Butler argued gender isn't something you have — it's something you keep doing

Judith Butler proposed that gender isn't an inner essence expressed outwardly, but a repeated performance: a sequence of stylized acts — gestures, clothing, speech — that congeal over time into the appearance of a stable identity. Because it's produced through repetition rather than fixed by nature, Butler argued, gender can also be performed differently, opening space for it to be contested and changed.

— Judith Butler, Gender Trouble: Feminism and the Subversion of Identity — 1990
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