Judith Butler argues in works like Gender Trouble (1990) that gender is about performance and reiteration within sexual regimes. Gender is an illusion as has been suggested by Butler: “ The effect of gender . . . must be understood as the mundane ways in which bodily gestures, movements, and styles of various kinds constitute the illusion of an abiding gendered self.” According to Butler one can never have an abiding gendered self and these habits of behaviour, bodily gestures and bodily movements and styles only constitute an illusion of gender. This thereby forms a strong critique of what is called essentialist feminism.

The central thesis of Gender Trouble is a reworking of Simone de Beauvoir's statement that o ne is not born a woman but becomes one:

“ If there is something right in Beauvoir's claim that one is not born, but rather becomes a woman, it follows that woman itself is a term in process, a becoming, a constructing that cannot rightfully be said to originate or to end. As an ongoing discursive practice, it is open to intervention and resignification.”

Butler therefore argues that the process of becoming is an endless one :

•  To be a woman is a mode of becoming that does not ever end.

•  Applicable to all gendered orientations, not just man / woman.

•  Could lead to any number of directions.