Op-ed: Transgender Dinosaurs, Part Deux: The Revenge of Judith Butler
We're in a changing-of-the-guard moment where being transgender is more celebrated than feared.
BY Riki Wilchins
March 05 2013 5:00 AM ET
http://www.advocate.com/commentary/riki-wilchins/2013/03/05/op-ed-transgender-dinosaurs-part-deux-revenge-judith-butlerIt was Gender Trouble and other writing by Judith Butler that first ignited my thinking about gender and made me believe a transgender politics that transcended both the binary and the demands of cis-gendered people was possible. There was a period of about three years when I seemed helpless to do anything but discuss and analyze gender theory, even over the most casual luncheon dates. Being able to finally deconstruct the oppression with which I struggled and see all the moving parts ignited in me a new desire to confront, rather than conform to, the gender system and informed my trans-activism for the coming two decades.
So I looked forward to eagerly devouring her ideas on contesting gender oppression when her book, Undoing Gender, was published.
But her ideas of what passed for gender activism seemed strangely oblique and bloodless to me—small, individual acts of insubordinacy that parodied and upset gender norms, while celebrating genderqueerness. WTF?
