Indeed, Butler goes far as to argue that gender, as an objective natural thing, does not exist: “Gender reality is performative which means, quite simply, that it is real only to the extent that it is performed” (“Performative” 278). Gender, according to Butler, is by no means tied to material bodily facts but is solely and completely a social construction, a fiction, one that, therefore, is open to change and contestation: “Because there is neither an ‘essence’ that gender expresses or externalizes nor an objective ideal to which gender aspires; because gender is not a fact, the various acts of gender creates the idea of gender, and without those acts, there would be no gender at all. Gender is, thus, a construction that regularly conceals its genesis” (“Performative” 273). That genesis is not corporeal but performative (see next module), so that the body becomes its gender only “through a series of acts which are renewed, revised, and consolidated through time” (“Performative” 274). By illustrating the artificial, conventional, and historical nature of gender construction, Butler attempts to critique the assumptions of normative heterosexuality: those punitive rules (social, familial, and legal) that force us to conform to hegemonic, heterosexual standards for identity.