Real Julia is a real woman

More than twenty years ago Judith Butler argued that gender is performative - especially so in the political sense - and that it therefore constitutes the identity it is purported to be.

The performative model provides insight into gendered speech in which masculine and feminine styles are consciously conveyed by actors who seek to constitute themselves in a particular way. Witness Tony Abbott's exaggerated arm movements, Joe Hockey's and Wayne Swan's dismal attempts at anger.

The way in which a political actor orients their discursive selves is the way in which they are represented. Thus Julia Gillard's drawl and use of masculinist discourse is an attempt to engage with the wider public. But she is unable to pull it off because it is not really her.

Feminist scholar Deborah Cameron says this approach acknowledges the instability and variability of gender identities and therefore of the behaviour in which those identities are performed.

Instability and variability of gender identities plays out in most spoken and written political discourse.

Julia Gillard has tested a variety of discourses on the public in the past few years none of which has had any lasting effect.

Kevin Rudd, on the other hand, stuck to the knitting, using the same generic phrases over and over so that some, at least, have almost become folklore.

In arguing that gender is the issue and that the politics of sexism is now embedded in Australian society, Dr Summers is rightly keeping alive the issue of under-representation of women in Canberra.

To use Julia Gillard's poor communication skills as leverage, however, is to misrepresent the issue.