ive come up with a new theory of gender. this is why judith butler is wrong. gender is NOT a performance, because to call it a performance is to presume that there is a Self, something which PRECEDES gender and then PERFORMS gender. in fact, there is no such Self: we are, each of us, constituted THROUGH and BY gendered relations—relations which precede US; relations which set the stage and context into which we emerge AS selves, as individuals. so in fact it is not that gender is a performance, but that WE, our lives and experiences as individuated beings, are ourselves being performed in no small part BY and THROUGH a system of gender without which we could not begin to conceive of ourselves, much less the world.