Judith Butler’s ‘Performative Acts and Gender Constitution’ argues that gender is not a stable inner truth expressed through the body, but a social reality produced through repeated bodily acts. Drawing on phenomenology, feminist theory and theatre, Butler challenges the assumption that gender follows naturally from biological sex. Instead, she claims that gender is constituted over time through gestures, movements, speech, posture, dress and social habits that create the illusion of an enduring identity. The key idea is performativity: gender does not simply reveal who someone already is, but actively produces the appearance of that identity through repetition. This does not mean gender is freely chosen like a costume; rather, it is performed under social pressure, regulated by punishment, taboo and the demand to appear intelligible within binary categories of “man” and “woman”. Butler’s engagement with Simone de Beauvoir’s claim that “one is not born, but rather becomes, a woman” is central, because it allows her to reinterpret womanhood as a historical and cultural process rather than a natural essence. Gender norms become powerful because they are repeated until they seem obvious, permanent and real. Yet this repetition also creates the possibility of change: if gender must be continually performed, it can also be repeated differently, parodied, disrupted or resignified. Butler’s example of theatricality clarifies this point, since the same gendered act may be accepted on stage but punished in everyday public space, revealing how social context polices bodily meaning. Ultimately, Butler shows that gender is a fragile but forceful social fiction, sustained through collective belief and bodily discipline. Her argument transforms feminist theory by shifting attention from what gender “is” to how it is repeatedly made, enforced and potentially undone through acts.