Perhaps The Promise Of Phallus Is Always

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.

As We Interpret Ourselves Differently, We Also Live Ourselves Differently.

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.

I Do Not Follow Closely Anymore, Since There Is A Limit To How Much Heartsickness One Can Bear.

I Certainly Don't Mean To Suggest That All Investigative Journalism Prior To 9/11 In The Us Was Praiseworthy. But There Were More Examples To Which One Could Point, And There Were At Last Some Activist Photographers Who Understood That Getting Information Into The Public Sphere In Spite Of Military Censorship Was A Right And Obligation Within Democracy. That Strain In War Journalism Did Nearly Vanish During That Time.