“Gender is a copy for which there is no original.”

This was Butler’s point in Bodies that Matter. It was deployed in service of defending and valorizing that which is genderqueer, which is delegitimized because it is an imitation of the Real Thing.

For Butler, there is no Real Thing in evidence. No one springs into life knowing how to do gender. We learn how to do a gender by watching and mastering the symbolic language of those around us.

There is, for instance, nothing natural about holding objects with one’s pinky finger extended, standing hands-on-hips with the finger pointed backwards, or pointing with the wrist bent at a 90-degree angle.