Early feminism was reliant on stable notions of men and women congruent with the similarly stable notions of male and female. Simone de Beauvoir disrupted this stability when she published her groundbreaking 1949 work The Second Sex, where she asserted, “one is not born, but, rather, becomes a woman” (qtd. in Butler 519). Decades later, Judith Butler would expand on this idea in their 1988 essay Performative Acts and Gender Constitution with their formulation of the performative model of gender, which expertly articulated the interactions between sex, gender, and sexuality. With Butler's analysis, supported by Talia Mae Bettcher's 2007 essay Evil Deceivers and Make-Believers: On Transphobic Violence and the Politics of Illusion, it becomes evident how the historic expressive model of gender is not only inaccurate but harmful, especially to those who are transgender, who engage in nonbinary gender performances, and are under the essentialist category of “woman”.

There are two models of gender at play: the expressive model and the performative model. The expressive model stipulates that gender presentation is the expression of an inner sex/gender. The expressive model is built off of what Harold Garfinkel labeled “the natural attitude”, which he proposed is an attitude that is present in everyone prior to theoretical conditioning (Bettcher 48).^[1] Bettcher details that the natural attitude is that gender presentation is the expression of the concealed sexed body, of which genitalia (at birth) are the critical determinants. But one's genitals are obviously not the cause of most gender presentations; under the expressive model, gender presentation is conceived as both a representation of genitals and, as Butler explains, the expression of one's inner gender “essence” (this where “gender” supposedly originates) — an essence which they describe as “the spiritual or psychological correlate of biological sex” (528). Butler's performative model diverges from the idea of gender as identity by attributing the originator of gender to acts. Following in the analysis of Beauvoir and Merleau-Ponty, Butler maintains gender is not constituted by an internal identity, but rather, by a “stylized repetition of acts” (519) that, like all expressions of the body, are “taking up and rendering specific…a set of historical possibilities” (521). In other words, one is not a gender, but rather, one does gender.

The expressive model has the capacity to be harmful to transgender people because of its reliance on the natural attitude. The natural attitude stipulates that sex is a discrete, invariant binary; in such a binary, the resultant gender expression must align with (psychological and thus) physical sex. And, as Bettcher points out, “genitalia play the role of "concealed truth" about a person's sex” (48). This creates a problem for those whose presentations do not match their genitalia. Bettcher details how transgender people, especially those without genital reconstruction, deal with a “double bind” in how to communicate their identity: either they attempt to “pass” and keep their transgender identity invisible, or they attempt to not pass and make the discrepancy between physical sex and gender identity visible. Both approaches are not accepted by society: to be invisible is to be a “deceiver”, while to be visible is to be a “pretender” (Bettcher 60). As such, both are subject to violence for not conforming to the discrete sex-gender system (Butler 522). However, Bettcher details the unique transphobic violence directed towards trans people who are invisible but attempt to engage in intimacy (particularly male-to-female trans people with straight cisgender men), where it will be revealed that they are “really a man/woman” and have “betrayed” their partner (48). As Butler points out, “Discrete genders are part of what ‘humanizes’ individuals within contemporary culture” (522), and so violence against those with nonconforming gender presentation can be justified. This violence is a direct consequence of the invariance of the natural attitude and the expressive model.

It would be incorrect to say that the expressive model doesn't have the capacity to accept transgender people. Bettcher describes how “trans claims to ‘authenticity’ may be understood as directly opposing constructions as deceiver/pretender. Thus, for example, the metaphor ‘really a woman trapped in the body of a man’ turns the accusation of deception or betrayal on its head by representing the body itself as somehow deceptive” (55). This is still the language of expression, but of gender presentation as the expression of an inner, pre-social gender identity, which can be thought of as psychological sex. However, this shift in the expressive model still excludes gender presentations that are outside the discrete male-female binary. This binary is created by the model's reliance on the natural attitude, which not only stipulates that genitals are determinants of sex, but that genitals are binary, discrete, and invariant. Of course, there is much evidence to the contrary — perhaps most notably, the existence of genital reconstruction surgery. When presented with the evidence of genital reconstruction surgery, “normals” (what Garfinkel terms adherents to the natural attitude), generally respond in three ways, according to Bettcher. The “normals” could dismiss the evidence by viewing the genitals as “artificial” or “exceptional”, they could “come to believe that such surgery legitimately constitutes a sex change (and thereby reject their view that sex is invariant) or else view gender self-identity as the essential determinant of sex (and thereby reject genital essentiality)” (Bettcher 49). The final response that Bettcher outlines is a more trans-inclusive version of the expressive model centering psychological sex. However, this transformation notably leaves untouched the perception of physical sex as binary, discrete, and invariant. Because psychological sex is defined in relation to physical sex, it can only be defined through a binary, discrete, and invariant relationship — psychological sex is either in alignment with or in opposition to physical sex (i.e. male/female in a male/female's body). The discrete, invariant binary promoted by the expressive model limits what gender performances are deemed acceptable.

The negative effects of the expressive model's binary are far-reaching. Apart from those who explicitly do not fall under the labels of “man” and “woman”, the label of “woman” is not even representative of the “concrete lives” of those to whom the label is prescribed (Butler 523). Butler argues that the category of woman is especially limiting because it is defined as the Other, which has to be specified from the universal of “man”. With increased visibility brought by feminists who aim to challenge male dominance in perceptions of society, the inaccuracies at the Othered category's edges become more apparent and more problematic. The essential categories formulated by the expressive model, especially that of “woman”, are simply too specific to capture the range of gender diversity present in the real world. One notable example is compulsory heterosexuality; Butler writes, “one way in which this system of compulsory heterosexuality is reproduced and concealed is through the cultivation of bodies into discrete sexes with ‘natural’ appearances and ‘natural’ heterosexual dispositions” (524). Feminism has historically relied on a stable notion of woman, and so going beyond such a notion would be truly disruptive to the feminist project. But Butler argues that such a disruption is needed in feminist analysis: “There is, in my view, nothing about femaleness that is waiting to be expressed; there is, on the other hand, a good deal about the diverse experiences of women that is being expressed and still needs to be expressed” (530). Understanding the diverse experiences of women through a broader lens than just gender, the expressive model's discrete, essentialist gender binary could be considered inherently counter to an intersectional analysis of gender, and thus, counter to a full analysis of gender.

Understanding gender as acts rather than identity can help us understand the violence and oppression against, as well as the subversive potential of, gender performances outside the binary. Acts are powerful because they create gender reality. Butler writes, “the act is not contrasted with the real, but constitutes a reality that is in some sense new, a modality of gender that cannot readily be assimilated into the pre-existing categories that regulate gender reality” (527). By insisting that gender performance must actually be the expression of binary sex, we reinforce an appearance-reality contrast that doesn't actually exist and obscures our diverse realities, whether we're transgender or nonbinary or women or anything else. Although a stable concept of “woman” and a “feminine essence” may be rhetorically powerful for women to unify in some instances, it is ultimately harmful to the feminist project.