In addressing the concept of ‘performativity’ in relation to Kimberly Peirce’s 1999 film Boys Don’t Cry, I think it essential to first discuss Judith Butler’s ideas about gender performativity and particularly how they relate to discourses surrounding ‘Queer’ theory. The idea of gender being essentially performative emerges from Michel Foucault’s assertion that the ‘self’ is not pre-existing but rather is constructed only through our relations with others and through structures of power and knowledge. In other words we embody and are constituted by the discourses that make up our culture. Leading on from Foucault’s idea that there is no essential ‘truth’, Butler proposes that gender is not a ‘natural’ element of ourselves or inherently linked to our biological sex, but is entirely performative.
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