Mar 302010
Gender is not something that one is, it is something one does, an act… a “doing” rather than a “being”.
Perhaps the promise of phallus is always dissatisfying in some way.
Indeed it may be only by risking the incoherence of identity that connection is possible.
Gender is a kind of imitation for which there is no original; in fact, it is a kind of imitation that produces the very notion of the original as an effect and consequence of the imitation itself.
There is no gender identity behind the expressions of gender; that identity is performatively constituted by the very “expressions” that are said to be its results.