Performing

If you watched the video on Judith Butler's theory of performativity you will note that she sees gender more as verb than noun. One performs gender and sends messaging of one's "man-ness" or "woman-ness" I think with the understanding that there are innate forces at play at the biological level for transgender people.

In theory then one could perform gender as an actor on a stage but not have much investment as some people do. Irrespective of any gender variance, it is understood that everyone performs gender whether it is to attract a partner or to be considered for joining a group. For some of them our degree of suitability will be judged based on how acceptable our performance is.

However, if gender were exclusively performance then transgender people would not exist. There would be no dysphoria and no feeling of mismatch and John Money would have been proven correct with the case of David Reimer.