In The First Instance, Performativity Must Be

If Gender Is Eradicated, So Too Is An Important Domain Of Pleasure For Many People. And Others Have A Strong Sense Of Self Bound Up With Their Genders, So To Get Rid Of Gender Would Be To Shatter Their Self-hood.

Maybe We Need To Start With The Rethinking Of What Is "west" And What Is "non-west." It Seems To Me That There Are Any Number Of Populations Who Already Cross That Divide, And We Could Probably Point To Several Existing States That Belong Exclusively Neither To One Category Nor To The Other. Do We Use These Terms To Designate Geographical Realities, Geopolitical Ones, Or Perhaps Sites Of Power, Exploitation, Orientalism That Move Through Space And Time In Ways That Have To Be Tracked Historically.

What Would It Mean If We Lived In A World In Which No One Held Out For The Possibility Of Substantial Political Equality, Or For A Full Cessation Of Colonial Practices - If No One Held Out For Those Things Because They Were Impossible?

Look, "gender Trouble" Includes A Critique Of The Idea That There Are Two Ideal Bodily Forms, Two Ideal Morphologies: The Masculine And The Feminine. I Want To Suggest That Today The Intersex Movement Is Very Engaged With Criticizing That Idea.

One Of The Things That Neoliberalism Does Is, It Relies On Flexible Workforces Who Are Hired And Fired At Will And Who Are Basically Disposable Labor. You Can Use Them. You Can Get Rid Of Them. They Have No Rights; They Have No Security. Their Lives And Well-being Are Made And Unmade At The Whim Of Those Who Are Exercising The Calculus. So, Instead Of Looking At The Institution And Objecting To That Kind Of Organization, People Just Go, "i'm A Failure;"; "i'm Not Working Hard Enough"; Or, "i'm Not As Smart As The Next Person."