This book by Judith Butler is dense & meaty but well worth the effort. I won't even try to summarise it - I think I understood half to two-thirds of it, if I'm being honest. I did get the main point though - which is that gender is not something objective & external that is metaphysically thrust upon you alongside all the other conditions of your existence; gender is a socio-psychological linguistic & normative set of patterns that can be performed bodily by anyone thus inclined. Pretty radical stuff - as history agrees: this is a profoundly influential & controversial book. I'm going to try to give it a re-read in a couple of years & see if it yields more digestible points then. In the meantime - I'm not sure I would highly recommend this book, as it's very academically written; not pretentiously, just academically in the sense that Butler wrote it to resolve specific academic problems within her philosophical field rather than to educate the general public audience - but if you're interested in gender theory & up for a challenge give it a go.
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