Gender performativity

Gender performativity is the notion that cultural notions of gender are produced by people's performances of what they believe about gender. Gender is therefore a cultural construct.

The term is a queer theory concept first described by Judith Butler in Gender Trouble (1990).

A relevant quote from Gender Trouble:

"The challenge of rethinking gender categories outside of the metaphysics of substance will have to consider the relevance of Nietzsche's claim in On the Genealogy of Morals that 'there is no 'being' behind doing, effecting, becoming; the 'doer' is merely a fiction added to the deed -- the deed is everything.' In an application that Nietzsche himself would not have anticipated or condoned, we might state as a corollary: There is no gender identity behind the expressions of gender; that identity is performatively constituted by the very 'expressions' that are said to be its results." p. 25