your life as that gender whether it's equal rights or letting it dictate your identity.
- Butler prefers, rather than gender being a fixed attribute in a person, it should be seen as a fluid variable which shifts and changes in different contexts and at different times - that it is not fixed, decided or final.
- She claims gender is a performance whether it’s traditional or not; it's what you do at particular times, rather than a universal who you are. By choosing to be different about it, we might work to change gender norms and the binary understanding of masculinity and femininity.
- http://www.theory.org.uk/ctr-butl.htm
