American writer, theorist and activist Judith Butler was BOTD in 1956. Born in Cleveland, Ohio to a middle-class family, they studied at Bennington College before transferring to Yale, and became an academic. Butler is best known for their 1990 book Gender Trouble: Feminism and the Subversion of Identity, which became a foundational text in feminist and queer studies. Butler contended that gender and sexual identity are performed and constituted via actions and speech, and that conventional notions of gender and sexuality exist to reinforce patriarchal power structures, oppressing gay and transgender people. Their dense, non-linear and often opaque prose style drew considerable criticism, as was the (mis)interpretation of the concept of gender as “performance”. Butler clarified their theories in 1993’s Bodies That Matter: On the Discursive Limits of ‘Sex, arguing that existing power structures meant gender could not be picked up and discarded at will, but could be destabilised through “deviant” gender behaviour and “gender parodies”, such as drag. Butler’s other works include Excitable Speech, Undoing Gender and The Force of Nonviolence. They have been heavily involved in LGBTQ, feminist and anti-war movements, often debating with radical and trans-exclusionary feminists. Butler identifies as lesbian and non-binary, and lives with their partner Wendy Brown, with whom they are raising a son. They currently teach at the University of California Berkeley.