In What Ways Does the “Performativity of Gender” Support or Subvert Heteropatriarchy?

Presentational Style: MLA 7th Edition
Essay Question: In what ways does the “performativity of gender” support or subvert heteropatriarchy? Heteropatriarchy, by definition, refers to the “sex/gender systems that naturalize masculinist domination and normalize heterosexual family forms and corollary heterosexist identities and practices” (Peterson, 57). Namely, it is “an overarching system of male dominance through the institution of compulsory heterosexuality” (Yep, 31). By reinforcing gender divisions between male and female, heteropatriarchy institutionalizes phallocentrism that “arrogates women’s bodies and labors” (Yep, 32). However, Judith Butler, in her works, notably Gender Trouble (1990) and Bodies that Matter (1993), subverts heteropatriarchy by theorizing the notion of the “performativity of gender”. According to her, gender is performative in the sense that there is no natural body pre-existing cultural inscription, and that body’s sex as well as gender identities are “regulatory ideals” socially constructed through a “stylized repetition of acts” (Gender Trouble, 179) or “performative interpellation”(Salih,61), which is “discursively maintained for the purpose of regulation of sexuality within the binary frame of reproductive heterosexuality” (GT, 173). Therefore, by revealing the performative and fictional nature of gender identities, Butler successfully denaturalizes “hegemonic” and “misogynist” culture upon which heteropatriarchy is based (GT, 176). Secondly, Butler argues that gender is an “imitation without origin” (GT, 173) and that parodic performances such as drag and cross-dressing reveal the incoherence and discontinuity of gendered experience. As a result, it opens up space for “resignification and recontexualiztion” of identities that challenge heteropatriarchy. However, Butler also admits that parody by itself is not subversive, and sometimes the parodic performances of gender only serve to reinforce existing heterosexual power

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