Do We Need Recourse To A Happier

There Is No Original Or Primary Gender A Drag Imitates, But Gender Is A Kind Of Imitation For Which There Is No Original.

We Have To Be Able Track The Ways In Which Fear, For Instance, Is Monopolized By State And Media Institutions, Ways In Which Fear Is Actually Promoted And Distributed As A Way Of Bolstering The Need For Greater Security And Militarization.

Some Trans People Thought That In Claiming That Gender Is Performative That I Was Saying That It Is All A Fiction, And That A Person's Felt Sense Of Gender Was Therefore "unreal." That Was Never My Intention. I Sought To Expand Our Sense Of What Gender Realities Could Be. But I Think I Needed To Pay More Attention To What People Feel, How The Primary Experience Of The Body Is Registered, And The Quite Urgent And Legitimate Demand To Have Those Aspects Of Sex Recognized And Supported.

One Struggles Always With These Norms. So One Doesn't Construct Oneself Freely Without Respect To Norm But One Works With One's Historical Situation And Sees Where There Might Be Some Play. Where There Might Be Some Freedom To Move.

... That Gender Is A Choice, Or That Gender Is A Role, Or That Gender Is A Construction That One Puts On, As One Puts On Clothes In The Morning, That There Is A 'one' Who Is Prior To This Gender, A One Who Goes To The Wardrobe Of Gender And Decides With Deliberation Which Gender It Will Be Today.